Democracy is simply a natural development of a healthy, growing society. Over the long term, it requires no revolution, no coup, and no sacred writ. It grows and blooms as automatically as flower seeds tossed in a good patch of earth, although it is a plant whose maturity is measured in human lifetimes rather than seasons.
The early United States after its revolution was no more a democracy than was the Mother Country. The growing authority of Parliaments had long limited the authority of Britain's monarchy. Even that mighty ruler, Elizabeth I, more than a century and a half before George III and the American Revolution, felt the limits of Parliament closing in on her.
George III, despite later American myths, was very much a constitutionally-limited monarch. For some time, up to and during the Revolution, there were many prominent American colonists who felt that the machinations of the British Parliament were thwarting the intentions of the king and endangering the health of the empire. Even at that early time, people understood that elected government was just as capable of bad policy as a royal one or an aristocratic one. Indeed, the genius of the British (unwritten) constitution was seen by most thoughtful American colonists as being in the way it combined the three forms of government to offset each other, the direct origin of the American concept of "checks and balances" by branches of government.
The early United States after its revolution was no more a democracy than was the Mother Country. The growing authority of Parliaments had long limited the authority of Britain's monarchy. Even that mighty ruler, Elizabeth I, more than a century and a half before George III and the American Revolution, felt the limits of Parliament closing in on her.
George III, despite later American myths, was very much a constitutionally-limited monarch. For some time, up to and during the Revolution, there were many prominent American colonists who felt that the machinations of the British Parliament were thwarting the intentions of the king and endangering the health of the empire. Even at that early time, people understood that elected government was just as capable of bad policy as a royal one or an aristocratic one. Indeed, the genius of the British (unwritten) constitution was seen by most thoughtful American colonists as being in the way it combined the three forms of government to offset each other, the direct origin of the American concept of "checks and balances" by branches of government.