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To: Don Lloyd who wrote (6855)	8/7/2001 1:19:35 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

It mattered quite a bit whether you lived in a town or in a rural area. Government is never 100% optional wherever there are people with competing interests that require accommodation or resolution (like, what do you do when violence is threatened and how do you enforce contracts?). You can do as the Athenians did and decide everything by popular vote, or you can elect a group of people to whom you delegate day-to-day trivia, and there's as many other ways of doing it as the imagination, e.g., a king, a sheriff, a mayor, a warlord, a council of elders, on and on and on. Someone's got to be the law west of the Pecos, so to speak. Democracy came "naturally" because there was a long tradition in England of something resembling democracy - the early moots, later Parliament. Even so, white men who did not own property did not vote until the 19th century - in North Carolina not until 1856. There were also restrictions on Catholic and non-Christian men voting. No, I would not agree that democracy was a necessity, but for white male property owners the desire for self government transcended the fear of the British army and navy.