John Jay was one of the eminent founders of this great nation, and this country's first Supreme Court Chief Justice, so his quotation most definitely should not be looked upon as something that was said, "tongue in cheek", but should be seen for what it really represents, that those that own the resources of this country, such as the property and industry owners, should be the ones that govern this country, for they are the ones that have invested their money and thereby their sweat equity into it, and therefore, it is strongly implied that those that do not own this country, by having no property, or industry equity, should not have a real voice in our government, for they are not the owners of it.
Now, just because the foregoing was said, doesn’t mean that this was the way that all founders thought, or even the way that America developed and became the great nation that it is, today. However, take a look around, and read the signs, for there are as reported by forbes.com, 540 billionaires in America, of which, the President is, himself, a billionaire, and his cabinet, in aggregate is the richest cabinet ever assembled, with at least four cabinet members, having a minimum net worth of $100 million and on up to a worth considerably higher.
In America, its largest mega-corporation is Wal-Mart, with annual sales of almost $500 billion, with Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, and ExxonMobil, all having sales of $200 billion and above, in which, these companies have proved time and time again, that whatever that they want they get from the government in regards to tax set asides, labor union busting, favorable treatment in all of its many forms, tax holidays and the parking of tax monies into tax havens, and so on and so forth. Yet, as large as these mega-corporations are, they are far smaller than the $700 billion annual defense budget passed recently by both houses, of which, it's unknown how many additional billions above this are also military-industrial defense related but because of security reasons, are considered classified information, and therefore not disclosed to the American public.
All of the above, means, that despite their being democratic elections for our representative government, that somehow, whether the people elected to office are Democratic or Republican, they aren't truly representatives of the people at large, for often they are instead part and parcel of those that own this country to begin with, for the rich having been getting richer in this country, and the very rich are so rich, that as reported by forbes.com, "…the individuals on The Forbes 400 hold more wealth than the bottom 64% of the country," this in a nation of 325,369,973 peoples, and just 400 people have more worth than over 207,000,000 Americans, combined.
It isn't a question as to whether those that own the country, govern it, for the proof is in the eating of the pudding, and the sheer massive divide between those that have it all, and the mass of the population that struggle day-by-day indicates clearly that the effective owners of this country govern it, exactly the way that they want to, for their interest isn't in seeing a more equal distribution of income in America, though they might talk and talk about such a thing, but instead their interest is in stringing along the American public with the song and dance that this is a country of meritocracy, of which, some are more successful than others, but the playing field is level and fair.
That may be the talk, but the truth is fairly obvious, the few own it, the few rule it, and the masses are just the hired help.