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Front Page > Reading Lists > John Adams and the French Debate the American Constitution

John Adams and the French Debate the American Constitution

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Liberty Fund Staff

Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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The creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 stirred considerable debate not only in America, but across the Atlantic in England and France as well. Among the supporters of the American colonists’ resistance to Britain, some viewed it as a first step in reforming the British constitution (Edmund Burke), while others as the beginning of something entirely new, a democratic republic (Thomas Paine and the “friends of liberty”).

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 there was a simliar split among those who sought a constitutional monarchy, limited by a written consitution, including a bill of rights and those who sought to abolish the monarchy altogether and establish a democratic republic of whatever color.

The American experience was both timely and a-propos as France was wracked by revolution, regicide, and war, and underwent multiple experiments in constitutionalism during the 1790s. In response, English, American, and French observers explored the nature of the British “constitution” as it had evolved between the Glorious Revolution and the American revolt, American efforts to reform and ultimately rewrite the British “constitution,” French efforts to duplicate the experiment within continental Europe, and finally, the collapse of the French republic and the rise of Napoleon. The debates of the 1780s and 1790s follow these political developments and parallel contemporary efforts to define constitutional limits to state power.

[Comment: I’ve reworked this somewhat, a little streamlining. Perhaps the long penultimate sentence should be broken-up or clarified. For example, were the Americans trying to “reform” or “rewrite” the British constitution, or simply resist British encroachments and ultimately achieve independence? In any case, the documents selected suggest the later. Also, the reference to the debates of the 1790s is not reflected in the reading list, which ends with Adams’ Defence of 1788. Finally, the title of the list does not seem to fully capture its content, given the presence De Lolme (on the English constitution) and Turgot (on the state constitutions). Moreover, the Defence was written before the U.S. Constitution was drafted and ratified. Just some thoughts. I’ve also made some slight alterations to the descriptions of the readings. Some could be developed further, but this may be sufficient for now.]

The following texts are listed in chronological order of original publication, along with modern editions (where these are available), and relevant page numbers to the editions used in the original colloquium. It is based upon a conference originally organized by Liberty Fund and the Institute for Humane Studies in January 1987:

1) Jean-Louis de Lolme, Constitution de l’Angleterre ou État du gouvernement anglais comparé avec la forme républicaine et avec les autres monarchies de l’Europe (Amsterdam, 1771) and the original 1775 English edition, published in London as The Constitution of England; or, an Account of the English Government; in which it is compared with the Republican Form of Government and occasionally with the Other Monarchies in Europe.

Print edition: The Rise and Progress of the English Constitution: the treatise of J. L. de Lolme … with an historical and legal introduction, and notes, by A. J. Stephens (London : J. W. Parker, 1838). Vol. II, pp. 629-35, 805-09, 818-27, 835-40, 862-78.
Online Library of Liberty edition: Liberty Fund’s edition of the 1784 English edition, Jean-Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, an Account of the English Government, edited and with an Introduction by David Lieberman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007).

2) Abbé de Mably, Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: In Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (1785).

Print edition: Mably, Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: In Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.) (1785), pp. 1-10, 25-33, 41-54, 78-91, 104-08, 119-27, 147-54, 179-82, 183-204, 245-51.
External online edition: Google Book Search - Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: In Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.) (1785) - http://books.google.com/books?id=IIg0AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=mably
External online edition: Gallica French edition -Mably, Gabriel de (1709-1785), Observations sur le gouvernement et les lois des Étas-unis d’Amérique, in Oeuvres complètes de l’abbé de Mably, [précédées d’un éloge de l’auteur par l’abbé Brizard] (Lyon : J. B. Delamollière, 1792), Tome VIII - http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2294611

3) Condorcet, De l’influence de la Révolution d’Amérique sur l’Europe (1786)

Print edition: English translation in Keith M. Baker, Condorcet: Selected Writings (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), pp. 71-83.
External online edition: Gallica French edition: Oeuvres de Condorcet, tome 8, publ. par A. Condorcet O’Connor,… et M. F. Arago (Paris : Firmin Didot frères, impr. de l’Institut, 1847), p. 3-113 - http://gallica.bnf.fr/Catalogue/noticesInd/FRBNF37237295.htm

4) Filippo Mazzei, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale, où l’on traite des établissemens des treize colonies, de leurs rapports & de leurs dissentions avec la Grande-Bretagne, de leurs gouvernemens avant & après la révolution, &c. Par un citoyen de Virginie (Paris, Chez Froulle, 1788).

Print edition: Filippo Mazzei, Researches on the United States, translated and edited by Constance D. Sherman (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), pp. 124-45, 156-79, 297-317.
External online edition: Google books - Filippo Mazzei, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale, où l’on traite des établissemens des treize colonies, de leurs rapports & de leurs dissentions avec la Grande-Bretagne, de leurs gouvernemens avant & après la révolution, &c. Par un citoyen de Virginie (Paris, Chez Froulle, 1788). http://books.google.com/books?id=Q3AOAAAAQAAJ&dq=inauthor:mazzei&lr=&num=100&as_brr=1

5) John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 3 vols. (London and Boston, Edmund Freeman, 1787-88, 3rd. edition 1797).

Print edition: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1851-56; New York: AMS Press, 1971), vols. IV, V, VI. Vol. IV, pp. 271, 278-81, 283-302, 358-73, 379-445, 463-72, 482-83, 488-92, 504-05, 520-27, 555-60, 579-88. Vol. V, pp. 491-96. Vol. VI, pp. 3-14, 56-70, 113-20, 133-38, 176-77, 209-20.
Online Library of Liberty edition: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1851-56), vols. IV, V, VI.

6) Letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Print edition: The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abagail and John Adams, vol. 1 1777-1804, ed. Lester J. Cappon (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 4-11, 33-39, 68-71, 88-89, 156, 168-70, 172-77, 191-92, 194-96, 197-200, 202-04, 210-12, 214-15, 236-37, 245-52.
Online Library of Liberty edition: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). Vols. VII, VIII, IX.
Online Library of Liberty edition: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vols. II-X.

For additional background reading see:

the American Declaration of Independence (1776)
the Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781)
the Constitution of the United States of America (ratified 1788)
the American Bill of Rights (ratified 1791)
Topic: the American Revolution and Constitution
Debate: the debate about the French Revolution
Debate: Loyalists vs. Patriots in the American Revolution

1. The Declaration of Independence (1776)
2. The Articles of Confederation (1781)
3. The U. S. Constitution (1788)
4. The Bill of Rights (1791)
5. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part I
6. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part II
7. Turgot’s Letter to Richard Price on the Importance of the American Revolution (1778)
8. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution (1787-88)- Part I
9. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution - Part 2
10. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution - Part 3

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1: 1. The Declaration of Independence (1776)

The first document asserting the right of the Colonies to secede from Britain and form an independent state.

Source:A chapter in Becker’s The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=519&Itemid=264 on 2008/3/2
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2: 2. The Articles of Confederation (1781)

The first attempt at union by the former American colonies, a loose confederation in which the states retained their “freedom, independence, and sovereignty.”

Source: James McClellan’s Liberty, Order, and Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government (3rd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=575&Itemid=264 on 2008/3/2
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3: 3. The U. S. Constitution (1788)

The Articles of Confederation were regarded by many as a failure and a new form of union with a stronger central government was drafted, debated, and adopted.

Source: The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=427&Itemid=264 on 2008/3/2
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4: 4. The Bill of Rights (1791)

A number of states hesitated to adopt the new constitution until its supporters agreed that additional guarantees of individual liberty would be added as amendments following its ratification.

Source: Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle, ed. and with a Preface by Lance Banning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1057&Itemid=264 on 2008/3/2
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5: 5. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part I

De Lolme’s book on the English constitution was first published in French in 1771 and then in English in 1775. It placed special emphasis on the the ways in which a constitutional monarchy which protected individual liberty had evolved since the Glorious Revolution 1688.

Jean Louis De Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, an Account of the English Government, edited and with an Introduction by David Lieberman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007). Chapter: CHAPTER IX: Of private Liberty, or the Liberty of Individuals.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2089/159027 on 2008-04-29

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.
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6: 6. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part II

In Book two (especially chapters I-V and X-XII), De Lolme continues his comparison of the English and European governments with special treatment of the powers of the Crown and the liberties of the press.

Jean Louis De Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, an Account of the English Government, edited and with an Introduction by David Lieberman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007). Chapter: BOOK II

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2089/159039 on 2008-04-29

The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.
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7: 7. Turgot’s Letter to Richard Price on the Importance of the American Revolution (1778)

Much of Adam’s work was a reply to Turgot’s more positive view of the American revolution and its example for Europe. [More positive than who? — Adams himself?]

Richard Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making it a Benefit to the World. To which is added, a Letter from M. Turgot, late Comptroller-General of the Finances of France: with an Appendix, containing a Translation of the Will of M. Fortuné Ricard, lately published in France (London: T. Cadell, 1785). Chapter: Letter from M. Turgot

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1788/97170 on 2008-04-30

The text is in the public domain.

A MonsieurPrice,
- A Londres.
AParis, le 22 Mars, 1778.

MR. FRANKLIN m’a remis, Monsieur, de votre part, la nouvelle édition de vos observations sur la liberté civile, &c. Je vous dois un double remerciment; 1° de votre ouvrage dont je connois depuis longtems le prix, et que j’avois lu avec avidité, malgré les occupations multipliées, dont j’etois assailli, lorsqu’il a paru pour la premiere fois; 2° de l’honnêteté que vous avez eue de retrancher l’imputation de maladresse* que vous aviez mêlée au bien que vous disiez d’ailleurs de moi dans vos observations additionelles. J’aurois pu la meriter, si vous n’aviez eu en vue d’autre maladresse que celle de n’avoir pas sçu demêler les ressorts d’intrigues que faisoient jouer contre moi des gens beaucoup plus adroits en ce genre que je ne le suis, que je ne le serai jamais, et que je ne veux l’etre. Mais il m’a paru que vous m’imputiez la maladresse d’avoir choqué grossierement l’opinion générale de ma nation; et à cet égard je crois que vous n’aviez rendu justice ni à moi, ni à ma nation, où il y a beaucoup plus de lumieres qu’on ne le croit généralement chez vous, et où peut-être il est plus aisé que chez vous même de ramener le public à des idées raisonnables. J’en juge par l’infatuation de votre nation sur ce projet absurde de subjuguer l’Amérique, qui a duré jusqu’à ce que l’aventure de Burgoyne ait commencé à lui dessiller les yeux. J’en juge par le systême de monopole et d’exclusion qui rêgne chez tous vos écrivains politiques sur le commerce, (J’excepte Mr. Adam Smith et le Doyen Tucker) systême qui est le véritable principe de votre séparation avec vos colonies. J’en juge par tous vos écrits polémiques sur les questions qui vous agitent depuis une vingtaine d’années, et dans lesquels avant que le vôtre eut paru, je ne me rappelle presque pas d’en avoir lu un, où le vrai point de la question ait êté saisi. Je n’ai pas conçu comment une nation qui a cultivé avec tant de succès toutes les branches des sciences naturelles a pu rester si fort au dessous d’elle même, dans la science la plus interessante de toutes, celle du bonheur public; dans une science où la liberté de la presse, dont elle seule jouit, auroit dû lui donner sur toutes les autres nations de l’Europe un avantage prodigieux. Est-ce l’orgueil national qui vous a empêchés de mettre à profit cet avantage? Est-ce parce que vous etiez un peu moins mal que les autres, que vous avez tourné toutes vos spéculations à vous persuader que vous etiez bien? Est-ce l’esprit de parti, et l’envie de se faire un appui des opinions populaires qui a retardé vos progrès, en portant vos politiques à traiter de vaine métaphysique toutes les spéculations qui tendent à établir des principes fixes sur les droits et les vrais interêts des individus et des nations? Comment se fait-il que vous soyez presque le premier parmi vos écrivains qui ayez donné des notions justes de la liberté, et qui ayez fait sentir la fausseté de cette notion rebattue par presque tous les écrivains les plus républicains, que la liberté consiste à n’être soumis qu’aux loix, comme si un homme opprimé par une loi injuste êtoit libre. Cela ne seroit pas même vrai quand on supposeroit que toutes les loix sont l’ouvrage de la nation assemblée; car enfin l’individu a aussi des droits que la nation ne peut lui ôter, que par la violence et par un usage illegitime de la force générale. Quoique vous ayez eu égard à cette verité, et que vous vous en soyez expliqué, peut-être méritoit-elle que vous la dévelopassiez avec plus d’étendue, vû le peu d’attention qu’y ont donnée même les plus zelés partisans de la liberté.

C’est encore une chose étrange que ce ne fût pas en Angleterre une vérité triviale de dire qu’une nation ne peut jamais avoir droit de gouverner une autre nation; et qu’un pareil gouvernement ne peut avoir d’autre fondement que la force, qui est aussi le fondement du brigandage et de la tyrannie; que la tyrannie d’un peuple est de toutes les tyrannies connues la plus cruelle et la plus intolérable, celle qui laisse le moins de ressource à l’opprimé; car enfin un despote est arrêté par son propre interêt, il a le frein du remords, ou celui de l’opinion publique, mais une multitude ne calcule rien, n’a jamais de remords, et se decerne à elle même la gloire lors qu’elle mérite le plus de honte.

Les événemens sont pour la nation Angloise un terrible commentaire de votre livre. Depuis quelques mois ils se précipitent avec une rapidité très accelérée. Le dénouement est arrivé par rapport à l’Amérique. La voila indépendante sans retour. Sera-t’elle libre et heureuse? Ce peuple nouveau situé si avantageusement pour donner au monde l’exemple d’une constitution où l’hommé jouisse de tous ses droits, exerce librement toutes ses facultés, et ne soit gouverné que par la nature, la raison et la justice, saura-t’il former une pareille constitution? saura-t’il l’affermir sur des fondemens éternels, prévenir toutes les causes de division et de corruption qui peuvent la miner peu-à-peu et la détruire?

Je ne suis point content je l’avoue des constitutions qui ont êté rédigées jusqu’àprésent par les différens Etats Américains. Vous reprochez avec raison à celle de la Pensylvanie le serment religieux exigé pour avoir entrée dans le corps des représentans. C’est bien pis dans les autres; il y en a une, je crois que c’est celle des Jerseis qui exige * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Je vois dans le plus grand nombre l’imitation sans objet des usages de l’Angleterre. Au lieu de ramener toutes les autorités à une seule, celle de la nation, l’on établit des corps différens, un corps des représentans, un conseil, un gouverneur, parce que l’Angleterre a une chambre des communes, une chambre haute et un Roi. On s’occupe a balancer ces différens pouvoirs; comme si cet équilibre de forces, qu’on a pu croire necessaire pour balancer l’énorme prépondérance de la Royauté, pouvoit être de quelque usage dans des Républiques fondées sur l’égalité de tous les citoyens; et comme si tout ce qui établit différens corps n’êtoit pas une source de divisions. En voulant prévenir des dangers chimériques, on en fait naitre de réels; on veut n’avoir rien à craindre du clergé, on le réunit sous la barriere d’une proscription commune. En l’excluant du droit d’eligibilité, on en fait un corps, et un corps étranger à l’Etat. Pourquoi un citoyen, qui a le même interêt que les autres à la defense commune de sa liberté et de ses propriétés, est-il exclus d’y contribuer de ses lumieres et de ses vertus, parce qu’il est d’une profession qui exige des lumieres et des vertus? Le clergé n’est dangereux que quand il existe en corps dans l’Etat; que quand il croit avoir en corps des droits et des interêts, que quand on a imaginé d’avoir une religion établie par la loi, comme si les hommes pouvoient avoir quelque droit, ou quelque interêt à régler la conscience les uns des autres; comme si l’individu pouvoit sacrifier aux avantages de la societé civile les opinions auxquelles il croit son salut éternel attaché; comme si l’on se sauvoit, ou se damnoit, en commun. Là où la vraye tolérance, c’est-à-dire l’incompétence absolue du gouvernement sur la conscience des individus, est établie, l’ecclesiastique au milieu de l’affemblée nationale n’est qu’un citoyen, lorsqu’il y est admis; il redevient ecclesiastique lorsqu’on l’en exclut.

Je ne vois pas qu’on se soit assez occupé de réduire au plus petit nombre possible, les genres d’affaires dont le gouvernement de chaque Etat sera chargé; ni à séparer les objets de législation, de ceux d’administration générale et de ceux d’administration particuliere et locale; à constituer des assemblées locales subsistantes, qui remplissant presque toutes les fonctions de detail du gouvernement dispensent les assemblées générales de s’en occuper, et ôtent aux membres de celles-ci tout moyen, et peut-être tout désir d’abuser d’une autorité qui ne peut s’appliquer qu’à des objets généraux et par là même étrangers aux petites passions qui agitent les hommes.

Je ne vois pas qu’on ait fait attention à la grande distinction la seule fondée sur la nature entre deux classes d’hommes, celle des propriétaires de terres, et celle des nonpropriétaires; à leurs interets et par conséquent à leurs droits différens, relativement à la législation, à l’administration de la justice et de la police, à la contribution aux dépenses publiques et à leur emploi.

Nul principe fixe établi sur l’impôt; on suppose que chaque province peut se taxer à sa fantaisie, établir des taxes personnelles, des taxes sur les consommations, sur les importations, c’est-à-dire se donner un interêt contraire à l’interêt des autres provinces.

On suppose par tout le droit de régler le commerce; on autorise même les corps executifs, ou les gouverneurs à prohiber l’exportation de certaines denrées dans certaines occurrences; tant on est loin d’avoir senti que la loi de la liberté entiere de tout commerce est un corollaire du droit de propriété; tant on est encore plongé dans le brouillard des illusions Européennes.

Dans l’union générale des provinces entre elles, je ne vois point une coalition, une fusion de toutes les parties, qui n’en fasse qu’un corps un, et homogene. Ce n’est qu’une aggrégation de parties, toujours trop séparées, et qui conservent toujours une tendance à se diviser, par la diversité de leurs loix, de leurs mœurs, de leurs opinions; par l’inégalité de leurs forces actuelles; plus encore par l’inégalité de leurs progrès ultérieurs. Ce n’est qu’une copie de la République Hollandoise; et celle-ci même n’avoit pas à craindre comme la République Américaine les accroissemens possibles de quelques unes de ses provinces. Tout cet édifice est appuyé jusqu’à présent sur la bâse fausse de la très ancienne et très vulgaire politique; sur le prejugé que les nations, les provinces, peuvent avoir des interêts, en corps de province et de nation, autres que celui qu’ont les individus d’être libres et de défendre leurs propriétés contre les brigan et les conquerans: interêt prétendu de faire plus de commerce que les autres, de ne point acheter les marchandises de l’étranger, de forcer l’étranger à consommer leurs productions et les ouvrages de leurs manufactures: interêt prétendu d’avoir un territoire plus vaste, d’acquérir telle ou telle province, telle ou telle isle, tel ou tel village: interêt d’inspirer la crainte aux autres nations: interêt de l’emporter sur elles par la gloire des armes, par celle des arts et des sciences.

