On the other hand, where there are many governors the government will be more readily kept in correspondence with the general will. The duty of the legislator is to hit the happy medium at which the government, while not failing in strength, is yet properly submissive to the sovereign. Or it may be placed in the hands of a minority, in which case it is called aristocracy. It may be urged, on behalf of democracy, that those who make the laws know better than anybody how they should be interpreted and administered. But it is not right that the makers of the laws should execute them, nor that the main body of the people should turn its attention from general views to particular objects.
Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs.
A true democracy, in the vigorous sense of the term, never has existed, and never will. It is against nature that the many should govern and the few be governed. A people composed of gods would govern itself democratically. By the elective method, probity, sagacity and experience afford guarantees that the community will be wisely governed. The first defect of monarchy is that it is to the interest of the monarch to keep the people in a state of weakness and misery, so that they may be unable to resist his power.