If there is such a ruling class, there must of course be a subject class, and when this condition is once established this Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, will have perished from the earth.
He warns that the establishment of a ruling class undermines the foundational principles of democracy.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.