It is possible that an individual may lay down a system of
principles, on which government shall be constitutionally
established to any extent of territory. This is no more than an
operation of the mind, acting by its own powers. But the practice upon
those principles, as applying to the various and numerous
circumstances of a nation, its agriculture, manufacture, trade,
commerce, etc., etc., a knowledge of a different kind, and which can
be had only from the various parts of society. It is an assemblage
of practical knowledge, which no individual can possess; and therefore
the monarchical form is as much limited, in useful practice, from
the incompetency of knowledge, as was the democratical form, from
the multiplicity of population. The one degenerates, by extension,
into confusion; the other, into ignorance and incapacity, of which all
the great monarchies are an evidence. The monarchical form, therefore,
could not be a substitute for the democratical, because it has equal
inconveniences.
Much less could it when made hereditary. This is the most
effectual of all forms to preclude knowledge. Neither could the high
democratical mind have voluntarily yielded itself to be governed by
children and idiots, and all the motley insignificance of character,
which attends such a mere animal system, the disgrace and the reproach
of reason and of man.
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