[1] Think not that any change in the form of government would
cure that which is caused by the people's sin, or the
common depravity of human nature. Some think they can
contrive such forms of government as that the rulers shall
be able to do no hurt; but either they will disable them to
do good, or else their engine is but glass, and will fail
or break when it comes to execution. Men that are
themselves so bad and unhumbled as not to know how bad they
are, and how bad mankind is, are still laying the blame
upon the form of government when anything is amiss, and
think by a change to find a cure. As if when an army is
infected with the plague, or composed of cowards, the
change of the general or form of government would prove a
cure. But if a monarch be faulty, in an aristocracy you
will have but many faulty governors for one, and in a
democracy a multitude of tyrants.--_Baxter,_ 1615-1691.