The true value of the system of representation seems to be as follows.
Large promiscuous assemblies, such as the assemblies of the people in Athens and Rome, Must perhaps always be somewhat tumultuous, and liable to many of the vices of democracy enumerated in the commencement of this chapter.
A representative assembly, deputed on the part of the multitude, will escape many of their defects. But representative government is necessarily imperfect.
It is, as was formerly observed, a point to be regretted, in the abstract notion of civil society, that a majority should overbear a minority, and that the minority, after having opposed and remonstrated, should be obliged practically to submit to that which was the subject of their remonstrance.
But this evil, inseparable from political government, is aggravated by representation, which removes the power of making regulations one step further from the people whose lot it is to obey them. Representation therefore, though a remedy, or rather a palliative, for certain evils, is not a remedy so excellent or complete as should authorize us to rest in it as the highest improvement of which the social order is capable.
Such are the general features of democratical government: but this is a subject of too much importance to be dismissed without the fullest examination of everything that may enable us to decide upon its merits. We will proceed to consider the further objections that have been alleged against it.