[T]o give one’s suffrage is not liberty itself, but only a means of procuring it; and a means which may degenerate into mere form.

DE LOLME, J.L., The Constitution of England, Book II, Chapter V, 1771

[T]he tendency for the democratic process to degenerate into special-interest-group politics means that often the degree of redistributional plunder can be almost as harmful to the economic well-being of a society as under a nondemocratic regime.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.

...the question, whether there shall be direct elections by the people, or...double elections; that is to say, elections of electors by the constituents, which electors elect the representative...elections by electing middle men deprive the representation of its directness...no distinct candidates can be before the constituents...and, inasmuch as the number of electors is a small one, intrigue is made easy. The fact that a double or mediate election foils in a great degree the very object of a representative government, is so well known by the enemies of liberty, that despotic governments...have frequently struggled hard to establish universal suffrage with double election.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XVI

The French knew, instinctively if not otherwise, that a single house of French representatives would be exposed to the rashest legislation.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XVII

There is no greater error than the idea of making the vote or election the sole basis of liberty - of believing that, with the establishment of an extensive or universal suffrage, we found liberty...The generals of nearly all, I believe of all, the monastic orders are elective, but, once elected, the vow of obedience of every man, and the distinct renunciation of liberty, make him master.

LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIV

[T]here are two kinds of [political] bribery. It can be carried on by promising or giving to expectant partisans places paid out of the taxes, or it may consist in the director process of legislating away the property of one class and transferring it to another.

The legislative, or supreme authority, cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges.

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards as a parliament, unlimited powers.

Democracy...cannot prevent majorities from falling victim to erroneous ideas and from adopting inappropriate policies which not only fail to realize the ends aimed at but result in disaster.

It is in vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.