"We are, in a sense, the purest democracy.

We have become a despotism.

Have you not noticed how continually in history democracy becomes despotism?
People call it the decay of democracy.

It is simply its fulfilment.

Why take the trouble to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John Robinsons, when you can take one John Robinson with the same intellect or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it?
The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent.