18th Century quote about democracy-Fiction!

Relevant Warning from an 18th Century Professor About Democracy-Fiction!

Summary of the eRumor
The erumor does not name but quotes what it says is a professor who says that democracies eventually vote themselves out of existence.

The Truth
This quote has been circulating on the Internet for quite a while.
We have not found any documentation of it beyond the past ten years.
Some versions say its author is a man named Tyler, but It is most often attributed to Sir Alex Fraser Tytler.
Tytler is real. He was a Scottish jurist, historian, and Edinburgh University professor.
We can find evidence that he wrote only one book titled "Universal history, from the creation of the world to the beginning of the eighteenth century" published in 1837 by Hilliard, Gray and Company in Boston.

TruthOrFiction.com has searched a digital version of the book and has not found anything resembling the alleged quote.

We have not found a book titled "The Decline and the Fall of the Athenian Republic" as is described in some versions of the eRumor or a book titled "The Fall of the Athenian Republic."

Last updated 9/27/03

A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:

Re: The Fall of the Athenian Republic.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse
(generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits
from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always
collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a
dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations
has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this
sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great
courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from
abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage.