This omission can not be satisfactorily explained as a mere oversight. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780, from which the fathers copied the qualified veto power, required the governor to take an oath in which he obligated himself to perform the duties of his office "agreeably to the rules and regulations of the constitution and the laws of the commonwealth." There was no precedent in any then existing state constitution for expressly binding the executive in his oath of office to defend the Constitution without mentioning his duty to enforce the laws. It is a reasonable inference that the framers of the Constitution intended to impress the President with the belief that his obligation to defend the Constitution was more binding upon him than his duty to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. In the foregoing discussion it has been shown that political authority was unequally divided between the various branches of the government; to the extent that this was the case the framers of the Constitution did not adhere consistently to the theory of checks. But in this, as in other instances where they departed from precedents which they professed to be following, they were actuated by a desire to minimize the direct influence of the people. If the Constitution had been framed in complete accord with the doctrine of checks and balances, the lower house of Congress as the direct representative of the people would have been given a veto on the entire policy of the government. But this, as we have seen, was not done. The more important powers were placed under the exclusive control of the other branches of the government over which it was believed public opinion would have but little influence. This deprived the people of the unlimited negative to which they were entitled even according to the theory of checks. Richard Henry Lee did not greatly exaggerate then when he said: "The only check to be found in favor of the democratic principle, in this system, is the House of Representatives, which, I believe, may justly be called a mere shred or rag of representation."[121] Nor was Mason entirely mistaken when he referred to the House of Representatives as "the shadow only" and not "the substance of representation."[122]