It is difficult to say what degree of exertion a democratic government may be capable of making a crisis in the history of the nation. But no great democratic republic has hitherto existed in the world. To style the oligarchy which ruled over France in 1793 by that name would be to offer an insult to the republican form of government. The United States afford the first example of the kind.英文原著 · 《Democracy In America-1》
This scepticism, however, like that of some great legal characters almost as sceptical as himself; vanishes whenever his political partialities interfere. He is a vehement admirer of tyranny and oligarchy, and considers no evidence as feeble which can be brought forward in favour of those forms of government. Democracy he hates with a perfect hatred, a hatred which, in the first volume of his history, appears only in his episodes and reflections, but which, in those parts where he has less reverence for his guides, and can venture to take his own way, completely distorts even his narration.英文原著 · 《The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches-1》
If, however, there be any form of government which in all ages and all nations has always been, and must always be, pernicious, it is certainly that which Mr Mitford, on his usual principle of being wiser than all the rest of the world, has taken under his especial patronage--pure oligarchy. This is closely, and indeed inseparably, connected with another of his eccentric tastes, a marked partiality for Lacedaemon, and a dislike of Athens. Mr Mitford's book has, I suspect, rendered these sentiments in some degree popular; and I shall, therefore, examine them at some length.英文原著 · 《The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches-1》
It was that of the Six Hundred, of whom mention is made by Diodorus, xix. Upon the expulsions of the tyrants, they made citizens of strangers and mercenary troops, which gave rise to civil wars. -- Aristotle, Politics, v. The people having been the cause of the victory over the Athenians, the republic was changed. -- Ibid., 4. The passion of two young magistrates, one of whom carried off the other's boy, and in revenge the other debauched his wife, was attended with a change in the form of this republic. -- Ibid. The aristocracy is changed into an oligarchy.英文原著 · 《The Spirit of Laws》