democracy history?

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1748-1813), a Scottish jurist and professor at the University of Edinburgh, wrote the following in The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic (1801):

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

(1) From bondage to spiritual faith
(2) From spiritual faith to great courage
(3) From great courage to liberty
(4) From liberty to abundance
(5) From abundance to selfishness
(6) From selfishness to complacency
(7) From complacency to apathy
(8) From apathy to dependency
(9) From dependency to bondage.

I found this guy about a month back while searching the internet on historical spiritual revivals. Good stuff.