and the incapacity of the other two with respect to knowledge.

Simple democracy was society governing itself without the aid of
secondary means. 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 to hereditary government, as the
republic of letters is to hereditary literature.

It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is
representation ingrafted upon democracy. It has fixed the form by a
scale parallel in all cases to the extent of the principle. What Athens
was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of
the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present.
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.

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. France, great
and populous as it is, is but a spot in the capaciousness of the system.
It is preferable to simple democracy even in small territories. Athens,
by representation, would have outrivalled her own democracy.

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. This cannot be accomplished by any
method so conducive to the various interests of the community, as by the
representative system. It concentrates the knowledge necessary to the
interest of the parts, and of the whole. It places government in a state
of constant maturity. It is, as has already been observed, never young,
never old. It is subject neither to nonage, nor dotage. It is never
in the cradle, nor on crutches. 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.

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