AN EARLY FUNDIE ON DEMOCRACY

I've just finished reading Freedom's Fetters by James Morton Smith and I will be posting some tidbits I thought were really interesting.  In Chapter 1, Smith lays out the ideological differences between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, often known as simply Republicans.   According to Smith, the Federalists were a bit like today's GOP in that they also believed in rule by wealthy.   What's more interesting is Smith's claim that they were fundamentally anti-democratic:

Essentially anti-democratic, the Federalists were the philosophical descendants of the Puritan John Cotton, who had raised a well-know rhetorical question: "If the people be governors, who shall be governed?" (op.cit, page 10)

I found the letter Cotton wrote that contains that statement:

A Letter from Mr. Cotton to Lord Say and Seal in the Year 1636

Democracy, I do not conceyve that ever God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? As for monarchy, and aristocracy, they are both of them clearely approoved, and directed in scripture, yet so as referreth the soveraigntie to himselfe, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as the best forme of government in the commonwealth, as well as in the church.

Here's a short bio of John Cotton:

(born Dec. 4, 1585, Derby, Derbyshire, Eng.died Dec. 23, 1652, Boston, Mass.) Anglo-American Puritan leader. He studied at the University of Cambridge, where he first encountered Puritanism. From 1612 to 1633 he served as a vicar in Lincolnshire. When English church authorities filed charges against him for his Nonconformism, he sailed for New England in 1633. As teacher of the First Church of Boston (1633-52), he became an influential leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He wrote a widely used children's catechism and defended Puritan orthodoxy in such books as The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (1645). He opposed freedom of conscience, as preached by Roger Williams, favoring a national theocratic society.