William Manning (1747 – 1814) was an American author, farmer, and soldier. After fighting in the Revolutionary War, he began to believe that his military service meant little to the American ruling class. Manning soon became a member of the Democratic-Republican Party in opposition to the ruling Federalist Party. As the years passed and his distrust towards the federal government grew, he wrote multiple papers on what he deemed was the corruption of the "Few" and what the "Many" endured as a result of it.
In 1798, Manning wrote his most famous work, The Key of Liberty, in which he wrote that the goal of the "Few" was to distress and force the "Many" into being financially dependent on them, creating a continued cycle of dependence. He argued that the only hope of the "Many" was to vote for leaders that would fight for those with lesser political power and support a smaller government. His work, however, would not be published for more than a century, mostly due to its controversial content.