"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.  Wherever it has resided
has never failed to destroy all records, memorials,
all histories which it did not like, and to corrupt
those it was cunning enough to preserve...."

Canto XXXIII

the words are Jefferson's, but they come out of the mouth of Pound.....