“It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this.”

Speech in New York, urging ratification of the U.S. Constitution (21 June 1788)
Context: It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

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Alexander Hamilton 106
Founding Father of the United States 1757–1804

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