[Little Ray]

Actually, they could.
What couldn’t imagine was the popular election of senators, universal suffrage, or the level of the Federal governments intrusion into the election process. IIRC, initially, only property owners could vote.
Nowadays, my vote can be canceled out by welfare recipient who has never been financially independent or paid a penny in income taxes in his entire life - and they call that “fair.”

[SuperLuminal]

"What couldn’t imagine was the popular election of senators, universal suffrage, or the level of the Federal governments intrusion into the election process. IIRC, initially, only property owners could vote. "

Probably because they, having just engaged in a revolution over things far less onerous than the tyrannical actions you have noted, would have thought there would have been a second (corrective) revolution long since....