As shown in a previous chapter, the Revolutionary movement largely destroyed the system of checks. It abolished the veto power, centralized authority and made the government in a measure responsible to the electorate. The Constitution, however, restored the old order in a modified form. In this sense it was reactionary and retrogressive. It went back to the old doctrine of the separation of powers, ostensibly to limit the authority of the government and thereby make it responsible to the people as Hamilton argued in _The Federalist_. That this could not have been the real object is evident to any one who has carefully studied the situation. The unthinking reader may accept Hamilton's contention that the system of checks and balances was incorporated in the Constitution to make the government the servant and agent of the people; but the careful student of history can not be so easily misled. He knows that the whole system was built up originally as a means of limiting monarchical and aristocratic power; that it was not designed to make government in any true sense responsible, but to abridge its powers because it was irresponsible. The very existence of the system implies the equal recognition in the Constitution of antagonistic elements. As it could not possibly exist where monarchy or aristocracy was the only recognized source of authority in the state, so it is likewise impossible where all power is in the people. It is to be observed, then, that what originally commended the system to the people was the fact that it limited the positive power of the king and aristocracy, while the framers of the Constitution adopted it with a view to limiting the power of the people themselves. There is no essential difference between the viewpoint of the framers of the American Constitution and that of their English contemporaries. Lecky says: "It is curious to observe how closely the aims and standard of the men who framed the memorable Constitution of 1787 and 1788 corresponded with those of the English statesmen of the eighteenth century. It is true that the framework adopted was very different.... The United States did not contain the materials for founding a constitutional monarchy or a powerful aristocracy.... It was necessary to adopt other means, but the ends that were aimed at were much the same. To divide and restrict power; to secure property; to check the appetite for organic change; to guard individual liberty against the tyranny of the multitude...."[103]