ce to obtain such a
government with ease, _or rather to confirm it when actually possessed_,
thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject their country
to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is it, then, a truth so
universally acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable
form into which human society can be thrown, that a man is not permitted
to hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of being a friend to
tyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind?

I do not know under what description to class the present ruling
authority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think
it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble
oligarchy. But for the present I admit it to be a contrivance of the
nature and effect of what it pretends to. I reprobate no form of
government merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations in
which the purely democratic form will become necessary. There may be
some (very few, and very particularly circumstanced) where it would be
clearly desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or of
any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of
considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them.
Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the most of those
constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring
with their opinion, that an absolute democracy no more than absolute
monarchy is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.
They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy than the sound
constitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes,
that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a
tyranny.[105] Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of
the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon
the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity,
as they often must,--and that oppression of the minority will extend to
far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than
can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. In
such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more
deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have
the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds,
they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy
under their sufferi