Ames* held that a study of the French Revolution was necessary as an example of the logical course of democracy, and of revolution as well. He recognized how essential revolution was to this faith as a cure-all for all past ills: “Every democrat more or less firmly believes that a revolution is the sure path to liberty; and therefore he believes government of little importance to the people, and a very great impediment to their rights.� Tyranny gains its foothold by appealing to the evil in man; the tyrant cannot function alone; he must interest “a sufficient number of subordinate tyrants in the duration of his power.� The people are enlisted by assaulting property, “the object of the great mass of every faction.� Gradually, not only the propertied but also the masses will be stripped of every private right and privilege. When this happens, “there is no return to liberty. What the fire of faction does not destroy, it will debase.� Slaves of this sort may dislike their slavery, but it is the outcome of their own lusts and demands. Eventually, testing will come to the American people, as it must come to all. It cannot be otherwise. But “we seem to expect a state of felicity before a state of probation. Of our six millions of people there are scarcely six hundred who yet look for liberty anywhere except on paper.�

The Federalists had been seriously in error. They assumed as a natural fact a moral product, character. “Federalism was therefore manifestly founded on a mistake, on the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the public morals. The party now in power committed no such mistake. They acted on the knowledge of what men actually are, not what they ought to be. Instead of enlightening the popular understanding, their business was to bewilder it.� But, “a democracy cannot last.� It will then change “into a military despotism�; imperialism will be the outcome. Moreover, as democracy moves into empire, empire does not stand still. “Experience proves, that in all such governments there is a continual tendency to unity.� “Ought we not then to be convinced, that something more is necessary to preserve liberty than to love it? Ought we riot to see that when the people have destroyed all power but their own, they are the nearest possible to a despotism, the more uncontrolled for being new, and tenfold the more cruel for its hypocrisy?�

Taken from R. J. Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System, p. 35f.
*Fisher Ames