John Adams:
And does this foolish woman expect to get rid of an aristocracy? God Almighty has decreed in the creation of human nature an eternal aristocracy among men. The world is, always has been, and ever will be governed by it. All that policy and legislation can do is check force by force. Arm a power above it and another below it; or if you will, one on its right hand, the other to its left; both able to say to it when it grows mad: "MANIAC KEEP WITHIN YOUR LIMITS!"
There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true in fact, and appears no where in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms or simple government, and when unchecked produce the same effects of avarice, violence, and cruelty".
The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished. Measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. As a result, democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
A properly designed state would check interest with interest, class with class, faction with faction, and one branch of government with another in a harmonious system of mutual frustration.
The better kind of people, by which I mean the people who are orderly and industrious, who are content with their situations, and not uneasy in their circumstances, will be led by the insecurity of property, the loss of confidence in their rulers, and the want of public faith and rectitude, to consider the charms of liberty as imaginary and delusive.
The people who own the country ought to run it.
The mob begin to think and reason. Poor reptiles! They bask in the sun and ere noon they will bite. Depend upon it. The gentry begin to fear this.
If the people should elect, they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character or services; some man, if he might so speak, of continental reputation.
The people have been and ever will be unfit to retain the exercise of power in their own hands.
I think that to give them, the supposed aristocrats, power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it and increasing instead of remedying the evil....Nor do I believe it necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislature, to protect themselves.
