Are we here?
Fillppo Mazzei was born in Tuscany, Italy in 1730. He was persuaded to come to America by Benjamin Franklin to produce certain agricultural commodities he was skilled in. Thomas Jefferson took a shine to him and Mazzei bought land next to Jefferson. Between Jefferson and Mazzei, Mazzei started writing political articles in Italian which Jefferson translated for printing. Here is a portion of one, the first part winding up in the Declaration Of Independence, but the concluding part is what predicts.
“All men are by nature equally free and independent. This equality is necessary to establish a free government. Each one must be equal to the other in natural rights. Class distinctions are not always static and will always be nothing more than an effective stumbling block, and the reason is most clear. Whenever you have many classes of men in one nation, it is necessary that you give each its share in the government; otherwise one class will tyrannize the others. But the shares cannot be made perfectly equal; and whenever one class takes power, human events will demonstrate that the classes are not in balance; and bit by bit the greater part of the machine will collapse.
For this reason all the ancient republics were short-lived. When they were stabilized, the inhabitants were divided by class and were always in dispute, each class trying to procure a greater share in government than the others; consequently the legislators came to yield to the prejudices of custom, to the contrary pretensions of the parties, and the best that could be had was a grotesque mixture of liberty and tyranny.”