Founding fathers view of government

[Won2blv]

I saw a facebook post quoting rand paul as saying that the founding fathers saw the government as a necessary evil that they wanted as little to do with as possible. Isn't this first of all, a really pessimistic way of describing such a beneficial infrastructure like a Government? Obviously, much of our advancement in science and culture has to do with a unified government. But I'm mostly wondering if any one here has some insight on if that statement by paul was even accurate or not?