Quelques-uns de ces préjugés sont fomentés en Europe, parce que la rivalité ancienne des nations et l’ambition des princes oblige tous les Etats à se tenir armés pour se défendre contre leurs voisins armés, et à regarder la force militaire comme l’objet principal du gouvernement. L’Amérique a le bonheur de ne pouvoir avoir d’ici à bien longtems d’ennemi extérieur à craindre, si elle ne se divise elle même; ainsi elle peut et doit apprécier à leur juste valeur ces prétendus interêts, ces sujets de discorde qui seuls sont à redouter pour sa liberté. Avec le principe sacré de la liberté du commerce regardé comme une suite du droit de la proprieté, tous les prétendus interêts de commerce disparoissent. Les prétendus interêts de posseder plus ou moins de territoires s’évanouissent par le principe que le territoire n’appartient point aux nations, mais aux individus propriétaires des terres; que la question de savoir si tel canton, tel village, doit appartenir à telle province, à tel Etat ne doit point être décidée par le prétendu interêt de cette province ou de cet Etat, mais par celui qu’ont les habitans de tel canton ou de tel village de se rassembler pour leurs affaires dans le lieu où il leur est le plus commode d’aller; que cet interêt êtant mesuré par le plus ou moins de chemin qu’un homme peut faire loin de son domicile pour traiter quelques affaires plus importantes sans trop nuire à ses affaires journalieres, devient une mesure naturelle et physique de l’étendue des jurisdictions et des Etats, et établit entre tous un équilibre d’étendue et de forces, qui écarte tout danger d’inégalité, et toute prétention à la supériorité.

L’interêt d’etre craint est nul quand on ne demande rien à personne, et quand on est dans une position où l’on ne peut être attaqué par des forces considérables avec quelque espérance de succès.

La gloire des armes ne vaut pas le bonheur de vivre en paix. La gloire des arts, des sciences appartient à quiconque veut s’en saisir; il y a dans ce genre à moissonner pour tout le monde; le champ des découvertes est inépuisable, et tous profitent des découvertes des tous.

J’imagine que les Américains n’en sont pas encore à sentir toutes ces verités, comme il faut qu’ils les sentent pour assurer le bonheur de leur postérité. Je ne blâme pas leurs chefs. Il a fallu pourvoir au besoin du moment par une union telle quelle, contre un ennemi présent et redoutable; on n’avoit pas le tems de songer à corriger les vices des constitutions et de la composition des différens etats. Mais ils doivent craindre de les éterniser, et s’occuper des moyens de réunir les opinions et les interêts et de les ramener à des principes uniformes dans toutes leurs provinces.

Ils ont à cet égard de grands obstacles à vaincre.

En Canada, la constitution du clergé Romain, et l’existence d’un corps de noblesse.

Dans la Nouvelle Angleterre, l’esprit encore subsistant du Puritanisme rigide, et toujours, dit on, un peu intolérant.

Dans la Pensylvanie, un très grand nombre de citoyens établissant en principe religieux que la profession des armes est illicite, et se refusant par conséquent aux arrangemens nécessaires pour que le fondement de la force militaire de l’Etat, soit la réunion de la qualité de citoyen avec celle d’homme de guerre et de milicien; ce qui oblige à faire du métier de la guerre un métier de mercenaires.

Dans les colonies méridionales, une trop grande inégalité de fortunes, et sur tout le grand nombre d’esclaves noirs dont l’esclavage est incompatible avec une bonne constitution politique, et qui même en leur rendant la liberté embarrasseront encore en formant deux nations dans le même Etat.

Dans toutes, les préjugés, l’attachement aux formes établies, l’habitude de certaines taxes, la crainte de celles qu’il faudroit y substituer, la vanité des colonies qui se sont cru les plus puissantes, et un malheureux commencement d’orgucil national. Je crois les Américains forcés à s’agrandir, non pas par la guerre, mais par la culture. S’ils laissoient derriere eux les déscrts immenses qui s’étendent jusqu’à la mer de l’Ouest il s’y etabliroit du mélange de leurs bannis, et des mauvais sujets échappés à la séverité des loix, avec les sauvages: des peuplades de brigands qui ravageroient l’Amérique, comme les barbares du nord ont ravagé l’empire Romain; de là un autre danger, la nécessité de se tenir en armes sur la frontiere et d’être dans un état de guerre continuelle. Les colonies voisines de la frontiere seroient en conséquence plus aguerries que les autres, et cette inégalité dans la force militaire seroit un aiguillon terrible pour l’ambition. Le remede à cette inégalité seroit d’entretenir une force militaire subsistante à laquelle toutes les provinces contribueroient en raison de leur population; et les Américains qui ont encore toutes les craintes que doivent avoir les Anglois redoutent plus que toute chose une armée permanente. Ils ont tort. Rien n’est plus aisé que de lier la constitution d’une armée permanente avec la milice, de façon que la milice en devienne meilleure, et que la liberté n’en soit que plus affermie. Mais il est mal aisé de calmer sur cela leurs allarmes.

Voila bien des difficultés, et peut-être les interêts secrets des particuliers puissans se joindront-ils aux préjugés de la multitude pour arrêter les efforts des vrais sages et des vrais citoyens.

Il est impossible de ne pas faire des vœux pour que ce peuple parvienne à toute la prospérité dont il est suceptible. Il est l’espérance du genre humain. Il peut en devenir le modéle. Il doit prouver au monde, par le fait, que les hommes peuvent être libres et tranquilles, et peuvent se passer des chaines de toute espece que les tyrans et les charlatans de toute robe ont prétendu leur impôser sous le pretexte du bien public. Il doit donner l’exemple de la liberté politique, de la liberté religieuse, de la liberté du commerce et de l’industrie. L’asyle qu’il ouvre à tous les opprimés de toutes les nations doit consoler la terre. La facilité d’en profiter pour se dérober aux suites d’un mauvais gouvernement forcera les gouvernemens d’être justes, et de s’éclairer; le reste du monde ouvrira peu-à-peu les yeux sur le néant des illusions dont les politiques se sont bercés. Mais il faut pour cela que l’Amérique s’en garantisse, et qu’elle ne redevienne pas comme l’ont tant repeté vos écrivains ministeriels une image de notre Europe, un amas de puissances divisées, se disputant des territoires ou des profits de commerce, et cimentant continuellement l’esclavage des peuples par leur propre sang.

Tous les hommes eclairés, tous les amis de l’humanité devroient en ce moment réunir leurs lumieres et joindre leurs réflexions à celles des sages Américains pour concourir au grand ouvrage de leur législation. Cela seroit digne de vous, Monsieur; je voudrois pouvoir échauffer votre zêle; et si dans cette lettre je me suis livré plus que je ne l’aurois dû peut-être à l’effusion de mes propres idées, ce désir a été mon unique motif, et m’excusera à ce que j’espere de l’ennui que je vous aurai causé. Je voudrois que le sang qui a coulé, qui coulera encore dans cette querelle ne fût pas inutile au bonheur du genre humain.

Nos deux nations vont se faire réciproquement bien du mal, probablement sans qu’aucune d’elles en retire un profit réel. L’accroissement des dettes et des charges, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *, et la ruine d’un grand nombre de citoyens en seront peut-être l’unique resultat. L’Angleterre m’en paroit plus près encore que la France. Si au lieu de cette guerre vous aviez pu vous exécuter de bonne grace dès le premier moment, s’il êtoit donné à la politique de faire d’avance ce qu’elle sera infailliblement forcée de faire plus tard, si l’opinion nationale avoit pu permettre à votre gouvernement de prévenir les evenemens, en supposant qu’il les eut prévus, s’il eût pu consentir d’abord à l’indépendance de l’Amérique sans faire la guerre à personne, je crois fermement que votre nation n’auroit rien perdu à ce changement. Elle y perdra aujourd’hui ce qu’elle a dépensé, ce qu’elle dépensera encore; elle eprouvera une grande diminution pour quelque tems dans son commerce, de grands bouleversemens intérieurs si elle est forcée à la banqueroute; et quoiqu’il arrive une grande diminution dans l’influence politique au dehors, mais ce dernier article est d’une bien petite importance pour le bonheur réel d’un peuple, et je ne suis point du tout de l’avis de l’Abbé Rainal dans votre épigraphe. Je ne crois point que ceci vous mene à devenir une nation meprisable, et vous jette dans l’esclavage.

Vos malheurs feront peut-être au contraire l’effet d’une amputation nécessaire; ils sont peut-être le seul moyen de vous sauver de la cangrene du luxe et de la corruption. Si dans vos agitations vous pouviez corriger votre constitution en rendant les elections annuelles, en repartissant le droit de représentation d’une maniere plus égale et plus proportionnée aux interets des représentés, vous gagneriez peut-être autant que l’Amérique à cette révolution; car votre liberté vous resteroit, et vos autres pertes se répareroient bien vîte avec elle et par elle.

Vous devez juger, Monsieur, par la franchise avec laquelle je m’ouvre à vous sur ces points délicats, de l’estime que vous m’avéz inspirée, et de la satisfaction que j’eprouve à penser quil y a quelque ressemblance entre nos manieres de voir. Je compte bien que cette confidence n’est que pour vous. Je vous prie même de ne point me répondre en détail par la poste, car votre réponse seroit infailliblement ouverte dans nos bureaux de poste, et l’on me trouveroit beaucoup trop ami de la liberté pour un ministre, même pour un ministre disgracié!

J’ai l’honneur d’etre, Monsieur, avec toute la consideration possible,

Votre très humble,
et très obeissant serviteur,
TURGOT.

It is not easy to do justice in English to many parts of the preceding letter. The following Translation of it will however, I hope, be found to be nearly correct; and I think myself greatly obliged to the Gentleman who has been so good as to favour me with it.

TRANSLATION.

To Dr. Price,London.

Paris, 22d March, 1778.
Sir,

MR. FRANKLIN by your desire has put into my hands the last edition of your Observations on Civil Liberty, &c. for which I think myself doubly indebted to you. In the first place, for the work itself, of which I have long known the value and read with great avidity, notwithstanding the multiplicity of my engagements, when it was first published: And in the next place, for the politeness you have shewn in leaving out the imputation of want of address,* which you intermixed with the handsome things you said of me in your additional observations. I might have merited this imputation, if you had in view no other want of address than incapacity to unravel the springs of those intrigues that were employed against me, by some people who are much more expert in these matters than I am, or ever shall be, or indeed ever desire to be: But I imagined you imputed to me a want of address which made my opinions grossly clash with the general opinions of my countrymen; and in that respect I thought you neither did justice to me nor to my country, where there is a degree of understanding much superior to what you generally suppose in England, and where it is more easy perhaps, than even with you, to bring back the public to hearken to reason.

I have been led to judge thus by the infatuation of your people in the absurd project of subduing America, till the affair of Burgoyne began to open their eyes; and by the system of monopoly and exclusion which has been recommended by all your writers on Commerce, (except Mr. Adam Smith and Dean Tucker); a system which has been the true source of your separation from your Colonies. I have also been led to this opinion by all your controversial writings upon the questions which have occupied your attention these twenty years, and in which, till your observations appeared, I scarce recollect to have read one that took up these questions on their proper ground. I cannot conceive how a nation which has cultivated every branch of natural knowledge with such success, should have made so little progress in the most interesting of all sciences, that of the public good: A science, in which the liberty of the Press, which she alone enjoys, ought to have given her a prodigious advantage over every other nation in Europe. Was it national pride which prevented you from profiting by this advantage? Or was it, because you were not altogether in so bad a condition as other nations, that you have imposed upon yourselves in your speculations so far as to be persuaded that your arrangements were compleat? Is it party spirit and a desire of being supported by popular opinion which has retarded your progress, by inducing your political writers to treat as vain Metaphysics* all those speculations which aim at establishing the rights and true interests of nations and individuals upon fixed principles. How comes it that you are almost the first of the writers of your country, who has given a just idea of liberty, and shewn the falsity of the notion so frequently repeated by almost all Republican Writers, “that liberty consists in being subject only to the laws,” as if a man could be free while oppressed by an unjust law. This would not be true, even if we could suppose that all the laws were the work of an assembly of the whole nation; for certainly every individual has his rights, of which the nation cannot deprive him, except by violence and an unlawful use of the general power. Though you have attended to this truth and have explained yourself upon this head, perhaps it would have merited a more minute explanation, considering how little attention is paid to it even by the most zealous friends of liberty.

It is likewise extraordinary that it was not thought a trivial matter in England to assert “that one nation never can have a right to govern another nation”—“that a government where such a principle is admitted can have no foundation but that of force, which is equally the foundation of robbery and tyranny”—“and that the tyranny of a people is the most cruel and intolerable, because it leaves the fewest resources to the oppressed.”—A despot is restrained by a sense of his own interest. He is checked by remorse or by the public opinion. But the multitude never calculate. The multitude are never checked by remorse, and will even ascribe to themselves the highest honour when they deserve only disgrace.

What a dreadful commentary on your book are the events which have lately befallen the English nation?—For some months they have been running headlong to ruin.—The fate of America is already decided—Behold her independent beyond recovery.—But will She be free and happy?—Can this new people, so advantageously placed for giving an example to the world of a constitution under which man may enjoy his rights, freely exercise all his faculties, and be governed only by nature, reason and justice—Can they form such a Constitution?—Can they establish it upon a never failing foundation, and guard against every source of division and corruption which may gradually undermine and destroy it?

I confess that I am not satisfied with the Constitutions which have hitherto been formed by the different States of America. It is with reason that you reproach the State of Pensylvania with exacting a religious test from those who become members of the body of Representatives. There are much worse tests in the other States; and there is one (I believe the Jerseys) which requires(†) a declaration of faith in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.—I observe that by most of them the customs of England are imitated, without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one center, that of the nation, they have established different bodies; a body of representatives, a council, and a Governour, because there is in England a House of Commons, a House of Lords, and a King.—They endeavour to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in Republics founded upon the equality of all the Citizens; and as if establishing different orders of men, was not a source of divisions and disputes. In attempting to prevent imaginary dangers they create real ones; and in their desire to have nothing to fear from the clergy, they unite them more closely by one common proscription. By excluding them from the right of being elected into public offices they become a body distinct from the State. Wherefore should a Citizen, who has the same interest with others in the common defence of liberty and property, be excluded from contributing to it his virtue and knowledge? Is it because he is of a profession which requires knowledge and virtue? The clergy are only dangerous when they exist as a distinct body in the State; and think themselves possessed of separate rights and interests and a religion established by law, as if some men had a right to regulate the consciences of other men, or could have an interest in doing this; as if an individual could sacrifice to civil society opinions on which he thinks his eternal salvation depends; as if, in short, mankind were to be saved or damned in communities—Where true toleration, (that is, where the absolute incompetency of civil government in matters of conscience, is established); there the clergyman, when admitted into the national assembly, becomes a simple citizen; but when excluded, he becomes an ecclesiastic.

I do not think they are sufficiently careful to reduce the kind of business with which the government of each State is charged, within the narrowest limits possible; nor to separate the objects of legislation from those of the general administration, or from those of a local and particular administration; nor to institute local permanent assemblies, which by discharging almost all the functions in the detail of government, make it unnecessary for the general assemblies to attend to these things, and thereby deprive the members of the general assemblies of every means, and perhaps every desire, of abusing a power which can only be applied to general objects, and which, consequently, must be free from the influence of the little passions by which men usually are agitated.

I do not find that they attend to the great distinction (the only one which is founded in nature between two classes of men), between landholders, and those who are not landholders; to their interests, and of course to their different rights respecting legislation, the administration of justice and police, their contributions to the public expence, and employment.

No fixed principle of taxation is established. They suppose that each State may tax itself according to its own fancy, by establishing either personal taxes, or taxes on consumption and importation; that is, that each State may assume to itself an interest contrary to the interest of the other States.

They also every where suppose that they have a right to regulate commerce. They even delegate authority to executive bodies, and to Governors, to prohibit the exportation of certain commodities on certain occasions. So far are they from being sensible that the right to an entire liberty in commerce is the consequence of the right of property. So much are they still involved in the mist of European illusions.

In the general union of the States I do not observe a coalition, a fusion of all the parts to form one homogeneous body. It is only a jumble of communities too discordant, and which retain a constant tendency to separation, owing to the diversity in their laws, customs and opinions; to the inequality in their present strength; but still more, to the inequality in their advances to greater strength. It is only a copy of the Dutch republic, with this difference, that the Dutch republic had nothing to fear, as the American republic has, from the future possible increase of any one of the Provinces.—All this edifice has been hitherto supported upon the erroneous foundation of the most ancient and vulgar policy; upon the prejudice that Nations and States, as such, may have an interest distinct from the interest which individuals have to be free, and to defend their property against the attacks of robbers and conquerors: An interest, in carrying on a more extensive commerce than other States, in not purchasing foreign merchandize, and compelling foreigners to consume their produce and manufactures: An interest in possessing more extensive territories, and acquiring such and such a province, island or village: An interest in inspiring other nations with awe, and gaining a superiority over them in the glory of arts, sciences, and arms.

Some of these prejudices are fomented in Europe, from the ancient rivalship of nations and the ambition of Princes, which compel every State to keep up an armed force to defend itself against the attack of neighbours in arms, and to look upon a military force as the principal object of government. America is likely in no long time to enjoy the happiness of having no external enemy to dread, provided she is not divided within herself. She ought, therefore, to estimate properly those pretended interests and causes of discord which alone are likely to be formidable to her liberty. On that sacred principle, “liberty of commerce considered as a natural right flowing from the possession of property,” all the pretended interests of commerce must vanish.—The supposed interest in possessing more or less territory disappear on this principle, “that a territory does not belong to nations, but to the individuals who are proprietors of the lands.” The question, whether such a canton or such a village belongs to such a Province or such a State, ought not to be determined by the interest in it pretended by that Province or that State; but by the interest the inhabitants of the canton or village have in assembling for transacting their affairs in the place most convenient for them. This interest, measured by the greater or less distance that a man can go from his home to attend to important affairs without injuring his private concerns, forms a natural boundary to the jurisdiction of States, and establishes an equipoise* of extent and strength between them, which must remove every danger of inequality, and every pretence to superiority.

There can be no interest in being feared when nothing can be demanded, and when men are in a situation not to be attacked by a considerable force with any hope of success.

The glory of arms is nothing to those who enjoy the happiness of living in peace.

The glory of arts and sciences belongs to every man who can acquire it. There is here ample scope. The field of discovery is boundless; and all profit by the discoveries of all.

I imagine that the Americans are not as sensible of these truths, as they ought to be, in order to secure the happiness of their posterity. I do not blame their leaders. It was necessary to provide for the necessities of the moment, by such an union as they could form against a present and most formidable enemy. They have not leisure to consider how the errors of the different constitutions and States may be corrected; but they ought to be afraid of perpetuating these errors, and to endeavour by all means to reconcile the opinions and interests of the different provinces, and to unite them by bringing them to one uniform set of principles.

To accomplish this they have great obstacles to surmount.

In Canada, an order of Roman Catholic Clergy, and a body of Nobles.

In New England, a rigid puritanical spirit which has been always somewhat intolerant* .

