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Below is a brief excerpt from Mr. Gore Vidal's recent book, Inventing a Nation Yale University Press 2003, p30-31, referring to comments made to America's 1787 Constitutional Convention by the nation's great universal man, Benjamin Franklin:
"At eighty-one Franklin was too feeble to address the convention on its handiwork, and so a friend read for him the following words: 'I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but which may be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so currupted as to need a Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.'
Now, two centuries and sixteen years later, Franklin's blunt dark prophecy has come true: popular corruption has indeed given birth to that Despotic Government which he foresaw as inevitable at our birth..."
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A little American History lesson