The Founding Fathers on the dangers of a democracy
1. “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. 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 nowhere appears in history.” John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor, 17 December 1814
2. “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [that is, do not lack] virtue but are the dupes of pretended patriots.” – Elbridge Gerry, 1787, spoken during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
3. “It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” – Alexander Hamilton, from a speech at the New York ratifying convention, 21 June 1788 Francis Childs’ version
4. “ . . . 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.” – James Madison, Federalist #10
5. Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government. [Liberty] is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”
6. John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”
7. Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”