In Pensylvania, a very great number of inhabitants laying it down as a religious principle, that the profession of arms is unlawful, and refusing to join in the arrangements necessary to establish the military force of the State, by uniting the character of the Citizen with that of the Soldier and Militiaman, in consequence of which the business of war is made to be the business of mercenaries.

In the Southern Colonies, an inequality of fortune too great; and what is worse, a great number of Blacks, whose slavery is incompatible with a good political constitution; and who, if emancipated, would occasion great embarrassement by forming two distinct people in one State.

In all of them, various prejudices, an attachment to established forms, a habit of paying certain taxes, and a dread of those which must be substituted for them; a vanity in those colonies which think themselves most powerful; and a wretched beginning of national pride. I imagine that the Americans must aggrandize themselves not by war, but by agriculture. If they neglect the immense desarts which are at their backs, and which extend all the way to the western sea, their exiles and fugitives from the severity of the laws, will unite with the Savages, and settle that part of the country; the consequence of which will be that bodies of Banditti will ravage America, as the Barbarians of the North ravaged the Roman Empire, and subject the States to the necessity of keeping the frontiers always guarded, and remaining in a State of continual war. The Colonies next to the frontier will of course be better disciplined than the rest; and this inequality of military force will prove a dreadful incentive to ambition. The remedy for this inequality would be to keep up a standing army, to which every State should contribute in proportion to its population; but the Americans, who have the fears that the English ought to have, dread nothing so much as a standing army. In this they are wrong. There is nothing more easy than to combine a standing army with a militia, so as to improve the militia, and gain additional security for liberty. But it is no easy matter to calm their apprehensions on that head.

Here are a number of difficulties; and perhaps the private interests of powerful individuals will unite with the prejudices of the multitude, to check the efforts of true Philosophers and good Citizens.

It is impossible not to wish ardently that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the world. They may become a model to it. They may prove by fact that men can be free and yet tranquil; and that it is in their power to rescue themselves from the chains in which tyrants and knaves of all descriptions have presumed to bind them under the pretence of the public good. They may exhibit an example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commerical liberty, and of industry. The Asylum they open to the oppressed of all nations should console the earth. The case with which the injured may escape from oppressive governments, will compel Princes to become just and cautious; and the rest of the world will gradually open their eyes upon the empty illusions with which they have been hitherto cheated by politicians. But for this purpose America must preserve herself from these illusions; and take care to avoid being what your ministerial writers are frequently saying She will be—an image of our Europe—a mass of divided powers contending for territory and commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of the people with their own blood.

All enlightened men—All the friends of humanity ought at this time to unite their lights to those of the American sages, and to assist them in the great work of legislation. This, sir, would be a work worthy of you. I wish it was in my power to animate your zeal in this instance. If I have in this letter indulged too free an effusion of my sentiments, this has been my only motive; and it will, I hope, induce you to pardon me for tiring you. I wish indeed that the blood which has been spilt, and which will contiune for some time to be spilt in this contest, may not be without its use to the human race.

Our two nations are about doing much harm to each other, and probably without the prospect to either of any real advantage. An increase of debts and public burthens, (perhaps a national bankruptcy), and the ruin of a great number of individuals, will prove the result. England seems to me to be more likely to suffer by these evils, and much nearer to them, than France.—If instead of going to war, you had at the commencement of your disputes endeavoured to retreat with a good grace; if your Statesmen had then consented to make those concessions, which they will infallibly be obliged to make at last; if the national opinion would have permitted your government to anticipate events which might have been foreseen; if, in short, you had immediately yielded to the independence of America without entering into any hostilities; I am firmly persuaded your nation would have lost nothing.—But you will now lose what you have already expended, and what you are still to expend; you will experience a great diminution of your commerce for some time, and great interior commotions, if driven to a bankruptcy; and, at any rate, a great diminution of weight in foreign politics. But this last circumstance I think of little consequence to the real happiness of a people; for I cannot agree with the Abbe Raynal in your motto* . I do not believe all this will make you a contemptible nation or throw you into slavery.—On the contrary; your misfortunes may have the effect of a necessary amputation. They are perhaps the only means of saving you from the gangrene of luxury and corruption. And if they should terminate in the amendment of your constitution, by restoring annual elections, and distributing the right of suffrages for representation so as to render it more equal and better proportioned to the interests of the represented, you will perhaps gain as much as America by this revolution; for you will preserve your liberty, and with your liberty, and by means of it, all your other losses will be speedily repaired.

By the freedom with which I have opened myself to you, sir, upon these delicate points, you will judge of the esteem with which you have inspired me; and the satisfaction I feel in thinking there is some resemblance between our sentiments and views. I depend on your* confining this confidence to yourself. I even beg that you will not be particular in answering me by the Post, for your letter will certainly be opened at our Post-Offices, and I shall be found much too great a friend to liberty for a minister, even though a discarded minister.

I have the honour to be with all possible respect,

Sir,
Your most humble,
and most obedient Servant,
TURGOT.

[* ]See the Notes annexed to the Translation of this Letter.

[* ]What is here said refers to the following account of M. Turgot’s administration in the second tract on Civil Liberty and the War with America, p. 150, &c. “A new reign produced a new minister of finance in France, whose name will be respected by posterity for a set of measures as new to the political world, as any late discoveries in the system of nature have been to the philosophical world—Doubtful in their oparation, as all untried measures must be, but distinguished by their tendency to lay a solid foundation for endless peace, industry, and a general enjoyment of the gifts of nature, arts and commerce—The edicts issued during his administration exhibit indeed a phænomenon of the most extraordinary kind. An absolute King rendering a voluntary account to his subjects, and inciting his people to think; a right which it has been the business of all absolute princes and their ministers to extinguish.—In these edicts the King declared in the most distinct terms against a bankruptcy, &c. while the minister applied himself to increase every public resource by principles more liberal than France, or any part of Europe, ever had in serious contemplation.—It is much to be regretted, that the opposition he met with and the intrigues of a court should have deprived the world of those lights, which must have resulted from the example of such an administration.” In this passage I had, in the first edition, mentioned improperly Mr. Turgot’s want of address among the other causes of his dismission from power. This occasioned a letter from him to inform me of the true reasons of his dismission, and begun that correspondence, of which this letter is a part, and which continued till his death.—It may not be improper to add here, that his successor was Mr. Necker, author of the interesting Treatise on the Administration of the Finances of France just published; and that in the passage just quoted, the following notice is taken of this appointment.—“After a short interval, a nomination, in some respects still more extraordinary, took place in the Court of France. A court, which a few years since was distinguished by its bigotry and intolerance, has raised a protestant, the subject of a small but virtuous republic, to a decisive lead in the regulation of its finances. It is to be presumed that so singular a preference will produce an equally singular exertion of integrity and talents.”

[* ]See Mr. Burke’s Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

[(†) ]It is the Constitution of Delware that imposes the test here meant. That of the Jerseys, with a noble liberality, orders that there shall never in that Province be any establishment of any one religious sect in preference to another, and that all Protestants of all persuasions shall enjoy equal rights and privileges.

[* ]This seems to be a particular of much consequence. The great inequality now existing, and which is likely to increase, between the different States, is a very unfavourable circumstance; and the embarassment and danger to which it exposes the union ought to be guarded against as far as possible in laying out future States.

[* ]This has been once true of the inhabitants of New-England, but it is not so now. See p. 47.

[* ]This refers to the following words (taken from Mr. Justamond’s translation of the Abbe Raynal’s History of the European Settlements) in the Title-page to the Second Tract on Civil Liberty—“Should the morals of the English be perverted by luxury—should they lose their colonies by restraining them, &c. they will be enslaved. They will become insignificant and contemptible; and Europe will not be able to shew the world one nation in which she can pride herself.”

[* ]In compliance with Mr. Turgot’s desire, this letter was kept private during his life. Since his death I have thought the publication of it a duty which I owe to his memory, as well as to the United States and the world. I can add, with much satisfaction, that my venerable friend and the excellent Philosopher and Satesman whose name introduces this letter; and also, that some intimate friends of Mr. Turgot’s, who have been consulted on this subject, concur with me in this sentiment.

Note omitted in Page 52.

The imperfection of real knowledge may often produce unreasonable incredulity.—Had the best Philosophers been told a few years ago, “that there existed fishes which had the command of lightening, and which used it to kill their prey,” they would have scouted the information as absurd and ridiculous.
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8: 8. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution (1787-88)- Part I

By the time De Lolme’s work appeared in English (1775), the differences between the American colonists and the British government had reached a breaking point when some form of independence seemed inevitable. Mably (1785), Condorcet (1786), and Mazzei (1788) wrote critiques of the American efforts and tried to explain how the example might influence affairs in Europe. John Adams wrote the most extensive defense of the American constitutions in a three volume work which appeared between 1787 and 1788. In volume IV of his complete works he defends his method, while in chapters III-VII of the Defence he examines the opinions of philosophers, political theorists and historians on the viability of the republican form of government.

John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 4. Chapter: THE DEFENCE.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2102/159776 on 2008-04-29

The text is in the public domain.

Before this reaches you, the resolution for finally separating from Britain will be handed to Congress by Colonel Nelson.1 I put up with it in the present form for the sake of unanimity. ’Tis not quite so pointed as I could wish.

Our Convention is now employed in the great work of forming a constitution. My most esteemed republican form has many and powerful enemies. A silly thing published in Philadelphia, by a native of Virginia, has just made its appearance here, strongly recommended, ’tis said, by one of our delegates now with you,—Braxton. His reasonings upon and distinction between private and public virtue, are weak, shallow, evasive, and the whole performance an affront and disgrace to this country; and, by one expression, I suspect his whiggism.1

THE DEFENCE.

A

DEFENCE

of the

CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

of the

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

AGAINST THE ATTACK OF M. TURGOT, IN HIS LETTER TO DR. PRICE, DATED THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY OF MARCH, 1778.

by

JOHN ADAMS.

“All Nature’s difference keeps all Nature’s peace.” Pope

in three volumes.

VOL. I.

PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR.

The constitution adopted by the State of Massachusetts, in 1780, did not go into operation without meeting serious obstacles in the first few years. The hostility entertained towards an independent executive head and a double legislative department had shown itself very decidedly in the convention,1 and it rather gained than lost strength, from the disturbed condition of things and the distress among the people immediately after the revolution. Complaints of the aristocratic character of the senate, of the governor’s salary, and of the courts, grew louder and louder until the year 1786, when they took the shape of armed resistance to the public authorities, threatening the entire overthrow of the government.

Simultaneously with this state of affairs in America, and growing out of them, discussions of the nature of government again came into vogue, both in England and France. Among other writers, Dr. Richard Price, who had all along viewed with the most lively interest the progress of the revolution, published at the close of the struggle a small tract entitled “Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of making it a Benefit to the World,” embodying many useful suggestions and much good advice to the people of the United States. At the close of this pamphlet he added a letter which had been addressed to him, in 1778, by the celebrated philosopher and minister of France, M. Turgot, wherein among many strictures upon the civil institutions of America, he unequivocally and roundly condemns the whole theory of government which Mr. Adams had labored to sustain. Viewing it from a French position, in which the centralization of power has, under every change of form, even the most republican, been the leading idea, he attacks the state constitutions as slavishly borrowed from the system of the mother country, and advocates the collecting of all authority in one centre as the only true substitute. The passage relating to it is prefixed to this republication of Mr. Adams’s Defence, as well because it seems essential to a right understanding of the allusions constantly occurring to it in that work, as because it contains reflections upon other subjects which have not lost their interest even at this day. This letter was soon followed by a pamphlet written by the celebrated Mirabeau, reviewing the positions of Dr. Price and of M. Turgot, and particularly enforcing, in his declamatory style, the views of the latter respecting a simple and central government. These views were generally adopted by that school of philosophers which had risen into great influence at this time in France, and they were well known to be sustained by the high authority of Dr. Franklin, as well as of other distinguished men in America.

The occasion seemed to require a defence of the forms already adopted in some, though not in all of the states. Two of them had chosen to act upon the idea of a single source of legislative power, and others were known to be inclined to follow the example. The confederation had fallen into ruins, and projects were already in agitation for the reconstruction of the federal system. Mr. Adams, who was at the moment living in England, decided to come forward once more and fortify his position with both reasoning and authority. Such is the origin of this book, and the explanation of its title. It is a defence of the form of constitutions of the several states, and not, as some have imagined, of that of the United States, in which indeed the leading ideas are embodied, but which was not made until afterwards. Although from the day that the latter system went into successful operation it has been more and more throwing into the shade the state organizations, it must be apparent to every observer of the complex machine, that its favorable movement, in a great measure, depends upon the good condition of those less prominent parts. But this defence equally applies to the one and the other, being in its nature a generalization of ultimate principles, upon which that class of governments is founded which draw their powers from bases long established in all human, civilized society.

Viewed with the searching eye of criticism, the main defect of this book as a treatise appears to be its want of methodical treatment of the subject; a fault which is owing to the hasty manner in which it was prepared to meet a particular crisis, having been commenced on the fourth of October, 1786, and finished on the twenty-sixth of December of the next year. The author was always prompted to write by a sense of the necessity of immediate exertion, and, therefore, in this as in all other instances of his composition, he took too little care of the shape in which his thoughts were clothed.1 The pride of authorship never belonged to him, even to the degree to which it ought to belong to every man conscious of powers to contribute something to benefit his own generation. The editor had not advanced many pages in his work of revision of the many and glaring errors of the press, before he became impressed with the necessity of deciding a question lying deeper than these. The choice was before him, on the one hand, of implicitly following the text and the order of arrangement of the former editions, however obvious the disadvantage to a work of too much learning and profound reflection not to deserve placing in a better permanent form, or, on the other, of exercising within certain limits the liberty of revision and of correction. To give a single example: in the second volume, page 111, there occurs an obvious transposition of several pages of the text, the effect of which is to derange the regular order of dates, as given in Machiavel’s History of Florence, which the author steadily follows elsewhere, and to conclude with the first half of an account, the other portion of which had already been inserted out of any connection thirty pages earlier. Neither is there any reason to be seen in the substance of the story, for this violent change. There can be no cause for doubt that this was the result of an accidental misplacement of the sheets sent to the printer of the first edition, which has been faithfully transmitted to each succeeding one. So in regard to the numerous errors in dates and names, in French and Italian, as well in the translation, as in the original when placed in the notes; all these equally serve to show that if the work deserve to be retained at all, it imperatively requires to be freed from every minor imperfection. Conscious of the responsibility resting upon him for such a decision, the editor, after deliberate reflection, determined to enter upon a thorough revision. Hence it is that the original, unmeaning, and arbitrary division of the subject into letters addressed to a friend, has been made to give way to a more natural one of chapters, embracing the whole or a certain portion of some one topic. Passages, manifestly misplaced, have been brought together. Mistakes of the press have been corrected, and an elaborate comparison has been made of all the abridgments, translations, and quotations of passages to be found in other writers, with the originals, wherever these have been attainable. In all cases in which casual mistakes of the meaning have been made in the hurry of translation from languages with which the author did not become acquainted until late in life, corrections have been tacitly made; and the liberty has been sometimes taken of rearranging the members of a sentence too closely transferred from the Italian idiom, so as to free them from what in English appears unnatural inversion. More important errors sometimes occur, but these have been left to be pointed out in the notes. The changes thus made will prove to be considerable in number, yet, throughout, great care has been taken in no way to impair the meaning, or even to modify the original text of the author. It is obvious that with this notice, and with the original editions still in existence, and to be found in most public libraries, no room is left for a suspicion of surprise, either upon the reader or upon the public.

The remark has been made, that a careful collation with the original authorities has been attempted where practicable. But it should be added, that in some cases it has not been possible to obtain them. This is one of that class of works which, by reason of the deficiency of the libraries, could at no moment, even down to this time, have been written in America. Of the Italian historians referred to, several have been found only in the collection of books left by the author himself.

A few notes to the first volume have been found, a portion of them by the well-known Granville Sharp, and the others by Mr. Brand Hollis, with both of whom the author was in habits of intimacy when in England. Although not very material, they have been inserted with the initial of the writer attached.

The first volume was printed and published in octavo form, as a complete work, by C. Dilly, in London, in the year 1787. It was forthwith transmitted to the United States, where it arrived in the midst of the agitation caused by the assembling of the convention to form the federal constitution. An edition in duodecimo was immediately printed in Boston, another in New York, and another in Philadelphia, by Hall and Sellers, which was much circulated in the convention, and undoubtedly contributed somewhat to give a direction to the opinions of the members. Encouraged by the favorable reception of this volume, the author redoubled his efforts, and in the succeeding year brought out two additional ones. He would have done better had he allowed himself further time. But the French Revolution was impending, the federal constitution was struggling against popular opposition, and the public attention of all Europe was more than ever drawn to the examination of republican forms. The work was translated into French, with the omission of the Italian history, on the ground of the facility had by Europeans of access to the original authorities, and published at Paris, in two volumes, in 1792, together with some notes and observations by M. de la Croix. These notes do not appear to be such as to form an exception in favor of that writer from the sweeping condemnation passed upon his works by Lord Brougham.1 Not much time elapsed before another edition was published in London, by John Stockdale. This edition of 1794 is accompanied with an engraved head of the author, taken from Copley’s full-length picture, now in the possession of Harvard College. By the permission of that institution, an engraving of the entire picture has now for the first time been taken, and accompanies this volume. Lastly, William Cobbett published another edition in Philadelphia, in the year 1797. These are all the editions of the work which the editor has been enabled to discover, although, in some of the author’s later correspondence, he alludes to others. Sufficient has been shown to prove the existence of what must have been, considering its nature, regarded as a great demand. Neither has it been easy at any time since to obtain a perfect copy, without paying for it a full price.

Speculations upon government have gone out of vogue in the United States; partly by reason of a general satisfaction with the existing form of constitution, and a disposition to do nothing to disturb it; partly for another and more singular cause. In few countries, even those most despotically governed, can greater unwillingness prevail among educated men, to publish opinions on this subject, conflicting with received ideas. The experience of the author of the Defence furnished a memorable lesson of the danger incurred by a public man through an unreserved expression of his convictions, however honestly entertained. Written in a foreign country, without a thought of personal consequences, and solely to maintain a system recommended long before, the volumes, nevertheless, furnished, for many years after his return home, an unfailing armory, from which weapons to be used against him could be drawn at pleasure by the party in political opposition. Single passages, appearing to favor monarchy or an aristocracy, were torn from the context to prove that the writer was in his heart an enemy to liberty; whilst those which looked the other way, and exposed the defects of both, were overlooked or forgotten. These are the common practices of political warfare, and are only deserving of notice in this connection, on account of the effect they have had to destroy the independence of judgment indispensable to all effective scientific investigation. Upon a fair survey of the entire reasoning embodied in these volumes, it does not seem probable that the author intended to advocate the placing a greater share of power in the hands of his one executive head, than is now actually wielded by the President of the United States, with the exception of the restrictions held by the senate. So, likewise, the senate has probably proved to the full as conservative a body, in all its tendencies, as he designed to approve. The country, however, was just then emerging from an old into a new system, and was not prepared to weigh questions of science in very minute scales. The author was met with a storm of pamphlets and newspaper assaults, which pursued him as long as he remained in public life. Whether owing to this cause or not, the fact is certain, that no leading political man, since his day, has been known to express a serious doubt of the immaculate nature of the government established by the majority. The science has become reduced in America to a eulogy of the Constitution of the United States; and we are compelled to look abroad, to Sismondi, De Tocqueville, Lord Brougham, and other writers, who have studied on a broader scale, for the only philosophical examinations that are free from a bias seriously affecting their permanent value.

Very certainly this is not the spirit in which the Defence was written. Whether the opinions which it expresses prove to be sustained in the course of ages, by the experience of republican systems, or not, they were formed upon no immediate or narrow observation, but resulted from extensive generalization. As such, they must be regarded hereafter as the author’s contribution to science, upon which whatever may belong to him of name and fame must ultimately rest. It is not to be supposed that, in all the essential parts of the practical operation of a republican system in the United States, he has judged rightly. Thus far, some of his apprehensions of evil have proved to be without foundation, by reason of his not giving sufficient attention to the neutralizing forces which have been put in operation. But his deductions having been made from observations of the general laws regulating the action of mankind, during the whole period of recorded history, their ultimate soundness or unsoundness will only be established after a much longer term of trial of free institutions throughout the world than has yet been allowed them. It is matter of sufficient gratulation for the present generation, that the restraints recommended by the author, and generally adopted in the United States, have so far proved not inconsistent with the largest liberty, and have guaranteed to society the enjoyment of many of the substantial blessings that can be expected to flow from a well-ordered constitution.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER OF M. TURGOT TO DR. RICHARD PRICE.

Paris, 22 March, 1778.

But it appeared that you imputed to me the indiscretion of having flown in the face of the general opinion of my nation; and there I think you neither did justice to me nor to my nation, which is much more enlightened than is generally supposed among you, and in which perhaps it is easier than even with you, to call the public attention to ideas of reason. I judge so from the infatuation of the British in the prospect of conquering America, which continued until the adventure of Burgoyne made them, in some degree, open their eyes. I judge so from the system of monopoly and exclusion, which governs all your political writers upon commerce, except Mr. Adam Smith and Dean Tucker, a system which is the true prime cause of your separation from your colonies. I judge so from all your polemic writings upon questions which have been agitated for twenty years back, and in which, before yours appeared, I do not recollect to have read a single piece in which the true point in dispute has been rightly taken up. I have been unable to conceive how a nation which hath so successfully cultivated every branch of the natural sciences, can have continued so much beneath herself in the most interesting science of the whole, that of the public good; a science wherein the liberty of the press, which she alone enjoys, must have given her a mighty advantage over all the rest of Europe. Is it national pride which hath hindered you from making the utmost of that advantage? Is it because you were something better off than others, that you have turned all your speculations towards persuading yourselves that you were quite happy? Is it the spirit of party, and the wish to form self-support out of popular opinions, which hath retarded your progress by leading your politicians to treat as empty metaphysics all those speculations which tend to establish some fixed principles respecting the rights and true interests of individuals and of nations? How comes it to pass that you are almost the first among your writers who have given just notions of liberty, and who have exposed the falsehood of that threadbare sentiment of the greatest class of even the most republican writers, that liberty consists in being subject only to laws, as if a man oppressed by an unjust law was free? This would not be true, even if we suppose all the laws to be the work of the entire nation assembled; because, in fact, the individual has certain rights which the nation cannot take from him, but by violence, and an illegal use of force. Although you have had regard to this truth, and have explained yourself thereon, yet perhaps it merits your care to develop it more at large, considering the little attention which hath been paid to it by even the most zealous partisans of liberty.

It is also a strange thing that it should not be counted in England a trifling observation to say that one nation can never have a right to govern another; and that such a government could have no foundation but that of force, upon which also are supported robbery and tyranny. That the tyranny of a people is, of all known in the world, the most cruel and intolerable, leaving no remedy for the oppressed; whereas a single despot is at length stopped in his career by self-interest; he has the check of remorse, or that of public opinion; but a multitude makes no calculations, feels no remorse, and decrees to itself glory, when, in fact, it deserves the utmost disgrace.

Events are to the English nation a terrible commentary upon your book. For some months they have been falling headlong with accelerated rapidity. The knot is untied in regard to America. Lo! she is independent irrecoverably. Will she be free and happy? Will this new people, situated so advantageously to give the world the example of a constitution wherein man may enjoy all his rights, exercise freely his whole faculties, and be governed only by nature, by reason, and by justice, know how to form such a constitution—know how to fix it upon everlasting foundations, by guarding against all causes of division and corruption, which would sap it by degrees and overturn it?

I am not satisfied, I own, with any constitutions which have as yet been framed by the different American States. You blame with reason that of Pennsylvania, for exacting a religious test upon admission into the representative body. It is much worse in others. There is one of them, I think that of the Jerseys, which requires* . . . .

I see in the greatest number an unreasonable imitation of the usages of England. Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England has a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They undertake to balance these different authorities, as if the same equilibrium of powers which has been thought necessary to balance the enormous preponderance of royalty, could be of any use in republics, formed upon the equality of all the citizens; and as if every article which constitutes different bodies, was not a source of divisions. By striving to prevent imaginary dangers, they have created real ones. They wish to have nothing to fear from the clergy, and yet unite them under the barrier of a common proscription. By rendering them ineligible, they become formed into a body, and such a one as is foreign to the state. Why should one citizen, who has the same interest as others in the common defence of liberty and property, be excluded from contributing towards it his genius and virtues, because he is of a profession in which genius and virtue are essentials? The clergy are only dangerous when they compose a body in the state,—when they conceive themselves to have rights and interests as a body; or when it has been devised to have a religion established by law, as if men could have any right or any interest in regulating each other’s consciences; as if an individual could sacrifice to civil society those opinions on which he thinks his eternal salvation depends, or as if mankind were to be saved or damned by the lump. Wherever true toleration, that is to say, the absolute incompetency of government over the conscience of individuals, is established, there an ecclesiastic, when he is admitted into the national assembly, is but a citizen; when he is excluded from it, he becomes again an ecclesiastic.

I do not perceive that there has been sufficient care to reduce to the lowest possible number the kinds of business which the government of each state is to manage; or to separate the object of legislation from those of the general and from those of the particular and local assemblies, which, by performing all the functions of detail in government, may free the general assemblies from engaging therein, and so to take from the members of these latter all means, and, perhaps, all desire to abuse an authority, which would only be occupied about objects general in their nature, and, therefore, unconnected with the little passions which agitate mankind.

Nor do I perceive that due attention has been paid to the great distinction, and the only one founded in nature, between two classes of men. I mean those who are proprietors in lands and those who are not; to their interests, and, consequently, to their different rights, with respect to legislation, to the administration of justice and of the police, to the contribution for public expenses, and to their employments.

No fixed principle is established in regard to imposts. Each state is supposed to be at liberty to tax itself at pleasure, and to lay its taxes upon persons, consumptions, or importations, that is to say, to erect an interest contrary to that of the other states.

They suppose in all the states, that they have a right to regulate commerce. They even authorize the executive bodies or the governors to prohibit the exportation of certain products upon particular occasions; so far are they from seeing that the law of entire liberty of all commerce is a corollary of the right of property; so far are they still involved in the mists of European illusions.

In the general union of the states with one another, I do not see a coalition, a melting of all the parts together, so as to make the body one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregate of parts, always too separate, and which have a continual tendency to divide themselves, from the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions; from the inequality of their future progress. It is only a copy of the republic of Holland, and this had no occasion, like that of America, to dread the possible growth of any one of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported, until now, upon the false basis of very ancient and very vulgar policy; upon the prejudice which nations, which provinces may have, concerning interests as a province or a nation, different from those which individuals have of being free, and defending their properties against robbers and conquerors;—a pretended interest in carrying on more commerce than others, not in buying merchandise of foreigners, but in forcing these to consume our productions and the works of our manufacturers; a pretended interest in having more extensive territory, in acquiring such and such a province, such and such an island, such and such a town; an interest in inspiring other nations with dread; an interest in excelling them in the glory of arms, or that of arts and sciences.

Each of these prejudices is cherished in Europe, because the ancient rivalry of nations and the ambition of princes obliges all states to be in arms, for defence against their armed neighbors, and to regard a military force as the principal object of government. Such is the good fortune of America, that she cannot have, for a long time, an external enemy to fear, if she does not become self-divided; therefore she may and ought to estimate at their true value those pretended interests, those grounds of discord, which are all that endanger her liberty. The sacred principle of freedom of commerce being considered as the necessary consequence of the right of property, all the pretended interests of trade vanish before it. The pretended interest of possessing more or less territory vanishes also, when the territory is justly considered as not belonging to nations, but to the individual proprietors of the soil; and when the question, whether such a canton or such a village ought to belong to such a province, or such a state, is not decided by the pretended interest of that province or that state, but by the interest which the inhabitants of the canton or village have in assembling themselves to transact their affairs in places the most convenient of access; when that interest, being measured by the length or shortness of the way which a man can go to manage his most important, without too much injury to his common concerns, becomes the natural and physical measure of the extent of the jurisdiction of states, and establishes throughout an equilibrium of extent and power, which annihilates all the danger of inequality, and all pretensions of superiority.

The interest of being dreaded becomes null, when we make no demands, and when we are in a situation not to be attacked, even by a considerable force, with any hope of success.

The glory of arms cannot compare with the felicity of living in peace. The glory of arts and sciences belongs to every one who has spirit to acquire it. There is a harvest of this kind abundantly sufficient for everybody; the field of discoveries cannot be overtilled, and all profit by the discoveries of all.

I imagine that the Americans have not felt these truths so strongly as they ought to be felt by them, for the security of the happiness of their posterity. I blame not their leaders. There was a necessity of providing against the exigencies of the moment, by some sort of union, against an enemy actually present and formidable; there was not time to correct the defects in constitutions, or in the models of the different states. But there should be a dread of perpetuating them, and an application to the means of uniting opinions and interests, and of reducing them to uniform principles throughout all the states.

PREFACE.

The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation, and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world, and the human character, which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is every day rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family. Even in the theory and practice of government, in all the simple monarchies, considerable improvements have been made. The checks and balances of republican governments have been in some degree adopted at the courts of princes. By the erection of various tribunals, to register the laws, and exercise the judicial power—by indulging the petitions and remonstrances of subjects, until by habit they are regarded as rights—a control has been established over ministers of state, and the royal councils, which, in some degree, approaches the spirit of republics. Property is generally secure, and personal liberty seldom invaded. The press has great influence, even where it is not expressly tolerated; and the public opinion must be respected by a minister, or his place becomes insecure. Commerce begins to thrive; and if religious toleration were established, personal liberty a little more protected, by giving an absolute right to demand a public trial in a certain reasonable time, and the states were invested with a few more privileges, or rather restored to some that have been taken away, these governments would be brought to as great a degree of perfection, they would approach as near to the character of governments of laws and not of men, as their nature will probably admit of. In so general a refinement, or more properly a reformation of manners and improvement in science, is it not unaccountable that the knowledge of the principles and construction of free governments, in which the happiness of life, and even the further progress of improvement in education and society, in knowledge and virtue, are so deeply interested, should have remained at a full stand for two or three thousand years?

According to a story in Herodotus, the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and the advantages and inconveniences of each, were as well understood at the time of the neighing of the horse of Darius, as they are at this hour. A variety of mixtures of these simple species were conceived and attempted, with various success, by the Greeks and Romans. Representations, instead of collections, of the people; a total separation of the executive from the legislative power, and of the judicial from both; and a balance in the legislature, by three independent, equal branches, are perhaps the only three discoveries in the constitution of a free government, since the institution of Lycurgus. Even these have been so unfortunate, that they have never spread: the first has been given up by all the nations, excepting one, which had once adopted it; and the other two, reduced to practice, if not invented, by the English nation, have never been imitated by any other, except their own descendants in America.

While it would be rash to say, that nothing further can be done to bring a free government, in all its parts, still nearer to perfection, the representations of the people are most obviously susceptible of improvement. The end to be aimed at, in the formation of a representative assembly, seems to be the sense of the people, the public voice. The perfection of the portrait consists in its likeness. Numbers, or property, or both, should be the rule; and the proportions of electors and members an affair of calculation. The duration should not be so long that the deputy should have time to forget the opinions of his constituents. Corruption in elections is the great enemy of freedom. Among the provisions to prevent it, more frequent elections, and a more general privilege of voting, are not all that might be devised. Dividing the districts, diminishing the distance of travel, and confining the choice to residents, would be great advances towards the annihilation of corruption. The modern aristocracies of Holland, Venice, Bern, &c., have tempered themselves with innumerable checks, by which they have given a great degree of stability to that form of government; and though liberty and life can never be there enjoyed so well as in a free republic, none is perhaps more capable of profound sagacity. We shall learn to prize the checks and balances of a free government, and even those of the modern aristocracies, if we recollect the miseries of Greece, which arose from its ignorance of them. The only balance attempted against the ancient kings was a body of nobles; and the consequences were perpetual alternations of rebellion and tyranny, and the butchery of thousands upon every revolution from one to the other. When kings were abolished, aristocracies tyrannized; and then no balance was attempted but between aristocracy and democracy. This, in the nature of things, could be no balance at all, and therefore the pendulum was forever on the swing.

It is impossible to read in Thucydides,* his account of the factions and confusions throughout all Greece, which were introduced by this want of an equilibrium, without horror. “During the few days that Eurymedon, with his troops, continued at Corcyra, the people of that city extended the massacre to all whom they judged their enemies. The crime alleged was, their attempt to overturn the democracy. Some perished merely through private enmity; some, by the hands of the borrower, on account of the money they had lent. Every kind of death, every dreadful act, was perpetrated. Fathers slew their children; some were dragged from altars, some were butchered at them; numbers, immured in temples, were starved. The contagion spread through the whole extent of Greece; factions raged in every city; the licentious many contending for the Athenians, and the aspiring few for the Lacedæmonians. The consequence was, seditions in cities, with all their numerous and tragical incidents.”

“Such things ever will be,” says Thucydides, “so long as human nature continues the same.” But if this nervous historian had known a balance of three powers, he would not have pronounced the distemper so incurable, but would have added—so long as parties in cities remain unbalanced. He adds,—“Words lost their signification; brutal rashness was fortitude; prudence, cowardice; modesty, effeminacy; and being wise in every thing, to be good for nothing: the hot temper was manly valor; calm deliberation, plausible knavery; he who boiled with indignation, was trustworthy; and he who presumed to contradict, was ever suspected. Connection of blood was less regarded than transient acquaintance; associations were not formed for mutual advantage, consistent with law, but for rapine against all law; trust was only communication of guilt; revenge was more valued, than never to have suffered an injury; perjuries were master-pieces of cunning; the dupes only blushed, the villains most impudently triumphed.”

“The source of all these evils was a thirst of power, from rapacious and ambitious passions. The men of large influence, some contending for the just equality of the democratical, and others for the fair decorum of aristocratical government, by artful sounds, embarrassed those communities, for their own private lucre, by the keenest spirit, the most daring projects, and most dreadful machinations. Revenge, not limited by justice or the public welfare, was measured only by such retaliation as was judged the sweetest; by capital condemnations, by iniquitous sentences, and by glutting the present rancor of their hearts with their own hands. The pious and upright conduct was on both sides disregarded; the moderate citizens fell victims to both. Seditions introduced every species of outrageous wickedness into the Grecian manners. Sincerity was laughed out of countenance; the whole order of human life was confounded; the human temper, too apt to transgress in spite of laws, now having gained the ascendant over law, seemed to glory that it was too strong for justice, and an enemy to all superiority.”

Mr. Hume has collected, from Diodorus Siculus alone, a few massacres which happened in only sixty of the most polished years of Greece:—“From Sybaris, 500 nobles banished; of Chians, 600 citizens; at Ephesus, 340 killed, 1000 banished; of Cyrenians, 500 nobles killed, all the rest banished; the Corinthians killed 120, banished 500; Phæbidas banished 300 Bœotians. Upon the fall of the Lacedæmonians, democracies were restored in many cities, and severe vengeance taken of the nobles; the banished nobles returning, butchered their adversaries at Phialæ, in Corinth, in Megara, in Phliasia, where they killed 300 of the people; but these again revolting, killed above 600 of the nobles, and banished the rest. In Arcadia, 1400 banished, besides many killed; the banished retired to Sparta and Pallantium; the latter were delivered up to their countrymen, and all killed. Of the banished from Argos and Thebes, there were 500 in the Spartan army. The people, before the usurpation of Agathocles, had banished 600 nobles; afterwards that tyrant, in concurrence with the people, killed 4000 nobles, and banished 6000; and killed 4000 people at Gela; his brother banished 8000 from Syracuse. The inhabitants of Ægesta, to the number of 40,000, were killed, man, woman, and child, for the sake of their money; all the relations of the Libyan army, fathers, brothers, children, killed; 7000 exiles killed after capitulation. These numbers, compared with the population of those cities, are prodigious; yet Agathocles was a man of character, and not to be suspected of wanton cruelty, contrary to the maxims of his age.”1

Such were the fashionable outrages of unbalanced parties. In the name of human and divine benevolence, is such a system as this to be recommended to Americans, in this age of the world? Human nature is as incapable now of going through revolutions with temper and sobriety, with patience and prudence, or without fury and madness, as it was among the Greeks so long ago. The latest revolution that we read of was conducted, at least on one side, in the Grecian style, with laconic energy; and with a little Attic salt, at least, without too much patience, foresight, and prudence, on the other. Without three orders, and an effectual balance between them, in every American constitution, it must be destined to frequent unavoidable revolutions; though they are delayed a few years, they must come in time. The United States are large and populous nations, in comparison with the Grecian commonwealths, or even the Swiss cantons; and they are growing every day more disproportionate, and therefore less capable of being held together by simple governments. Countries that increase in population so rapidly as the States of America did, even during such an impoverishing and destructive war as the last was, are not to be long bound with silken threads; lions, young or old, will not be bound by cobwebs. It would be better for America, it is nevertheless agreed, to ring all the changes with the whole set of bells, and go through all the revolutions of the Grecian States, rather than establish an absolute monarchy among them, notwithstanding all the great and real improvements which have been made in that kind of government.

The objection to it is not because it is supported by nobles, and a subordination of ranks; for all governments, even the most democratical, are supported by a subordination of offices, and of ranks too. None ever existed without it but in a state of anarchy and outrage, in a contempt of law and justice, no better than no government. But the nobles, in the European monarchies, support them more by opposing than promoting their ordinary views. The kings are supported by their armies; the nobles support the crown, as it is in full possession of the gift of all employments; but they support it still more by checking its ministers, and preventing them from running into abuses of power and wanton despotism; otherwise the people would be pushed to extremities and insurrections. It is thus that the nobles reconcile the monarchical authority to the obedience of the subjects; but take away the standing armies, and leave the nobles to themselves, and in a few years, they would overturn every monarchy in Europe, and erect aristocracies.

It is become a kind of fashion among writers, to admit, as a maxim, that if you could be always sure of a wise, active, and virtuous prince, monarchy would be the best of governments. But this is so far from being admissible, that it will forever remain true, that a free government has a great advantage over a simple monarchy. The best and wisest prince, by means of a freer communication with his people, and the greater opportunities to collect the best advice from the best of his subjects, would have an immense advantage in a free state over a monarchy. A senate consisting of all that is most noble, wealthy, and able in the nation, with a right to counsel the crown at all times, is a check to ministers, and a security against abuses, such as a body of nobles who never meet, and have no such right, can never supply. Another assembly, composed of representatives chosen by the people in all parts, gives free access to the whole nation, and communicates all its wants, knowledge, projects, and wishes to government; it excites emulation among all classes, removes complaints, redresses grievances, affords opportunities of exertion to genius, though in obscurity, and gives full scope to all the faculties of man; it opens a passage for every speculation to the legislature, to administration, and to the public; it gives a universal energy to the human character, in every part of the state, such as never can be obtained in a monarchy.

There is a third particular which deserves attention both from governments and people. In a simple monarchy, the ministers of state can never know their friends from their enemies; secret cabals undermine their influence, and blast their reputation. This occasions a jealousy ever anxious and irritated, which never thinks the government safe without an encouragement of informers and spies, throughout every part of the state, who interrupt the tranquillity of private life, destroy the confidence of families in their own domestics and in one another, and poison freedom in its sweetest retirements. In a free government, on the contrary, the ministers can have no enemies of consequence but among the members of the great or little council, where every man is obliged to take his side, and declare his opinion, upon every question. This circumstance alone, to every manly mind, would be sufficient to decide the preference in favor of a free government. Even secrecy, where the executive is entire in one hand, is as easily and surely preserved in a free government, as in a simple monarchy; and as to despatch, all the simple monarchies of the whole universe may be defied to produce greater or more numerous examples of it than are to be found in English history. An Alexander, or a Frederic, possessed of the prerogatives only of a king of England, and leading his own armies, would never find himself embarrassed or delayed in any honest enterprise. He might be restrained, indeed, from running mad, and from making conquests to the ruin of his nation, merely for his own glory; but this is no argument against a free government.

There can be no free government without a democratical branch in the constitution. Monarchies and aristocracies are in possession of the voice and influence of every university and academy in Europe. Democracy, simple democracy, never had a patron among men of letters. Democratical mixtures in government have lost almost all the advocates they ever had out of England and America. Men of letters must have a great deal of praise, and some of the necessaries, conveniences, and ornaments of life. Monarchies and aristocracies pay well and applaud liberally. The people have almost always expected to be served gratis, and to be paid for the honor of serving them; and their applauses and adorations are bestowed too often on artifices and tricks, on hypocrisy and superstition, on flattery, bribes, and largesses. It is no wonder then that democracies and democratical mixtures are annihilated all over Europe, except on a barren rock, a paltry fen, an inaccessible mountain, or an impenetrable forest. The people of England, to their immortal honor, are hitherto an exception; but, to the humiliation of human nature, they show very often that they are like other men. The people in America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number, since the transgression of the first pair; if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven. If there is one certain truth to be collected from the history of all ages, it is this; that the people’s rights and liberties, and the democratical mixture in a constitution, can never be preserved without a strong executive, or, in other words, without separating the executive from the legislative power. If the executive power, or any considerable part of it, is left in the hands either of an aristocratical or a democratical assembly, it will corrupt the legislature as necessarily as rust corrupts iron, or as arsenic poisons the human body; and when the legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.* A member of a senate, of immense wealth, the most respected birth, and transcendent abilities, has no influence in the nation, in comparison of what he would have in a single representative assembly. When a senate exists, the most powerful man in the state may be safely admitted into the house of representatives, because the people have it in their power to remove him into the senate as soon as his influence becomes dangerous. The senate becomes the great object of ambition; and the richest and the most sagacious wish to merit an advancement to it by services to the public in the house. When he has obtained the object of his wishes, you may still hope for the benefits of his exertions, without dreading his passions; for the executive power being in other hands, he has lost much of his influence with the people, and can govern very few votes more than his own among the senators.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the Divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men. The Greeks entertained this prejudice throughout all their dispersions; the Romans cultivated the same popular delusion; and modern nations, in the consecration of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine right in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it. Even the venerable magistrates of Amersfort devoutly believe themselves God’s vicegerents. Is it that obedience to the laws can be obtained from mankind in no other manner? Are the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? It was a tradition in antiquity that the laws of Crete were dictated to Minos by the inspiration of Jupiter. This legislator and his brother Rhadamanthus were both his sons; once in nine years they went to converse with their father, to propose questions concerning the wants of the people; and his answers were recorded as laws for their government. The laws of Lacedæmon were communicated by Apollo to Lycurgus; and, lest the meaning of the deity should not have been perfectly comprehended, or correctly expressed, they were afterwards confirmed by his oracle at Delphos. Among the Romans, Numa was indebted for those laws which procured the prosperity of his country to his conversations with Egeria. The Greeks imported these mysteries from Egypt and the East, whose despotisms, from the remotest antiquity to this day, have been founded in the same solemn empiricism; their emperors and nobles being all descended from their gods. Woden and Thor were divinities too; and their posterity ruled a thousand years in the north by the strength of a like credulity. Manco Capac was the child of the sun, the visible deity of the Peruvians; and transmitted his divinity, as well as his earthly dignity and authority, through a line of incas. And the rudest tribes of savages in North America have certain families from which their leaders are always chosen, under the immediate protection of the god War. There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few are always artful.

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature;* and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses, as Copley painted Chatham; West, Wolf; and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramsay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the* despicable dreams of De Pau. Neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than as ordinary arts and sciences, only more important. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time, both for England and America, suddenly to erect new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; to compare these with the principles of writers; and to inquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy; and when this was done, so far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages and reject the inconveniences of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other one of holy water. The people were universally too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honor to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind. The experiment is made, and has completely succeeded; it can no longer be called in question, whether authority in magistrates and obedience of citizens can be grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion, without the monkery of priests, or the knavery of politicians. As the writer was personally acquainted with most of the gentlemen in each of the states, who had the principal share in the first draughts, the following work was really written to lay before the public a specimen of that kind of reading and reasoning which produced the American constitutions.

It is not a little surprising that all this kind of learning should have been unknown to any illustrious philosopher and statesman, and especially one who really was, what he has been often called, “a well of science.” But if he could be unacquainted with it, or it could have escaped his memory, we may suppose millions in America have occasion to be reminded of it. The writer has long seen with anxiety the facility with which philosophers of greatest name have undertaken to write of American affairs, without knowing any thing of them, and have echoed and reëchoed each other’s visionary language. Having neither talents, leisure, nor inclination to meet such champions in the field of literary controversy, he little thought of venturing to propose to them any questions. Circumstances, however, have lately occurred which seem to require that some notice should be taken of one of them. If the publication of these papers should contribute any thing to turn the attention of the younger gentlemen of letters in America to this kind of inquiry, it will produce an effect of some importance to their country. The subject is the most interesting that can engage the understanding or the heart; for whether the end of man, in this stage of his existence, be enjoyment, or improvement, or both, it can never be attained so well in a bad government as a good one.

The practicability or the duration of a republic, in which there is a governor, a senate, and a house of representatives, is doubted by Tacitus, though he admits the theory to be laudable: “Cunctas nationes et urbes, populus, aut priores, aut singuli, regunt. Delecta ex his et constituta reipublicæ forma, laudari facilius quam inveniri; vel, si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest.”1 Cicero asserts, “Statuo esse optime constitutam rempublicam, quæ ex tribus generibus illis, regali, optimo, et populari, modice confusa,” in such peremptory terms the superiority of such a government to all other forms, that the loss of his book upon republics is much to be regretted. From a few passages that have been preserved, it is very probable he entered more largely into an examination of the composition of monarchical republics than any other ancient writer.2 He was so far from apprehending “disputes” from a variety of orders, that he affirms it to be the firmest bond of justice, and the strongest anchor of safety to the community. As the treble, the tenor, and the bass exist in nature, they will be heard in the concert. If they are arranged by Handel, in a skilful composition, they produce rapture the most exquisite that harmony can excite; but if they are confused together, without order, they will
“Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder.”

“Ut in fidibus aut tibiis, atque in cantu ipso, ac vocibus, concentus est quidam tenendus ex distinctis sonis, quem immutatum aut discrepantem aures eruditæ ferre non possunt; isque concentus, ex dissimillimarum vocum moderatione, concors tamen efficitur et congruens; sic ex summis et infimis et interjectis ordinibus, ut sonis, moderata ratione, civitas consensu dissimillimorum concinit; et quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia arctissimum atque optimum omni in republica vinculum incolumitatis; eaque sine justitia nullo pacto esse potest.” As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight. His decided opinion in favor of three branches is founded on a reason that is unchangeable; the laws, which are the only possible rule, measure, and security of justice, can be sure of protection, for any course of time, in no other form of government; and the very name of a republic implies, that the property of the people should be represented in the legislature, and decide the rule of justice. “Respublica est res populi. Populus autem non omnis hominum cœtus quoquo modo congregatus, sed cœtus multitudinis juris consensu, et utilitatis communione sociatus.”

“Respublica res est populi, cum bene ac juste geritur, sive ab uno rege, sive a paucis optimatibus, sive ab universo populo. Cum vero injustus est rex, quem tyrannum more græco voco; aut injusti optimates, quorum consensus factio est; aut injustus ipse populus, cui nomen usitatum nullum reperio, nisi ut etiam ipsum tyrannum appellem; non jam vitiosa, sed omnino nulla respublica est; quoniam non est res populi, cum tyrannus eam factiove capessat; nec ipse populus jam populus est si sit injustus, quoniam non est multitudo juris consensu, et utilitatis communione sociata sicut populus fuerat definitus.”

“Ubi justitia vera non est, nec jus potest esse. Quod enim jure fit, profecto juste fit. Quod autem fit injuste, nec jure fieri potest. Non enim jura dicenda sunt, vel putanda, iniqua hominum constituta; cum illud etiam ipsi jus esse dicant quod de justitiæ fonte manaverit; falsumque sit, quod a quibusdam non recte sentientibus dici solet, id jus esse, quod ei, qui plus potest, utile est.” According to this, a simple monarchy, if it could in reality be what it pretends to be, a government of laws, might be justly denominated a republic. A limited monarchy, therefore, especially when limited by two independent branches, an aristocratical and a democratical power in the constitution, may with strict propriety be called by that name.

If Cicero and Tacitus could revisit the earth, and learn that the English nation had reduced the great idea1 to practice, and brought it nearly to perfection, by giving each division a power to defend itself by a negative; had found it the most solid and durable government, as well as the most free; had obtained by means of it a prosperity among civilized nations, in an enlightened age, like that of the Romans among barbarians; and that the Americans, after having enjoyed the benefits of such a constitution a century and a half, were advised by some of the greatest philosophers and politicians of the age to renounce it, and set up the governments of ancient Goths and modern Indians,—what would they say? That the Americans would be more reprehensible than the Cappadocians, if they should listen to such advice.

It would have been much to the purpose, to have inserted a more accurate investigation of the form of government of the ancient Germans and modern Indians; in both, the existence of the three divisions of power is marked with a precision that excludes all controversy. The democratical branch, especially, is so determined, that the real sovereignty resided in the body of the people, and was exercised in the assembly of king, nobles, and commons together. These institutions really collected all authority into one centre of kings, nobles, and people. But, small as their numbers and narrow as their territories were, the consequence was confusion; each part believed it governed the whole; the chiefs thought they were sovereigns; the nobles believed the power to be in their hands; and the people flattered themselves that all depended upon them. Their purposes were well enough answered, without coming to an explanation, so long as they were few in number, and had no property; but when spread over large provinces of the Roman empire, now the great kingdoms of Europe, and grown populous and rich, they found the inconvenience of each not knowing its place. Kings, nobles, and people claimed the government in turn; and after all the turbulence, wars, and revolutions, which compose the history of Europe for so many ages, we find simple monarchies established everywhere. Whether the system will now become stationary, and last forever, by means of a few further improvements in monarchical government, we know not; or whether still further revolutions are to come. The most probable, or rather the only probable change, is the introduction of democratical branches into those governments. If the people should ever aim at more, they will defeat themselves; as they will, indeed, if they aim at this by any other than gentle means and by gradual advances, by improvements in general education, and by informing the public mind.

The systems of legislators are experiments made on human life and manners, society and government. Zoroaster, Confucius, Mithras, Odin, Thor, Mahomet, Lycurgus, Solon, Romulus, and a thousand others, may be compared to philosophers making experiments on the elements. Unhappily, political experiments cannot be made in a laboratory, nor determined in a few hours. The operation once begun, runs over whole quarters of the globe, and is not finished in many thousands of years. The experiment of Lycurgus lasted seven hundred years, but never spread beyond the limits of Laconia. The process of Solon expired in one century; that of Romulus lasted but two centuries and a half; but the Teutonic institutions, described by Cæsar and Tacitus, are the most memorable experiment, merely political, ever yet made in human affairs. They have spread all over Europe, and have lasted eighteen hundred years. They afford the strongest argument that can be imagined in support of the position assumed in these volumes. Nothing ought to have more weight with America, to determine her judgment against mixing the authority of the one, the few, and the many, confusedly in one assembly, than the wide-spread miseries and final slavery of almost all mankind, in consequence of such an ignorant policy in the ancient Germans. What is the ingredient which in England has preserved the democratical authority? The balance, and that only. The English have, in reality, blended together the feudal institutions with those of the Greeks and Romans, and out of all have made that noble composition, which avoids the inconveniences, and retains the advantages of both.

The institutions now made in America will not wholly wear out for thousands of years. It is of the last importance, then, that they should begin right. If they set out wrong, they will never be able to return, unless it be by accident, to the right path. After having known the history of Europe, and of England in particular, it would be the height of folly to go back to the institutions of Woden and of Thor, as the Americans are advised to do. If they had been counselled to adopt a single monarchy at once, it would have been less mysterious.

Robertson, Hume, and Gibbon have given such admirable accounts of the feudal institutions and their consequences, that it would have been, perhaps, more discreet to have referred to them, without saying any thing more upon the subject. To collect together the legislation of the Indians would take up much room, but would be well worth the pains. The sovereignty is in the nation, it is true, but the three powers are strong in every tribe; and their royal and aristocratical dignities are much more generally hereditary, from the popular partiality to particular families, and the superstitious opinion that such are favorites of the God of War, than late writers upon this subject have allowed.

Grosvenor Square, January 1, 1787.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

Three writers in Europe of great abilities, reputation, and learning, M. Turgot, the Abbé de Mably, and Dr. Price, have turned their attention to the constitutions of government in the United States of America, and have written and published their criticisms and advice. They all had the most amiable characters, and unquestionably the purest intentions. They all had experience in public affairs, and ample information respecting the nature of man, the necessities of society, and the science of government.

There are in the productions of all of them, among many excellent things, some sentiments, however, that it will be difficult to reconcile to reason, experience, the constitution of human nature, or to the uniform testimony of the greatest statesmen, legislators, and philosophers of all enlightened nations, ancient and modern.

M. Turgot, in his letter to Dr. Price, confesses, “that he is not satisfied with the constitutions which have hitherto been formed for the different states of America.” He observes, “that by most of them the customs of England are imitated, without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavor to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens, and as if establishing different orders of men was not a source of divisions and disputes.”

There has been, from the beginning of the revolution in America, a party in every state, who have entertained sentiments similar to these of M. Turgot. Two or three of them have established governments upon his principle; and, by advices from Boston, certain committees of counties have been held, and other conventions proposed in the Massachusetts, with the express purpose of deposing the governor and senate as useless and expensive branches of the constitution;* and as it is probable that the publication of M. Turgot’s opinion has contributed to excite such discontents among the people, it becomes necessary to examine it, and, if it can be shown to be an error, whatever veneration the Americans very justly entertain for his memory, it is to be hoped they will not be misled by his authority.

M. Turgot is offended, because the customs of England are imitated in most of the new constitutions in America, without any particular motive. But, if we suppose English customs to be neither good nor evil in themselves, and merely indifferent; and the people, by their birth, education, and habits, were familiarly attached to them; would not this be a motive particular enough for their preservation, rather than to endanger the public tranquillity, or unanimity, by renouncing them? If those customs were wise, just, and good, and calculated to secure the liberty, property, and safety of the people, as well, or better, than any other institutions, ancient or modern, would M. Turgot have advised the nation to reject them, merely because it was at that time justly incensed against the English government? What English customs has it retained which may with any propriety be called evil? M. Turgot has instanced only one, namely,—“that a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, have been established, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king.” It was not so much because the legislature in England consisted of three branches, that such a division of power was adopted by the states, as because their own assemblies had ever been so constituted. It was not so much from attachment by habit to such a plan of power that it was continued, as from conviction that it was founded in nature and reason.

M. Turgot seems to be of a different opinion, and is for “collecting all authority into one centre, the nation.” It is easily understood how all authority may be collected into “one centre” in a despot or monarch; but how it can be done when the centre is to be the nation, is more difficult to comprehend. Before we attempt to discuss the notions of an author, we should be careful to ascertain his meaning. It will not be easy, after the most anxious research, to discover the true sense of this extraordinary passage. If, after the pains of “collecting all authority into one centre,” that centre is to be the nation, we shall remain exactly where we began, and no collection of authority at all will be made. The nation will be the authority, and the authority the nation. The centre will be the circle, and the circle the centre. When a number of men, women, and children, are simply congregated together, there is no political authority among them; nor any natural authority, but that of parents over their children. To leave the women and children out of the question for the present, the men will all be equal, free, and independent of each other. Not one will have any authority over any other. The first “collection” of authority must be an unanimous agreement to form themselves into a nation, people, community, or body politic, and to be governed by the majority of suffrages or voices. But even in this case, although the authority is collected into one centre, that centre is no longer the nation, but the majority of the nation. Did M. Turgot mean that the people of Virginia, for example, half a million of souls scattered over a territory of two hundred leagues square, should stop here, and have no other authority by which to make or execute a law, or judge a cause, but by a vote of the whole people, and the decision of a majority! Where is the plain large enough to hold them; and what are the means, and how long would be the time, necessary to assemble them together?

A simple and perfect democracy never yet existed among men. If a village of half a mile square, and one hundred families, is capable of exercising all the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, in public assemblies of the whole, by unanimous votes, or by majorities, it is more than has ever yet been proved in theory or experience. In such a democracy, for the most part, the moderator would be king, the town-clerk legislator and judge, and the constable sheriff; and, upon more important occasions, committees would be only the counsellors of both the former, and commanders of the latter.

Shall we suppose, then, that M. Turgot intended that an assembly of representatives should be chosen by the nation, and vested with all the powers of government; and that this assembly should be the centre in which all the authority was to be collected, and should be virtually deemed the nation? After long reflection, I have not been able to discover any other sense in his words, and this was probably his real meaning. To examine this system in detail may be thought as trifling an occupation as the labored reasonings of Sidney and Locke, to show the absurdity of Filmer’s superstitious notions, appeared to Mr. Hume to be in his enlightened day. Yet the mistakes of great men, and even the absurdities of fools, when they countenance the prejudices of numbers of people, especially in a young country and under new governments, cannot be too fully confuted. I shall not then esteem my time misspent, in placing this idea of M. Turgot in all its lights; in considering the consequences of it; and in collecting a variety of authorities against it.

