For Jefferson and his colleagues, public opinion was the starting point of governing, but not its end. Reason and deliberation were necessary to refine public opinion. Politicians were not supposed to be mere instruments of the mob. The “republican principle…does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse,” wrote Hamilton. When “the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations,” it is the representatives’ duty “to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.”
