The primary concern of the framers of the constitution was the proper and just balance of powers in order to protect against tyranny, ensure fair representation, and safeguard individual rights. The American Constitution was framed with the citizens past experience fully in mind. While under British control, American citizens were severely undercut in both federal power and representation in parliament. Parliament was insanely corrupt, purposefully taking more power for itself over the population of Britain en masse. While making the constitution the framers kept these issues in mind, holding to the firmly held belief of their colonial constituents that, as stated by Lord Acton in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” …show more content…
Needless to say, this system of one vote per state made some of the more populous states feel less influential. Of course the feeling works both ways, the smaller states held just as much say as a state with possibly double their population. Once the Articles were thrown out the Virginia Plan took its place for a brief time. With the Virginia plan representation was based off of population. The same issue arose, but now with the smaller state not being represented enough. If it wasn 't enough, this raised the issue of slaves counting towards a state 's population. Of course slave holding states wanted them to count fully, but the free states saw that slaves would hardly ever agree with their masters, so they didn 't want them to count at all. This led to the three fifths compromise, where a slave would only count as three fifth of a vote. However, with the smaller states not possessing a big enough sway the Virginia plan was quickly thrown out. Replacing it would be the system used still to this day. Congress would be split into two separate groups the House and the Senate. The House would hold representatives based on a state 's population and the senate would let every state get the same amount of votes. This, more or less, accomplished the role of letting every state have fair and balanced representation. Even today people take for granted how much say they have when it comes to the world of