They were idealistic in that a lot of them subscribed to the ideals of the enlightenment which as a reminder was not a working class movement. Most of the compromises they made were innate issues of their era, but there is still that massive throughline within a lot of it that assumes that those in power are statesmen not demagogues. The problem is that I doubt they would expect the very checks and balances to be used by the demagogues they feared.