“By 1815, Jefferson had come to agree with Benjamin Rush’s view that America was fast becoming a republic in name only, where power may have been derived from the people, but where they possessed it ‘only on the days of their elections. After that it is the property of their rulers.’ The steady transfer of power from the local governments to the states and from the states to the federal government threatened to turn all the challenges of self-government—of what later generations would call democracy–into problems of administration. Self-government required the active participation of well-informed citizens. Problems of administration relied, instead, on a professional class of increasingly unaccountable government agents, with as little involvement as possible by the people themselves.” (p.130, Twilight at Monticello. Crawford. ISBN 978-1-4000-6079-5)

Food for thought.