Scarcely one generation after the Spirit of the Laws and the Social
Contract, however, the idea of attributing public functions by lot had
vanished almost without trace. Never was it seriously considered
during the American and French revolutions. At the same time that
the founding fathers were declaring the equality of all citizens, they
decided without the slightest hesitation to establish, on both sides of
the Atlantic, the unqualified dominion of a method of selection long
deemed to be aristocratic. Our close study of republican history and
theory, then, reveals the sudden but silent disappearance of an old
idea and a paradox that has hitherto gone unnoticed.