the legislature that the wheels of its government are stopped; to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait for two whole years until a remedy was discovered. ..with-out having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind."
As Alexis de Tocqueville marveled in his classic 1835 appraisal of Democ-racy in America (Arden, 1986), there was nothing in the history of nations like the American experiment.
The ancient Greek city-states and Irn-perial Rome had boasted "constitu-tions,"...