Historical voices

That monarchy is all a bubble, a mere court artifice to procure money, is evident (at least to me) in every character in which it can be viewed.

Before this period, he is not trusted with the management of an acre of land, or with the heritable property of a flock of sheep, or an herd of swine; but, wonderful to tell! he may, at the age of eighteen years, be trusted with a nation.

Where is the propriety of calling such a lad the father of the people?--In all other cases, a person is a minor until the age of twenty-one years.

On the contrary, the representative system is always parallel with the order and immutable laws of nature, and meets the reason of man in every part.

It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly.

It turns the progress of the human faculties upside down.

Nature is orderly in all her works; but this is a mode of government that counteracts nature.

We must shut our eyes against reason, we must basely degrade our understanding, not to see the folly of what is called monarchy.

It exists not by fraud and mystery; it deals not in cant and sophistry; but inspires a language that, passing from heart to heart, is felt and understood.

I compare it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open--and the company see what it is…

Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon; whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always appears to me a…

It is ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till boys grow to be men.

Every succession is a revolution, and every regency a counter-revolution.

All men can understand what representation is; and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.

Representation is of itself the delegated monarchy of a nation, and cannot debase itself by dividing it with another.

A nation is not a body, the figure of which is to be represented by the human body; but is like a body contained within a circle, having a common center, in which every radius meets; and that center is formed by representation.

It admits not of a separation between knowledge and power, and is superior, as government always ought to be, to all the accidents of individual man, and is therefore superior to what is called monarchy.

It concentrates the knowledge necessary to the interest of the parts, and of the whole.

That which is called government, or rather that which we ought to conceive government to be, is no more than some common center in which all the parts of society unite.

It is impossible to conceive a system of government capable of acting over such an extent of territory, and such a circle of interests, as is immediately produced by the operation of representation.

It is the easiest of all the forms of government to be understood and the most eligible in practice; and excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode, and the inconvenience of the simple democracy.

What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude.

By ingrafting representation upon democracy, we arrive at a system of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various interests and every extent of territory and population; and that also with advantages as much superior…

Retaining, then, democracy as the ground, and rejecting the corrupt systems of monarchy and aristocracy, the representative system naturally presents itself; remedying at once the defects of the simple democracy as to form, and the…