[log in to unmask] wrote:

> "It's that despotism
>     or absolute power....unlimited sovereignty,
>     is the same in a majority of a popular assembly,
>     an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto,
> and a single emperor, equally arbitrary, bloody
> and in every respect diabolical.

Pound, I assume, was a principled supporter of authoritarian rule --
and he states the core principle of *all* such theories here, the equation
of a single despot or oligarchy with "a majority of a popular assembly."
That is what Madison and Hamilton thought as well. And incidentally
the speaker here is Adams, not Jefferson. (It is dated Quincey Nov.
13, 1815.) You can see the first western statement of this theory
(and the theory has not changed in essentials since then) in Book 8
of the *Republic*, the description of the successive degenerations
of the ideal state into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism.
The assumption (which the Sophists, the first theorists of democracy,
spend their lives denouncing) was that rule was a special art or craft
or skill. The sophists held that they could teach wisdom (i.e., the
ability to participate in public life) -- and thereby equip the *demos*
to rule. The 2500 year bad reputation of the sophists has been one
continuous attack on democracy.

Carrol