CHAPTER I.

OF MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICS.

SAN MARINO.

“A society of gods would govern themselves democratically,” says the eloquent philosopher of Geneva; who, however, would have agreed, that his “gods” must not have been the classical deities; since he knew from the highest authority, the poets, who had their information from those divinities, the Muses, that all the terrors of the nod, the arm, and the thunderbolts of Jupiter, with all the energy of his undisputed monarchy, were insufficient to hold them in order. As it is impossible to know what would have been his definition of the gods, we may quietly pursue our inquiry, whether it is practicable to govern men in this way. It would be very surprising if, among all the nations that have existed, not one has discovered a secret of so much importance. It is not necessary for us to prove that no such government has existed; it is incumbent on him who shall embrace the opinion of M. Turgot, to name the age, the country, and the people in which such an experiment has been tried. It might be easier to determine the question concerning the practicability or impracticability, the utility or inutility of a simple democracy, if we could find a number of examples of it. From the frightful pictures of a democratical city, drawn by the masterly pencils of ancient philosophers and historians, it may be conjectured that such governments existed in Greece and Italy, at least for short spaces of time; but no particular history of any one of them is come down to us; nor are we able to procure any more satisfaction to our curiosity from modern history. If such a phenomenon is at this time to be seen in the world, it is probably in some of those states which have the name of democracies, or at least in such as have preserved some share in the government to the people. Let us travel to some of those countries and examine their laws.

The republic of San Marino, in Italy, is sometimes quoted as an instance; and, therefore, it is of some importance to examine, 1. Whether, in fact, this is a simple democracy; and, 2. Whether, if it were such, it is not owing to particular circumstances, which do not belong to any other people, and prove it to be improper for any other, especially the United States of America, to attempt to imitate it.

The republic of San Marino, as Mr. Addison informs us, stands on the top of a very high and craggy mountain, generally hid among the clouds, and sometimes under snow, even when the weather is clear and warm in all the country about it.

This mountain,1 and a few hillocks that lie scattered about the bottom of it, form the whole circuit of the dominion. They have what they call three castles, three convents, and five churches, and reckon about five thousand souls in their community.

St. Marino was its founder, a Dalmatian by birth, and by trade a mason. He was employed about thirteen hundred years ago in the reparation of Rimini, and after he had finished his work, retired to this solitary mountain, as very proper for the life of a hermit, which he led in the greatest austerities of religion. He had not been long here before he wrought a reputed miracle, which, joined with his extraordinary sanctity, gained him so great an esteem, that the princes of the country made him a present of the mountain, to dispose of it at his discretion. His reputation quickly peopled it, and gave rise to the republic which calls itself after his name. The best of its churches is dedicated to the saint, and holds his ashes. His statue stands over the high altar, with the figure of a mountain crowned with three castles in his hands, which is likewise the arms of the commonwealth. The citizens attribute to his protection the long duration of the state, and look on him as the greatest saint, next to the blessed Virgin. In their statute-book is a law against such as speak disrespectfully of him, who are to be punished in the same manner as those convicted of blasphemy. This petty republic has lasted thirteen hundred years, while all the other states of Italy have several times changed masters and forms of government.2 Their whole history consists in two purchases of a neighboring prince, and two wars, in which they assisted the pope against a lord of Rimini.

They would probably sell their liberty as dear as they could to any that attacked them;1 for there is but one road by which to climb up to them. All that are capable of bearing arms are exercised, and ready at a moment’s call.

The sovereign power of the republic was lodged originally in what they call the arengo, a great council, in which every house had its representative; but, because they found too much confusion in such a multitude of statesmen, they devolved their whole authority into the hands of the council of sixty. The arengo, however, is still called together in cases of extraordinary importance; and if, after due summons, any member absents himself, he is to be fined. In the ordinary course of government, the council of sixty, which, notwithstanding the name, consists but of forty persons, has in its hands the administration of affairs, and is made up, half out of the noble families, and half out of the plebeian.2 They decide all by balloting, are not admitted until five-and-twenty years old, and choose the officers of the commonwealth.

No sentence can stand that is not confirmed by two thirds of this council; no son can be admitted into it during the life of his father; nor can two be in it of the same family; nor can any enter but by election. The chief officers of the commonwealth are the two capitaneos, who have such a power as the old Roman consuls had, but are chosen every six months. Some have been capitaneos six or seven times, though the office is never to be continued to the same persons twice successively. The third officer is the commissary, who judges in all civil and criminal matters; but because the many alliances, friendships, and intermarriages, as well as the personal feuds and animosities that happen among so small a people, might obstruct the course of justice, if one of their own number had the distribution of it, they have always a foreigner for this employ,1 whom they choose for three years, and maintain out of the public stock. He must be a doctor of law, and a man of known integrity.2 He is joined in commission with the capitaneos, and acts somewhat like the recorder of London under the lord mayor. The fourth man in the state is the physician. Another person, who makes no ordinary figure in the republic, is the schoolmaster. Few in the place but have some tincture of learning.3

“The people are esteemed very honest and rigorous in the execution of justice, and seem to enjoy more content and happiness among their rocks and snows, than the rest of the Italians do in the most fertile and inviting spots. Indeed, nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love of mankind for liberty, and of their aversion to arbitrary government, than such a savage mountain, covered with people, while the Campania of Rome is almost destitute of inhabitants.”

This is the account of San Marino. Yet, if all authority is here collected in one centre, that centre is not the nation. Although the original representation in the arengo was of houses, that is to say, of property, rather than of the persons of the citizens, and, consequently, was not very equal, since it excluded all personal property, as well as all who had no property; yet even such an agrarian, it seems, was not a sufficient check to licentiousness, and they found it necessary to institute a senate of forty men. Here, at least, commenced as complete an aristocracy as that of ancient Rome; or, to express it more exactly, as complete a separation of the aristocratical from the democratical part of the community. There are two remarkable circumstances in confirmation of this view; one is, that not only there are noble families in this illustrissima republica Sancti Marini, but that the constitution has limited the choice of the electors so far as to oblige them to choose one half the senate out of these nobles; the other is, that the names of the agents for the commonwealth, of the notary, and the witnesses to two instruments of purchases, made at seventy years’ distance from one another, one in 1100, the other in 1170, are the same. It is not credible that they were the same persons; they were probably sons or grandsons,—which is a strong proof of the attachment to aristocratical families in this little state, and of their desire to continue the same blood and the same names in public employments, as in the case of the Oranges, Fagels, De Lyndens, &c. in Holland, and innumerable other examples in all nations.1

Another remarkable circumstance is, the reluctance of the citizens to attend the assembly of the arengo, which obliged them to make a law, compelling themselves to attend, upon a penalty. This is a defect, and a misfortune natural to every democratical constitution, and to the popular part of every mixed government. A general or too common disinclination to attend, leaves room for persons and parties more active to carry points, by faction and intrigue, which the majority, were all present, would not approve.

It is curious to see how many checks and limitations are contrived for this legislative assembly. Half nobles, half plebeians; all upwards of five-and-twenty years old; two thirds must agree; no son can sit with his father; never two of the same family.

The capitaneos have the executive, like the Roman consuls,1 and the commissary has the judicial. Here, again, are remarkable limitations; the latter must be a foreigner, and he is chosen for three years. This is to give some degree of stability to the judicial power, and to make it a real and powerful check upon both the executive and legislative.

We are not, indeed, told whether the council of forty are elected annually or for life.2 Mr. Addison may, from his well-known character, be supposed to have been more attentive to the grand and beautiful monuments of ancient arts of every kind which surrounded him in Italy, than to this rough hillock, although the form of government might have excited his curiosity, and the simplicity of manners his esteem; he has accordingly given a very imperfect sketch of its constitution and history. Yet enough appears to show incontestably that San Marino is by no means a perfect democracy. It is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as really as Sparta and Rome were, and as the Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland now are, in which the powers of the governor, senate, and assembly are more exactly ascertained and nicely balanced; but they are not more distinct than those of the capitaneos, council of forty, and the arengo are in San Marino.

Should it be argued, that a government like this, where the sovereignty resides in the whole body of the people, is a democracy; it may be answered, that the right of sovereignty in all nations is unalienable and indivisible, and does and can reside nowhere else; but, not to recur to a principle so general, the exercise, as well as the right of sovereignty, in Rome, resided in the people, but the government was not a democracy. In America, the right of sovereignty resides indisputably in the body of the people, and they have the whole property of land. There are no nobles or patricians; all are equal by law and by birth. The governors and senates, as well as representative assemblies, to whom the exercise of sovereignty is committed, are annually chosen. Governments more democratical never existed; they are vastly more so than that of San Marino. Yet the annual administration is divided into executive, legislative, and judicial powers; and the legislature itself is divided into monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical branches; and an equilibrium has been anxiously sought for in all their deliberations and actions, with infinitely more art, judgment, and skill, than appears in this little Italian commonwealth.

The liberty and the honesty of these people is not at all surprising. In so small a state, where every man personally knows every other, let the form of government be what it will, it is scarcely possible that any thing like tyranny or cruelty can take place. A king, or a decemvirate, intrusted with the government, would feel the censures of the people, and be constantly conscious of the facility of assembling the whole, and apprehensive of an exertion of their strength.

The poverty of this people appears, by the fine of one penny imposed upon absence from the arengo; and by the law that an ambassador should have a shilling a day. This, however, is a salary in proportion to the numbers of the people, as thirty guineas a day would be to an ambassador from the United States. It appears also probable, from the physician’s being obliged to keep a horse, that there is not a carriage nor another saddle-horse in the commonwealth.

A handful of poor people, living in the simplest manner, by hard labor, upon the produce of a few cows, sheep, goats, swine, poultry, and pigeons, on a piece of rocky, snowy ground, protected from every enemy by their situation, their superstition, and even by their poverty, having no commerce nor luxury, can be no example for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Vermont,1 in one of which there are possibly half a million of people, and in each of the others at least thirty thousand, scattered over a large territory.

Upon the whole, a stronger proof cannot be adduced of the necessity of different orders, and of an equilibrium between them, than this commonwealth of San Marino, where there are such strong symptoms of both in a society in which there appears the least occasion for them that can be imagined to take place in any conceivable situation.1

BISCAY.

In a research like this, after those people in Europe who have had the skill, courage, and fortune to preserve a voice in the government, Biscay, in Spain, ought by no means to be omitted. While their neighbors have long since resigned all their pretensions into the hands of kings and priests, this extraordinary people have preserved their ancient language, genius, laws, government, and manners, without innovation, longer than any other nation of Europe. Of Celtic extraction, they once inhabited some of the finest parts of the ancient Bœtica; but their love of liberty, and unconquerable aversion to foreign servitude, made them retire, when invaded and overpowered in their ancient seats, into these mountainous countries, called by the ancients Cantabria. They were governed by counts, sent them by the kings of Oviedo and Leon, until 859, when, finding themselves without a chief, because Zeno, who commanded them, was made prisoner, they rose and took arms to resist Ordogno, son of Alfonsus III., whose domination was too severe for them. They chose for their chief one of the blood royal of Scotland, by the mother’s side, and son-in-law of Zeno, their governor, who, having overcome Ordogno, in 870, was elected their lord; and his posterity, who bore afterwards the name of Haro, succeeded him, from father to son, until the king, Don Pedro the Cruel, having put to death those who were in possession of the lordship, reduced them to make a treaty by which they united their country, under the title of a lordship, with Castile. By this convention the King of Spain is now Lord of Biscay. It is a republic; and one of the privileges the people have most insisted on, is not to have a king. Another was, that every new lord, at his accession, should come into the country in person, with one of his legs bare, and take an oath to preserve the privileges of the lordship. The present king of Spain is the first who has been complimented with their consent, that the oath should be administered at Madrid, though the other humiliating and indecent ceremony has been long laid aside.

Their solicitude for defence has surrounded with walls all the towns in the district. These are one-and-twenty in number; the principal of which are, Orduña, Laredo, Portugalete, Durango, Bilbao, and St. Andero. Biscay is divided into nine merindades, a sort of jurisdiction like a bailiwick, besides the four cities on the coast. The capital is Bilbao. The whole is a collection of very high and very steep mountains, rugged and rocky to such a degree, that a company of men posted on one of them might defend itself as long as it could subsist, by rolling rocks on the enemy. This natural formation of the country, which has rendered the march of armies impracticable, and the daring spirit of the inhabitants, have preserved their liberty.

Active, vigilant, generous, brave, hardy, inclined to war and navigation, they have enjoyed, for two thousand years, the reputation of being the best soldiers and sailors in Spain, and even the best courtiers, many of them having, by their wit and manners, raised themselves into offices of consequence under the court of Madrid. Their valuable qualities have recommended them to the esteem of the kings of Spain, who have hitherto left them in possession of those great immunities of which they are so jealous. In 1632, indeed, the court laid a duty upon salt; the inhabitants of Bilbao rose and massacred all the officers appointed to collect it, and all the officers of the grand admiral. Three thousand troops were sent to punish them for rebellion; these they fought, and totally defeated, driving most of them into the sea, which discouraged the court from pursuing their plan of taxation. Since that time the king has had no officer of any kind in the lordship, except his corregidor.

Many writers ascribe their flourishing commerce to their situation; but, as this is no better than that of Ferrol or Corunna, that advantage is more probably due to their liberty. In riding through this little territory, one would fancy himself in Connecticut; instead of miserable huts built of mud and covered with straw, the country appears full of large and commodious houses and barns of the farmer; the lands are well cultivated; and there is a wealthy, happy yeomanry. The roads, so dangerous and impassable in most other parts of Spain, are here very good, having been made at a vast expense of labor.

Although the government is called a democracy, we cannot here find all authority collected into one centre; there are, on the contrary, as many distinct governments as there are cities and merindades. The general government has two orders at least; the lord or governor, and the biennial parliament. Each of the thirteen subordinate divisions has its organized government, with its chief magistrate at the head of it. We may judge of the form of all of them by that of the metropolis, which calls itself, in all its laws, the noble and illustrious republic of Bilbao. This city has its alcalde, who is both governor and chief justice, its twelve regidores or counsellors, attorney-general, &c., and by all these, assembled in the consistorial palace under the titles of conçejo, justicia, y regimiento, the laws are made in the name of the Lord of Biscay, and confirmed by him.

These officers, it is true, are elected by the citizens, but they must by law be elected, as well as the deputies to the biennial parliament or junta general, out of a few noble families, unstained, both by the side of father and mother, by any mixture with Moors, Jews, new converts, penitentiaries of the inquisition, &c. They must be natives and residents, worth a thousand ducats, and must have no concern in commerce, manufactures, or trades; and, by a fundamental agreement among all the merindades, all their deputies to the junta general, and all their regidores, syndics, secretaries, and treasurers, must be nobles, at least knights, and such as never exercised any mechanical trades, themselves or their fathers. Thus we see the people themselves have established by law a contracted aristocracy, under the appearance of a liberal democracy. Americans, beware!

Although we see here in the general government, and in that of every city and merindade, the three branches of power, of the one, the few, and the many; yet, if it were as democratical as it has been thought by some, we could by no means infer, from this instance of a little flock upon a few impracticable mountains, in a round form of ten leagues diameter, the utility or practicability of such a government in any other country.

The disposition to division, so apparent in all democratical governments, however tempered with aristocratical and monarchical powers, has shown itself in the breaking off from it of Guipuscoa and Alaba; and the only preservative of it from other divisions has been the fear of their neighbors. They always knew, that as soon as they should fall into factions, or attempt innovations, the court of Spain would interpose, and prescribe them a government not so much to their taste.

SWITZERLAND.

It is commonly said, that some of the cantons of Switzerland are democratical, and others aristocratical; and if these epithets are understood only to mean that one of these powers prevails in some of those republics, and the other in the rest, they are just enough; but there is neither a simple democracy, nor a simple aristocracy among them. The governments of these confederated states are very complicated, and, therefore, very difficult to be fully explained; yet the most superficial inquirer will find in all of them the clearest traces of a composition of all the three powers.

To begin with the cantons commonly reputed democratical.

DEMOCRATICAL CANTONS.

APPENZEL.

The canton of Appenzel consists of a series of valleys, scattered among inaccessible rocks and mountains, in all about eighteen miles square.1 The people are laborious and frugal, and have no commerce but in cattle, hides, butter, cheese, and a little linen made of their own flax. It has no walled towns, and only two or three open boroughs and a few small villages; it is, like New England, almost a continued village, covered with excellent houses of the yeomanry, built of wood, each of which has its territory of pasture-grounds, commonly ornamented with trees; neatness and convenience are studied without, and a remarkable cleanliness within. The principal part of the inhabitants have preserved the simplicity of the pastoral life. As there are not, at most, above fifty thousand souls, there cannot be more than ten thousand men capable of bearing arms. It is not at all surprising, among so much freedom, though among rocks and herds, to hear of literature, and men of letters who are an ornament to their country.

Nevertheless, this simple people, so small in number, in so narrow a territory, could not agree. After a violent contest,2 at the time of the Reformation, in which they were in danger of a civil war, they agreed, through the mediation of the other cantons, to divide the canton into two portions, the Outer and the Inner Appenzel, or Rhodes Exterior and Rhodes Interior. Each district has now its respective chief magistrate, court of justice, police, banneret, and deputy to the general diet, although the canton has but one vote, and consequently loses its voice if the two deputies are of different opinions. The canton is divided into no less than twelve communities; six of them called the Inner Appenzel, lying to the east; and six, the Outer, to the west. They have one general sovereign council, which is composed of one hundred and forty-four persons, twelve taken from each community.

The sovereignty resides in the general assembly, which, in the Interior Rhodes, meets every year at Appenzel, the last Sunday in April; but, in the Exterior Rhodes, it assembles alternately at Trogen and at Hundwyl.1 In the Interior Rhodes are the chiefs and officers, the Land-Amman, the tithing man, the governor, the treasurer, the captain of the country, the director of the buildings, the director of the churches, and the ensign. The Exterior Rhodes have ten officers, namely,—two Land-Ammans, two governors, two treasurers, two captains, and two ensigns. The Interior Rhodes is subdivided into six lesser ones, each of which has sixteen counsellors, among whom are always two chiefs. The grand council in the Interior Rhodes, as also the criminal jurisdiction, is composed of one hundred and twenty-eight persons, who assemble twice a year, eight days before the general assembly, and at as many other times as occasions require.2 Moreover, they have also the little council, called the weekly council, because it meets every week in the year. The Exterior Rhodes are now divided into nineteen communities; and the sovereignty of them consists in the double grand council of the country, called the old and new council, which assembles once a year, eight days after the assembly of the country, at Trogen or at Herisaw, and is composed of ninety and odd persons. Then follows the grand council, in which, besides the ten officers, the reigning chiefs of all the communities have seats, the directors of the buildings, the chancellor, and the sautier, which make thirty-five persons; the reigning Land-Amman presides. After this comes the little council from before the Sitter, which is held on the first Tuesday of each month at Trogen; the reigning Land-Amman is the president, to whom always come in aid, alternately, an officer, with a member of council from all the thirteen communities, the chancellor of the country, and the sautier, and it consists of twenty and odd persons. The little council from behind the Sitter is held under the presidency of the reigning Land-Amman, whenever occasion requires;3 it is held at Herisaw, Hundwyl, or Urnaeschen; at it assist the chancellor of the country and the sautier, with the counsellors of the six communities behind the Sitter, appointed for this service.1

Let me ask, if here are not different orders of men and balances in abundance? Such a handful of people, living by agriculture, in primitive simplicity, one would think might live very quietly, almost without any government at all; yet, instead of being capable of collecting all authority into one assembly, they seem to have been forcibly agitated by a mutual power of repulsion, which has divided them into two commonwealths, each of which has its monarchical power in a chief magistrate; its aristocratical power in two councils, one for legislation, and the other for execution; besides the two more popular assemblies. This is surely no simple democracy. Indeed, a simple democracy by representation is a contradiction in terms.2

UNDERWALD.

