It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea democracy and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.
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About Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson was a contemporary Scottish historian. Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson is a British-American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. Read more on Wikipedia →