democratical

Updated: May 6, 2025

But they who offer this objection, forget the nature both of the people whose cause they plead, and of the Government under which they live. In a democratical Government, the voice of the people must at all times prevail.

G. R. (George Robert) Gleig - The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815

XXXIII. But as to the other political constitutions, these democratical advocates do not think they are worthy of being distinguished by the name which they claim. For why, say they, should we apply the name of king, the title of Jupiter the Beneficent, and not rather the title of tyrant, to a man ambitious of sole authority and power, lording it over a degraded multitude?

Marcus Tullius Cicero - Cicero's Tusculan Disputations: Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth

Such was the constitution of the Senate, purely elective, though like all other portions of the Roman constitution, under such checks and balances as were deemed sufficient to ensure it from becoming a democratical assembly. And such, in fact, it never did become.

Henry William Herbert - The Roman Traitor, Vol. 1

I need not tell you that the plan of government instituted by me was adopted by the Romans when they had driven out Tarquin, the destroyer of their liberty; and gave its form to that republic, composed of a due mixture of the regal, aristocratical, and democratical powers, the strength and wisdom of which subdued the world.

Baron George Lyttelton Lyttelton - Dialogues of the Dead

I cannot but consider that the House of Commons returned by it will be a democratical assembly of the worst description; that radical reform, vote by ballot, and all the evil consequences to be expected from the deliberations of such an assembly, must follow from this establishment. I entreat your Lordships to pause before you agree to establish such a system in your country. October 4, 1831.

Duke of Arthur Wellesley Wellington - Maxims and Opinions of Field-Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington, Selected From His Writings and Speeches During a Public Life of More Than Half a Century

"All this," says he, "only shows that the members of a government would do well if they were all-wise," and he proceeds to tell us that, as rulers are not all-wise, they will invariably act against this principle wherever they can, so that the democratical checks will still be necessary to produce good government.

Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay - Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2

The ancient rivalry between Themistocles and Aristides had been in a good degree extinguished by the danger which threatened their common country during the Persian wars. Aristides had since abandoned his former prejudices, and was willing to conform to many of the democratical innovations of his rival.

Sir William Smith - A Smaller history of Greece : From the earliest times to the Roman conquest

But the early "democratical man" of that valley, even if he came remotely from such oligarchical sires as Socrates gives immediately to all democratical men, reached his motto of "Liberty and Equality" through no such sensual definition of life.

John Finley - The French in the Heart of America

Again, let us see how the democratical man grows out of the oligarchical: the following, as I suspect, is commonly the process. What is the process?

Plato - The Republic

We are not merely suppressing an enormous riot, but contending for the possibility of permanent order coexisting with democratical fickleness; and while I would not superstitiously venerate form to the sacrifice of substance, neither would I forget that an adherence to precedent and prescription can alone give that continuity and coherence under a democratical constitution which are inherent in the person of a despotick monarch and the selfishness of an aristocratical class.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863