The canton of Underwald consists only of villages and boroughs, although it is twenty-five miles in length and seventeen in breadth.3 These dimensions, it seems, were too extensive to be governed by a legislation so imperfectly combined, and nature has taught and compelled them to separate into two divisions, the one above, and the other below, a certain large forest of oaks, which runs nearly in the middle of the country, from north to south. The inferior valley, below the forest, contains four communities; and the superior, above it, six. The principal or capital is Sarnen. The sovereign is the whole county, the sovereignty residing in the general assembly, where all the males of fifteen have entry and suffrage; but each valley apart has, with respect to its interior concerns, its Land-Amman, its officers of administration, and its public assembly, composed of fifty-eight senators, taken from the communities. As to affairs without, there is a general council, formed of all the officers of administration, and of fifty-eight senators chosen in the said councils of the two valleys. Besides this there are, for justice and police, the chamber of seven and the chamber of fifteen for the upper valley, and the chamber of eleven for the lower.

Here again are arrangements more complicated, and aristocratical preferences more decided, in order to counterpoise the democratical assembly, than any to be found in America, and the Land-Amman is as great a man in proportion as an American governor. Is this a simple democracy? Has this little clan of graziers been able to collect all authority into one centre? Are there not three assemblies here to moderate and balance each other? And are not the executive and judicial powers separated from the legislative? Although its constitution is not by any means so well digested as ten at least of those of the United States; and although it would never be found capable of holding together a great nation, is it not a mixed government as much as any in America?1

GLARUS.

The canton of Glarus is a mountainous country, of eight miles long and four wide, according to native authors, perhaps intending thereby German miles; but twenty-five miles in length and eighteen in breadth, according to some English accounts. The commerce of it is in cheese, butter, cattle, linen, and thread. Ten thousand cattle and four thousand sheep, pastured in summer upon the mountains, constitute their wealth.

The inhabitants live together in a general equality and most perfect harmony, even those of the different persuasions of catholics and protestants, who sometimes perform divine service in the same church, one after the other; and all the offices of state are indifferently administered by both parties, though the protestants are more in number, and superior both in industry and commerce. All the houses are built of wood, large and solid, those of the richest inhabitants differing only from those of the poorer, as they are larger.

The police is well-regulated here, as it is throughout Switzerland. Liberty does not degenerate into licentiousness. Liberty, independence, and an exemption from taxes, amply compensate for a want of the refinements of luxury. There are none so rich as to gain an ascendency by largesses. If they err in their counsels, it is an error of the judgment, and not of the heart. As there is no fear of invasion, and they have no conquests to make, their policy consists in maintaining their independence and preserving the public tranquillity. As the end of government is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, saving at the same time the stipulated rights of all, governments like these, where a large share of power is preserved by the people, deserve to be admired and imitated. It is in such governments that human nature appears in its dignity,—honest, brave, and generous.

Some writers are of opinion that Switzerland was originally peopled by a colony of Greeks. The same greatness of soul, the same spirit of independence, the same love of country, has animated both the ancients and the moderns to that determined heroism which prefers death to slavery. Their history is full of examples of victories obtained by small numbers of men over large armies. In 1388, the Austrians made an irruption into the territory of Glarus with an army of fifteen thousand men; but, instead of conquering the country as they expected, in attacking about four hundred men posted on the mountains at Naefels, they were broken by the stones rolled upon them from the summit; the Swiss, at this critical moment, rushed down upon them with such fury, as forced them to retire with an immense loss. Such will ever be the character of a people, who preserve so large a share to themselves in their legislature, while they temper their constitution at the same time with an executive power in a chief magistrate, and an aristocratical power in a wise senate.

The government here is by no means entirely democratical. It is true, that the sovereign is the whole country, and the sovereignty resides in the general assembly, where each male of sixteen, with his sword at his side, has his seat and vote. It is true that this assembly, which is annually held in an open plain, ratifies the laws, lays taxes, enters into alliances, declares war, and makes peace.

But it has a first magistrate in a Land-Amman, who is the chief of the republic, and is chosen alternately from among the protestants and from among the catholics.1 The protestant remains three years in office; the catholic two. The manner of his appointment is a mixture of election and lot. The people choose five candidates, who draw lots for the office.2 The other great officers of state are appointed in the same manner.

There is a council called a senate, composed of the Land-Amman, a stadtholder, and sixty senators, forty-five protestants and fifteen catholics, all taken from fifteen tagwen or corvees, into which the three principal quarters or partitions of the country are subdivided for its more convenient government. In this senate, called the council of regency, the executive power resides.3 Each tagwen or corvee furnishes four senators; besides the borough of Glarus, which furnishes six.4

Instead of a simple democracy, it is a mixed government, in which the monarchical power in the Land-Amman, stadtholder, or proconsul, the aristocratical order in the senate, and the democratical in the general assembly, are distinctly marked. It is, however, but imperfectly balanced; so much of the executive power in an aristocratical assembly would be dangerous in the highest degree in a large state and among a rich people. If this canton could extend its dominion, or greatly multiply its numbers, it would soon find the necessity of giving the executive power to the Land-Amman, in order to defend the people against the senate; for the senate, although it is always the reservoir of wisdom, is eternally the very focus of ambition.

ZUG.

The canton of Zug is small, but rich, and divided into mountains and plains. The sovereign is the city of Zug, and part of the country. It is divided into five quarters, which possess the sovereignty; the city of Zug is two, and the country three, Menzingen, Aegeri, and Baar. The government is very complicated, and the sovereignty resides in the general assembly of the five quarters, where each male person of sixteen years of age has admittance and a voice.1 It assembles annually to enact laws and choose magistrates.2 Thus these five quarters make a body of a democratical republic, which commands the rest of the canton. They furnish alternately the Land-Amman, the head or chief of the state, who must always reside at Zug, with the regency of the country, although he is chosen by the suffrages of all the quarters collectively. He continues three years in office, when taken from the district of Zug, and but two when chosen from any of the others.

The council of regency, to whom the general administration of affairs is intrusted, is composed of forty senators, thirteen from the city, and twenty-seven from the country.3

The city, moreover, has its chief, its council, and its officers apart, and every one of the other quarters has the same.

It is a total misapplication of words to call this government a simple democracy; for, although the people are accounted for something, and indeed for more than in most other free governments; in other words, although it is a free republic, it is rather a confederation of four or five republics, each of which has its monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical branches, than a simple democracy. The confederation, too, has its three branches; the general assembly, the regency of senators, and the Land-Amman; being different orders, tempering each other, as really as the house, council, and governor, in any of the United States of America.

URI.

The canton of Uri, the place of the birth and residence of William Tell, shook off the yoke of Austria in 1308, and, with Schwitz and Underwald, laid the foundation of the perpetual alliance of the cantons, in 1315. The canton consists only of villages and little towns or bourgades, and the whole is divided into ten genossamen, or inferior communities. It has no city. Altdorf, where the general assemblies are held, and the Land-Amman and regency reside, is the principal village.

The Land-Amman and the principal magistrates are elected in the general assembly, in which all the male persons of sixteen1 years of age have a right to a seat and a vote.

The senate, or council of regency, in whom is vested the executive power, is composed of sixty members, taken equally from each genossamen, though they reside at the capital borough. From this council are taken all the necessary officers.2

There are two other councils; one called the chamber of seven, and the other the chamber of fifteen, for the management of lesser affairs.

The valley of Urseren, three leagues in length and one in breadth, marches under the banners of Uri; but it is but an ally, connected by treaty in 1410. It has its proper Land-Amman and council, and has also a bailiwick subject to it.

The village of Gersaw is a league in breadth, and two in length; there are about a thousand inhabitants. This is the smallest republic in Europe; it has, however, its Land-Amman, its council of regency, and its general assembly of burgesses, its courts of justice and militia, although it is said there is not a single horse in the whole empire. Such a diminutive republic, in an obscure corner, and unknown, is interesting to Americans, not only because every spot of earth on which civil liberty flourishes deserves their esteem; but, particularly, because it shows the impossibility of erecting even the smallest government, among the poorest people, without different orders, councils, and balances.

SCHWITZ.

The canton of Schwitz has the honor of giving the name to the whole confederation, because the first battle for independency was fought there; yet it consists only of villages divided into six quarters, the first of which is Schwitz, where the ordinary regency of the country resides. The sovereign is the whole country; that is to say, the sovereignty resides in the general assembly of the country, where all the males of sixteen years of age have a right of entry and suffrage.

Yet they have their Land-Amman,1 and their ordinary regency, at which the Land-Amman presides, composed of sixty counsellors, taken equally2 from the six districts. All the necessary officers are taken from this council.

There are, besides, the secret chamber, the chamber of seven, and the chamber of nine, for finance, justice, and police.

THE GRISONS.

In the republic of the three leagues of the Grisons, the sovereign is all the people of a great part of the ancient Rhetia. This is called a democratical republic of three leagues. 1. The league of the Grisons. 2. The league Caddee.3 3. The league of Ten Jurisdictions. These three are united by the perpetual confederation of 1472, which has been several times renewed. The government resides sovereignly in the communities, where every thing is decided by the plurality of voices. These elect and instruct their deputies for the general diet, which is held once a year. Each league elects also its chief or president, who presides at the diets, each one in his league. The general diet assembles one year at Ilanz, in the league of the Grisons; one year at Coire, in the league Caddee; and one year at Davos, in the league of Ten Jurisdictions. There is another ordinary assembly, composed of chiefs, and of three deputies from each league, which is held at Coire, in the month of January. Besides these regular assemblies, they hold congresses whenever the necessities of the state require them; sometimes of the chiefs alone; sometimes of certain deputies from each league, according to the importance of the case. These assemblies are held at Coire. The three leagues form but one body in general affairs; and, although one league has more deputies than another, they count the voices without distinction of leagues.1 They conduct separately their particular affairs. Their country is thirty-five leagues in length and thirty in breadth.

Even in this happy country, where there is more equality than in almost any other, there are noble families, who, although they live like their neighbors by the cultivation of the earth, and think it no disgrace, are very proud of the immense antiquity of their descent, and boast of it, and value themselves upon it as much as Julius Cæsar did, who was descended from a goddess.2

THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.

There are in Friesland and Overyssell, and perhaps in the city of Dort, certain remnants of democratical powers, the fragments of an ancient edifice, which may possibly be reërected; but as there is nothing which favors M. Turgot’s idea, I shall pass over this country for the present.

CHAPTER II.

ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLICS.

THE CANTON OF BERN.

It is scarcely possible to believe that M. Turgot, by collecting all authority into one centre, could have intended an aristocratical assembly. He must have meant, however, a simple form of government of some kind or other; and there are but three kinds of simple forms, democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. As we have gone through most, if not all, the governments in Europe in which the people have any share, it will throw much light upon our subject if we proceed to the aristocracies and oligarchies; for we shall find all these under a necessity of establishing orders, checks, and balances, as much as the democracies. As the people have been always necessitated to establish monarchical and aristocratical powers, to check themselves from rushing into anarchy, so have aristocratical bodies ever been obliged to contrive a number of divisions of their powers to check themselves from running into oligarchy.

The canton of Bern has no other sovereign than the single city of Bern. The sovereignty resides in the grand council, which has the legislative power and the power of making peace, war, and alliances, and is composed of two hundred counsellors and ninety-nine assessors, the election of whom is made, by the seizeniers and the senate, from the citizens, from whom they are supposed virtually to derive their power; but a general assembly of the citizens is never called together, on any occasion, or for any purpose, not even to lay taxes, nor to make alliances or war. To be eligible into the grand council, one must be a citizen of Bern, member of one of the societies or tribes, and at least in the thirtieth year of his age.

The executive power is delegated by the grand council to the senate or little council, which is composed of twenty-seven persons, including the two avoyers or chiefs of the republic, the two treasurers of the German country and of the Pays de Vaud, and the four bannerets or commanders of the militia, taken from the first four tribes, for the four districts of the city.1 Vacancies in this senate are filled up by a complicated mixture of ballot and lot; twenty-six balls, three of which are gold, are drawn out of a box by the several senators; those who draw the golden ones nominate three electors out of the little council; in the same manner, seven members are designated from the grand council, who nominate seven electors from their body; these ten nominate ten candidates to be voted for in the grand council; the four of these who have the most votes, draw each of them a ball out of a box, which has in it two of gold and two of silver; the two who draw the gold are voted for in the grand council, and he who has the most votes is chosen, provided he be married, and has been ten years in the grand council.

Vacancies in the grand council are filled up at certain periods of about ten years, and two new members are appointed by each avoyer, one by each seizenier and senator, and two or three others by other officers of state; if there are more vacancies, they are filled by the election of the seizeniers and senators.

The seizeniers, who have this elective power, are drawn by lot from among those members of the grand council who have held the office of bailiffs, and who have finished the term of their administration. The bannerets and seizeniers have, by the constitution, an authority, for three days in Easter, resembling that of the censors in ancient Rome, and may deprive any member of either council of his place; but, as their sentence must be confirmed by the great council, they never exercise their power. There are six noble families at Bern, who enjoy the precedence of all the other senators although more ancient members, and have rank immediately after the bannerets.

The principal magistrates are, the two avoyers, who hold their offices for life; the two treasurers, who continue for six years; and the four bannerets, who remain only four. The avoyers officiate alternately a year; and the reigning avoyer, although he presides in council, in an elevated seat under a canopy, and has the public seal before him, has no vote, except in cases of equal divisions, and never gives his opinion unless it is required. The avoyer, out of office, is the first senator and president of the secret council.

The secret council is composed of the avoyer out of office, the four bannerets, the two treasurers, and two other secret counsellors taken from the senate. In this body all affairs that require secrecy,—and some of these are of great importance,—are debated and determined.

The grand council assembles and deliberates by its own authority at stated times, and superintends all affairs, although the most important are delegated generally to the senate. The whole administration is celebrated for its uncommon moderation, precision, and despatch.1

There are seventy-two bailiwicks, distributed in four classes, comprehending a country of sixty leagues in length, or a third part of all Switzerland, subject to this city. The bailiffs are appointed by lot from the grand council. They were formerly chosen, but this method, rendering all the members dependent upon a few, who had the most influence, had too strong a tendency to an oligarchy. The bailiwicks are the most profitable places, and are filled from the grand council. The bailiffs live in much splendor, and are able to lay up two or three thousand pounds sterling a year, besides discharging all their expenses. They represent the sovereign authority, put the laws in execution, collect the revenues, and act as judges in civil and criminal causes. An appeal lies to Bern, in civil causes to the courts of justice, and in criminal to the senate; but as the judges on appeal are persons who either have been or expect to be bailiffs, there is great reason to be apprehensive of partiality.

There is no standing army, but every male of sixteen is enrolled in the militia, and obliged to provide himself a uniform, a musket, powder, and ball; and no peasant is allowed to marry without producing his arms and uniform. The arms are inspected every year, and the men exercised. There are arsenals of arms at Bern, and in every bailiwick, sufficient for the militia of the district, and a sum of money for three months’ pay. The dragoons are chosen from the substantial farmers, who are obliged to provide their own horses and accoutrements. There is a council of war, of which the avoyer out of place is president in peace; in war, a general is appointed to command all the forces of the state.

There is a political seminary for the youth, called the exterior state, which is a miniature of the whole government. The young men assemble and go through all the forms; they have their grand council, senate, avoyers, treasurers, bannerets, seizeniers, &c.; the post of avoyer is sought with great assiduity. They debate upon political subjects, and thus improve their talents by exercise, and become more capable of serving the public in future life.1

The nobility in this country are haughty, and much averse to mixing in company, or any familiar conversation with the common people; the commons are taught to believe the nobles superiors, whose right it is to rule; and they believe their teachers, and are very willing to be governed.

FRIBOURG.

The canton of Fribourg is aristocratical, not having more than forty families who can have any part in the government. These all live very nobly; that is to say, without commerce, manufactures, or trades.

The sovereignty and legislative authority reside in the council of two hundred persons, composed of the two avoyers, who are for life; twenty-two counsellors; four bannerets; sixty other counsellors, from whom the twenty-four who compose the senate, in which resides the executive power, are taken when they are to be replaced; and one hundred and twelve others, whom they call the grand senate of two hundred.

The two avoyers are elected by the plurality of suffrages of all the citizens. They hold their offices for life, and preside alternately a year. The twenty-two counsellors are also for life, and are designated by lot, as well as the bannerets, whose charges continue but three years. The sixty also are nominated by lot, and are drawn from the hundred and twelve, called the two hundred. These last come forward in the state by the presentation and nomination of the secret chamber, composed of twenty-four, besides the bannerets, who are the chiefs of it. This chamber, which is sovereign, besides the right of nomination to the state, has alone that of correction and of proposing regulations.

The two avoyers, the twenty-two counsellors, and the four bannerets, form the little senate, which hears and determines civil causes, and assembles every day.

The affairs of state are carried before the grand senate of two hundred.

The tribes are corporations of tradesmen, who have no part in government, and who assemble in the abbays, only for the affairs of their occupations, and all their statutes are approved or rejected by the senate.

There are thirty-one bailiwicks subject to this canton. The method of determining the members of the little senate and secret council is another check. The names of the candidates in nomination are placed in a box, containing as many partitions as there are persons; the ballots are thrown into this box by the electors, without knowing how the names are placed; and the candidate whose name occupies the division, which receives by accident the most ballots, has the lot. This is to guard against the influence of families; for, among those few families from which alone any candidate can be taken, some have more influence than others. The canton contains sixty-six thousand souls. Its land produces good pasture, some corn, and little wine; it has no commerce, and not much literature. It has more troops in foreign service than any other canton in proportion. As the rivers and lakes have a direct communication with the sea, they might have a valuable commerce; but as none of the persons concerned in government can be merchants, no commerce can ever be in fashion, except that of their noble blood to foreign sovereigns. It is no doubt much to the honor of their fidelity and valor to be chosen so generally to be the lifeguards of princes; but whether they can vindicate such a traffic upon principles of justice, humanity, or policy, from the imputation of a more mercenary spirit than that of ordinary commerce, is for them to consider. The conservation of the oligarchy, however, is entirely owing to this custom; for a youthful, fiery nobility, at home in idleness, would necessarily become ambitious of popularity, and either procure, by intrigues and insurrections, a greater share of importance to the people, or set up one of the greatest genius and enterprise among them for a despot. In foreign service they exhaust their restless years, and return, after the death of their fathers, fatigued with dissipation, to enjoy their honors and estates; to support those laws which are so partial to their wishes; and to reassume the manly simplicity of manners of their native country.

