[John O’Sullivan], ‘Territorial Aggrandizement’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 17:88 (October 1845), pp. 243–8.

In a representative government, / the laws embody the average political intelligence of the electors; that is, their average knowledge of the true functions and processes of government. The moment that event shall transpire, the young men at least, of this generation might expect to see the termination of Mexico’s independent national existence, and the Congress of the United States of America proclaiming its laws to the Pacific. A monthly line of merchant vessels from New York to Mexico, would do more than a wilderness of Solons to shape and direct the public sentiment of the Mexican people. The population of the Empire had become so excessive and incongruous that there was no prevailing and conservative public opinion which could direct the enacting or the administration of the laws. All despotisms grow out of similar necessity. They are generally established for the protection of the people, though, of course, perpetuated through ignorance and fear.