The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) spells out that powers not explicitly granted to either level of government are reserved for the people. Many other examples of limited governments exist today, such as Canada, England, Australia, Japan, and Mexico.
Both natural law and English constitutional doctrine gave the colonists a right to revolt against the sovereign's oppression." But these understandings about the right of revolution on the eve of the American Revolution rested on a traditional model of government.