'It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is representation
ingrafted upon democracy ... What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude. The
one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration, the model of the
present. It is the easiest of all forms of government to be understood and the most eligible in
practice, and excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode, and the
inconveniences of the simple democracy.' (Paine, 1995:232-3)