This is perfectly conformable to the principle of equal rights:
for, in the first place, every man has a _right to give an opinion_ but
no man has a right that his opinion should _govern the rest_. In the
second place, it is not supposed to be known beforehand on which side
of any question, whether for or against, any man's opinion will fall.
He may happen to be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority
upon others; and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one
case, he must yield it in the other. All the disorders that have arisen
in France, during the progress of the revolution, have had their origin,
not in the _principle of equal rights_, but in the violation of that
principle. The principle of equal rights has been repeatedly violated,
and that not by the majority but by the minority, and _that minority
has been composed of men possessing property as well as of men without
property; property, therefore, even upon the experience already had,
is no more a criterion of character than it is of rights_. It will
sometimes happen that the minority are right, and the majority are
wrong, but as soon as experience proves this to be the case, the
minority will increase to a majority, and the error will reform itself
by the tranquil operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights.
Nothing, therefore, can justify an insurrection, neither can it ever be
necessary where rights are equal and opinions free.

Taking then the principle of equal rights as the foundation of the
revolution, and consequently of the constitution, the organical part,
or the manner in which the several parts of the government shall be
arranged in the constitution, will, as is already said, fall within the
province of opinion.

Various methods will present themselves upon a question of this kind,
and tho' experience is yet wanting to determine which is the best,
it has, I think, sufficiently decided which is the worst. That is
the worst, which in its deliberations and decisions is subject to
the precipitancy and passion of an individual; and when the whole
legislature is crowded into one body it is an individual in mass. In all
cases of deliberation it is necessary to have a corps of reserve, and it
would be better to divide the representation by lot into two parts, and
let them revise and correct each other, than that the whole should sit
together, and debate at once.

Representative government is not necessarily confined to