I can't remember who said it but one of the arguments against America having a republic instead of a monarchy was "I would rather have one tyrant 3,000 miles away than 3,000 tyrants one mile away."
You're almost certainly thinking of the local colonial assembly scene from early in The Patriot, something like this line was said by Mel Gibson's character. He does end up fighting the forces of the 'one tyrant 3,000 miles away' anyway though. Also by the time of the Revolutionary War the British monarchs had no power, Parliament had become supreme in the aftermath of the English Civil War & the Glorious Revolution, so really the colonies were being ruled by '3,000 tyrants 3,000 miles away'. It's why the Olive Branch Petition sent to George III by the Continental Congress never could've worked even if the king had read & sympathized with it, the power was not his to give away and certainly Parliament wasn't about to cede their power.
Overall I think it's less a question of what specific system you need to have in place and more a question of local, decentralized vs. distant, centralized authority. Much of Western political history until about the 18-19th centuries (when the centralists won pretty much everywhere outside of the USA, and there their victories have been piling up through the 20th century instead) has been defined by the constant struggle between local elites vs. the elites in the metropolitan center of each country (London, Paris, etc.)
In hindsight, the rule of a local elite - nobleman, parish priest, etc. doesn't really matter as much as the fact that they come from & live in your neighborhood - is pretty much always preferable over that of the distant centrally-based bureaucrat and/or politician in the long run, often in the short run too, even if they are 'tyrannical'. A locally-based ruler is not only more accessible, but he has to be more responsive to their constituents' needs too, because he runs a much higher risk of being run out of town or lynched by said constituents if he pisses them off too much compared to the distant ruler. He is also much more likely to be familiar with, and interested in preserving, the customs & traditions of his community compared to said distant ruler (ex. in France, local Breton and Occitan lords spoke and didn't try to suppress their own regional cultures, that came after the Paris-centric modern French state bulldozed them and viewed the local cultures as threats to central authority & uniformity).
Now there are circumstances that make having an overarching central authority beneficial or even necessary, even before the Industrial Revolution and industrialization of warfare. The Founding Fathers acknowledged this truth, that's why the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. A fractious, hopelessly decentralized confederacy of de facto independent states dominated entirely by insular local interests would've been piss easy for great powers like Britain/Spain/France to divide, conquer & partition; you need only look at what happened to Poland around the same time to get a picture of what would've actually happened to a US that stuck to the Articles down the road.
But as a rule, it's generally best to decentralize internal governance & domestic policy down to as local a level (and thus, as close to the governed) as feasible. What 'feasible' looks like keeps changing with developments in society & technology though. Throw in the natural human ambitions of, as said, local vs. central elites in there and you have a constant struggle that must be fought generation after generation, but it is what it is - part of the human condition that we all have to live with until & unless some apocalyptic event that changes everything (whether it's the Second Coming, a Deus Ex-like technological singularity, etc.) happens.
You're almost certainly thinking of the local colonial assembly scene from early in The Patriot, something like this line was said by Mel Gibson's character. He does end up fighting the forces of the 'one tyrant 3,000 miles away' anyway though. Also by the time of the Revolutionary War the British monarchs had no power, Parliament had become supreme in the aftermath of the English Civil War & the Glorious Revolution, so really the colonies were being ruled by '3,000 tyrants 3,000 miles away'. It's why the Olive Branch Petition sent to George III by the Continental Congress never could've worked even if the king had read & sympathized with it, the power was not his to give away and certainly Parliament wasn't about to cede their power.
Overall I think it's less a question of what specific system you need to have in place and more a question of local, decentralized vs. distant, centralized authority. Much of Western political history until about the 18-19th centuries (when the centralists won pretty much everywhere outside of the USA, and there their victories have been piling up through the 20th century instead) has been defined by the constant struggle between local elites vs. the elites in the metropolitan center of each country (London, Paris, etc.)
In hindsight, the rule of a local elite - nobleman, parish priest, etc. doesn't really matter as much as the fact that they come from & live in your neighborhood - is pretty much always preferable over that of the distant centrally-based bureaucrat and/or politician in the long run, often in the short run too, even if they are 'tyrannical'. A locally-based ruler is not only more accessible, but he has to be more responsive to their constituents' needs too, because he runs a much higher risk of being run out of town or lynched by said constituents if he pisses them off too much compared to the distant ruler. He is also much more likely to be familiar with, and interested in preserving, the customs & traditions of his community compared to said distant ruler (ex. in France, local Breton and Occitan lords spoke and didn't try to suppress their own regional cultures, that came after the Paris-centric modern French state bulldozed them and viewed the local cultures as threats to central authority & uniformity).
Now there are circumstances that make having an overarching central authority beneficial or even necessary, even before the Industrial Revolution and industrialization of warfare. The Founding Fathers acknowledged this truth, that's why the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. A fractious, hopelessly decentralized confederacy of de facto independent states dominated entirely by insular local interests would've been piss easy for great powers like Britain/Spain/France to divide, conquer & partition; you need only look at what happened to Poland around the same time to get a picture of what would've actually happened to a US that stuck to the Articles down the road.
But as a rule, it's generally best to decentralize internal governance & domestic policy down to as local a level (and thus, as close to the governed) as feasible. What 'feasible' looks like keeps changing with developments in society & technology though. Throw in the natural human ambitions of, as said, local vs. central elites in there and you have a constant struggle that must be fought generation after generation, but it is what it is - part of the human condition that we all have to live with until & unless some apocalyptic event that changes everything (whether it's the Second Coming, a Deus Ex-like technological singularity, etc.) happens.