SOLEURE.

The canton of Soleure, seven leagues in breadth and twelve in length, contains fifty thousand souls, and the patrician families are in quiet possession of all the public offices. The sovereign is the city of Soleure; and the sovereignty resides in the grand council, consisting of two avoyers, who preside alternately, and whose election depends upon the council, and all the citizens in general, who are divided into eleven tribes; of twenty-three of the thirty-three senators taken from the tribes, each of which furnishes three; and of sixty-six members who represent the citizens, and are taken also from the tribes in equal numbers, namely, six from each tribe.1

The senate is composed of the two avoyers, and the thirty-three senators taken from the tribes, making thirty-five in all, who are called the little council, conduct the affairs of state, and judge causes, civil and criminal. The two councils make together the number of one hundred, without computing the avoyer in office, who presides in chief. This body, named the grand council, makes laws and statutes; treats of alliances, peace, and war; decides appeals in the last resort; elects the treasurer, the fourth in rank in the estate, and the exterior bailiffs. The thirty-three senators consist of eleven alt-raths or senior counsellors, and twenty-two junk-raths or juniors. Upon the removal, by death, of one of the alt-raths, the eldest of the junkraths succeeds him, and this vacancy is filled out of the great council, by election of the eleven alt-raths. From among the alt-raths, the two avoyers, the banneret, and the treasurer, the four principal magistrates of the commonwealth, are chosen; and on the death of an avoyer, the banneret succeeds to his place, after having gone through the formality of a nomination by the general assembly of citizens. Vacancies in the grand council are supplied by the alt-raths, from the same tribe to which the deceased member belonged. There is an annual meeting of the whole body of the citizens, in which the avoyers and banneret are confirmed in their places; the senior and junior counsellors, at the same time, mutually confirm each other.1 All these confirmations are matters of course, and mere form. All other public employments are disposed of by the senate.

The revenues of the public and salaries of officers are very considerable, and afford the few distinguished families very profitable emoluments. The grand sautier is annually elected by all the citizens. There are several tribunals and chambers,—the secret council, formed of the two avoyers, the banneret, the treasurer, the most ancient of the senators of the first order, or alt-raths, the secretary of state, and attorney-general; the council of war; the council of justice, which is composed of six members of the little council, and eleven members of the grand council, one of whom is furnished by each tribe; the grand sautier presides in it, instead of the avoyer in office; the consistory and the chamber of orphans. This canton has a large country subject to it, comprehending eleven bailiwicks.

The soil is extremely fertile; yet there is a want of hands for agriculture, and population decreases; although commodiously situated for commerce, they have none. These circumstances are enough to show the blessings of a government by a few noble families. They show another thing, still more curious, to wit,—the consequence of mixing the nobles and commons together. The latter have been led to reduce their own constitutional share in the government to a mere form, and complaisantly to resign all the substance into the hands of those whom they think their natural superiors; and this will eternally happen, sooner or later, in every country in any degree considerable for extent, numbers, or wealth, where the whole legislative and executive power are in one assembly, or even in two, if they have not a third power to balance them.

Let us by no means omit, that there is a grand arsenal at Soleure, as there is at Bern, well stored with arms, in proportion to the number of inhabitants in the canton, and ornamented with the trophies of the valor of their ancestors.

Nor should it be forgotten, that a defensive alliance has subsisted between France and several of these cantons for more than a century, to the great advantage of both. These republicans have found in that monarchy a steady, faithful, and generous friend. In 1777, the alliance was renewed in this city of Soleure, where the French ambassador resides, and extended to all the cantons. In the former treaty an article was inserted, that, if any dissensions should arise between the cantons, his majesty should, at the request of one of the parties, interpose his mediation, by all gentle means, to bring about a reconciliation; but if these should fail, he should compel the aggressor to fulfil the treaties between the cantons and their allies. As this article was manifestly incompatible with that independence which republicans ought to value above all things, it has been wisely omitted in the new treaty; and it would have become the dignity of the Swiss character to have renounced equally those pensions, which are called Argents de Paix et d’Alliance, as inconsistent, not only with a republican spirit, but with that equality which ought to be the foundation of an alliance.

LUCERNE.

The canton of Lucerne comprehends a country of sixteen leagues long and eight wide, containing fifteen bailiwicks, besides several cities, abbeys, monasteries, signories, &c. The inhabitants are almost wholly engaged in agriculture and the exportation of their produce. Their commerce might be greatly augmented, as the river Reuss issues from the lake, passes through the town, and falls into the Rhine.

The city contains less than three thousand souls, has no manufactures, little trade, and no encouragement for learning; yet the sovereign is this single city, and the sovereignty resides in the little and great council, having for chiefs two avoyers, who are alternately regents. There are five hundred citizens in the town, from whom a council of one hundred are chosen, who are nominally the sovereignty; out of this body are formed the two divisions, the little council, senate, or council of state, consisting of thirty-six members, divided into two equal parts, of eighteen each, one of which makes choice of the other every half year. The whole power is actually exercised by this body, the two divisions of which administer the government by turns. They are subject to no control; are neither confirmed by the sovereign council nor by the citizens; the division which retires confirming that which comes in. As the vacancies in the senate are filled up by themselves, all power is in possession of a few patrician families. The son succeeds the father, and the brother his brother.

The grand council consists of sixty-four persons, taken from the citizens, who are said to have their privileges; but it is hard to guess what they are, as the elections are made by the little and great council conjointly.1

The administration, the police, the finances, and the whole executive power is in the senate, which is constantly sitting.

The grand council is assembled only upon particular occasions, for the purpose of legislation. The senate has cognizance of criminal causes; but in capital cases, the grand council is convoked to pronounce sentence; in civil causes an appeal lies from the senate to the grand council; but these appeals can be but mere forms, the same senators being in both courts.

As the senate constitutes above a third of the grand council, chooses its own members, confers all employments, has the nomination to ecclesiastical benefices, and two thirds of the revenues of the canton belonging to the clergy, its influence must be uncontrollable.1

The two avoyers are chosen from the senate by the council of one hundred, and are confirmed annually. The relations of the candidates are excluded from voting; but all such checks against influence and family connections in an oligarchy are futile, as all laws are ciphers. There are also certain chambers of justice and police.

In some few instances, such as declaring war and making peace, forming alliances, or imposing taxes, the citizens must be assembled and give their consent, which is one check upon the power of the nobles.

ZURICH.

The canton of Zurich contains one hundred and fifty thousand souls, upon an area of forty miles by thirty, and abounds in corn, wine, and all the ordinary productions of excellent pastures. Literature has been encouraged, and has constantly flourished in this country, from the time of Zuinglius to that of Gesner and Lavater. The inhabitants are industrious, their manufactures considerable, and their commerce extensive.

In the city is a public granary, an admirable resource against scarcity; and a magnificent arsenal, well filled with cannon, arms, and ammunition, particularly muskets for thirty thousand men, the armor of the old Swiss warriors, and the bow and arrow with which William Tell shot the apple on the head of his son:
- “Who with the generous rustics sate,
- On Uri’s rocks, in close divan,
- And winged that arrow, sure as fate,
- Which ascertained the sacred rights of man.”
The sovereign is the city of Zurich. The sovereignty resides in the two burgomasters, in the little council, composed of forty-eight members, and the grand council, composed of one hundred and sixty-two members; all taken from thirteen tribes, one of which is of the nobles, and the other twelve of citizens.

Although there are twelve thousand souls in the capital, and one hundred and fifty in the canton, there are not more than two thousand citizens. In early times, when the city had no territory round it, or a small one, the citizens were in possession of the government; when they afterwards made additions, by conquest or purchase, they still obstinately held this power, and excluded all their new subjects. It is a hundred and fifty years since a new citizen has been admitted; besides electing all the magistrates, and holding all offices, they have maintained a monopoly of commerce, and excluded all strangers, and even subjects of the canton, from conducting any in the town. Such are commons, as well as nobles and princes, whenever they have power unchecked in their hands!1

There is, even in this commercial republic, a tribe of nobles, who consider trade as a humiliation.

The legislative authority is vested in the grand council of two hundred and twelve, including the senate.

The senate consists of twenty-four tribunes and four counsellors, chosen by the nobles; to these are added twenty, elected by the sovereign council, making in all, with the two burgomasters, fifty;2 half of them administer six months, and are then succeeded by the rest. The burgomasters are chosen annually by the sovereign council, and one of them is president of each division of the senate, which has the judicial power in criminal matters, without appeal, and in civil, with an appeal to the grand council.

The members of the senate are liable to be changed, and there is an annual revision of them, which is a great restraint.

The state is not only out of debt, but saves money every year, against any emergency. By this fund they supported a war in 1712 without any additional taxes. There is not a carriage in the town, except it be of a stranger.

Zurich has great influence in the general diet, which she derives more from her reputation for integrity and original Swiss independence of spirit, than from her power.

SCHAFFHAUSE.

The sovereign is the city of Schaffhause. The citizens, about sixteen hundred, are divided into twelve tribes, one of which consists of nobles, and eleven are ordinary citizens.

The sovereignty resides in the little and grand councils.

The senate, or little council of twenty-five, has the executive power.

The great council, comprising the senate, has the legislative, and finally decides appeals.

The burgomasters are the chiefs of the republic, and alternately preside in both councils.

Besides these there are, the secret council of seven of the highest officers; the chamber of justice, of twenty-five, including the president; the prætorian chamber, of thirteen, including the president; the consistory, of nine; and the chamber of accounts, of nine. The city has ten bailiwicks subject to it.1

THE CITY OF MULHOUSE.

The sovereign is the city; the sovereignty resides in the little and the grand council. The lesser council is composed of twenty-four persons, namely,—three burgomasters who preside by turns, each one six months, nine counsellors, and twelve tribunes, who succeed by election, and are taken from the grand council.

The grand council is composed of seventy-eight, namely,—the twenty-four of the lesser council, thirty-six members of the tribes, six from each, and eighteen taken from the body of the citizens, and elected three by each of the six tribes.

THE CITY OF BIENNE.

The republic of Bienne contains less than six thousand souls.

The regency is composed of the great council, in which the legislative authority resides, consisting of forty members; and of the little council, composed of twenty-four, who have the executive.

Each of these councils elect its own members from the six confraternities of the city.

The burgomaster is chosen by the two councils, presides at their meetings, and is the chief of the regency; he continues in office for life, although he goes through the form of an annual confirmation by the two councils, when the other magistrates submit to the same ceremony. The burgomaster keeps the seal, and, with the banneret, the treasurers, and the secretary, forms the economical chamber and the chamber of orphans.

This town sends deputies to the general diets, ordinary and extraordinary.1

THE REPUBLIC OF ST. GALL.

The republic of St. Gall is a league and a half in circumference, and contains nine thousand souls. The inhabitants are very industrious in manufactures of linen, muslin, and embroidery, have an extensive commerce, and arts, sciences, and literature are esteemed and cultivated among them. They have a remarkable public library, in which are thirteen volumes of original manuscript letters of the first reformers. To see the different effects of different forms of government on the human character, and the happiness and prosperity of nations, it would be worth while to compare this city with Constance, in its neighborhood.

This happy and prosperous, though diminutive republic, has its grand council of ninety persons, its little council of twenty-four, and three burgomasters. The little council consists of the three burgomasters, nine senators, and twelve tribunes. The grand council consists of all the little council, and eleven persons from each tribe; for the city is divided into the society of the nobles and six tribes of the artisans, of whom the weavers are the principal.1

Besides these, there are the chamber of justice, the chamber of five, and some others.*

GENEVA.

In the republic of Geneva the sovereignty resides in the general council, lawfully convened, which comprehends all the orders of the state, and is composed of four syndics, chiefs of the republic, presidents of all the councils; of the lesser council of twenty-five; of the grand council of two hundred, though it consists of two hundred and fifty when it is complete; and of all the citizens of twenty-five years of age. The rights and attributes of all these orders of the state are fixed by the laws. The history of this city deserves to be studied with anxious attention by every American citizen. The principles of government, the necessity of various orders, and the fatal effects of an imperfect balance, appear nowhere in a stronger light. The fatal slumbers of the people, their invincible attachment to a few families, and the cool, deliberate rage of those families, if such an expression may be allowed, to grasp all authority into their own hands, when they are not controlled or overawed by a power above them in a first magistrate, are written in every page.*

The petty council is indifferently called the council of twenty-five, the petit council, or the senate.

The council of sixty is a body elected by the senate, and meets only for the discussion of foreign affairs.

The grand council and council of two hundred are one and the same body; it is still called the council of two hundred, though it now consists of two hundred and fifty members.

The general council, called indiscriminately the sovereign council, the general assembly, the sovereign assembly, the assembly of the people, or the council general, is composed of all the citizens or freemen of twenty-five years of age.

At the time of the Reformation, every affair, important or trifling, was laid before the general assembly; it was both a deliberating and acting body, that always left the cognizance of details to four syndics; this was necessary, in that time of danger, to attach the affections of the citizens to the support of the commonwealth by every endearing tie. The city was governed by two syndics of its own annual election. The multiplicity of affairs had engaged each syndic to nominate some of the principal citizens to serve as assessors during his administration; these assessors, called counsellors, formed a council of twenty-five persons. In 1457, the general council decreed that the council of twenty-five should be augmented to sixty. This body, in 1526, was augmented to two hundred.

Thus far the aristocratical gentlemen proceeded upon democratical principles, and all is done by the general assembly. At this instant commences the first overt act of aristocratical ambition. Warm in their seats, they were loath to leave them, or hold them any longer at the will of the people. With all the subtlety and all the sagacity and address which is characteristic of this order of men, in every age and nation, they prevailed on the people to relinquish for the future the right of electing counsellors in the general assembly; and the people, with their characteristic simplicity and unbounded confidence in their rulers when they love them, became the dupes, and passed a law, that the two councils should for the future elect, or at least approve and affirm, each other. This is a natural and unavoidable effect of doing all things in one assembly, or collecting all authority into one centre. When magistrates and people meet in one assembly, the former will forever do as they please, provided they proceed with any degree of prudence and caution.

The consequence was, that the annual reviews were a farce. Only in a very few instances, and for egregious faults, were any excluded; and the two councils became perpetual, and independent of the people entirely. The illusions of ambition are very subtle. If the motives of these magistrates, to extend the duration of their authority, were the public good, we must confess they were very ignorant. It is most likely they deceived themselves, as well as their constituents, and mistook their own ambition for patriotism. But this is the progressive march of all assemblies; none can confine themselves within their limits, when they have an opportunity of transgressing them. These magistrates soon learned to consider their authority as a family property, as all others, in similar circumstances, ever did, and ever will.

They behaved like all others in another respect, too; their authority being now permanent, they immediately attacked the syndics, and transferred their power to themselves.

The whole history of Geneva, since that period, follows of course. The people, by their supineness, have given up all balances and betrayed their own privileges, as well as the prerogatives of their first magistrates, into the hands of a few families.

The people of Geneva, as enlightened as any, have never considered the necessity of joining with the syndics, nor the syndics, that of joining the people; but have constantly aimed at an impossibility, that of balancing an aristocratical by a democratical assembly, without the aid of a third power.1

LUCCA.

The government of this republic is said to be purely aristocratical; yet the supreme power is lodged in the hands of two hundred and forty nobles, with the chief magistrate at their head, who is called gonfaloniero, or standard-bearer, and has the executive power. This magistrate is assisted by nine counsellors, called anziani, whose dignity lasts but nine months; he has a life-guard of sixty Swiss, and lives in the republic’s palace, as do his counsellors, at the public expense; after six years he may be rechosen. The election of all officers is decided in the senate by ballot.1

GENOA.

The legislative authority of Genoa is lodged in the great senate, consisting of signors, or the doge and twelve other members, with four hundred noblemen and principal citizens, annually elected. All matters of state are transacted by the signori, the members of which hold their places for two years, assisted by some other councils; and four parts in five of the senate must agree in passing a law. The doge is obliged to reside in the public palace the two years he enjoys his office, with two of the signors and their families. The palace where he resides, and where the great and little council, and the two colleges of the procuratori and rettori assemble, is a large stone building in the centre of the city. At the expiration of his time, he retires to his own house for eight days, when his administration is either approved or condemned; and in the latter case, he is proceeded against as a criminal. At the election of the doge, a crown of gold is placed on his head, and a sceptre in his hand, as King of Corsica; he is attended with life-guards, is clothed in crimson velvet, and styled Most Serene, the senators Excellencies, and the nobility Illustrious.

The nobility are allowed to trade in the wholesale way; to carry on velvet, silk, and cloth manufactures; and to have shares in merchant ships; and some of them, as the Palavicini, are actually the greatest merchants in Genoa.

The extent is about one hundred and fifty-two miles, the breadth from eight to twenty miles.1

VENICE.

The republic of Venice has existed longer2 than that of Rome or Sparta, or any other that is known in history. It was at first democratical; and its magistrates, under the name of tribunes, were chosen by the people in a general assembly. A tribune was appointed annually to distribute justice on each of those islands which this people inhabited. Whether this can be called “collecting all authority into one centre,” or whether it was not rather dividing it into as many parcels as there were islands, this simple form of government sufficed for some time, in so small a community, to maintain order; but the tyrannical administration of the tribunes and their eternal discords rendered a revolution necessary; and after long altercations and many projects, the people, having no adequate idea of the only natural balance of power among three orders, determined that one magistrate should be chosen as the centre of all authority—the eternal resource of every ignorant people, harassed with democratical distractions or aristocratical encroachments.

This magistrate must not be called king, but duke, and afterwards doge; he was to be for life, but at his death another was to be chosen; he was to have the nomination of all magistrates, and the power of peace and war. The unbounded popularity and great real merit of Paul Luc Anafeste added to the pressure of tribune tyranny and the danger of a foreign enemy, accomplished this revolution. The new doge was to consult only such citizens as he should judge proper; this, instead of giving him a constitutional council, made him the master;1 he, however, sent polite messages to those he liked best, praying that they would come and advise him. These were soon called pregadi, as the doge’s council is still called, though they are now independent enough of him.

The first and second doge governed mildly; but the third made the people repent of their confidence. After serving the state by his warlike abilities, he enslaved it; and the people, having no constitutional means to restrain him, put him to death in his palace, and resolved to abolish the office. Hating alike the name of tribune and of doge, they would have a master of the militia, and he should be annually eligible. Factions too violent for this transient authority arose; and, only five years after, the people abolished this office, and restored the power of the doge, in the person of the son of him whom in their fury they had assassinated. For a long course of years after this, the Venetian history discloses scenes of tyranny, revolt, cruelty, and assassination, which excite horror. Doges endeavoring to make their power hereditary, associating their eldest sons with them in office, and both together oppressing the people; these rising, and murdering them, or driving them into banishment, never once thinking of introducing a third order between them and their first magistrate, nor any other form of government, by which his power or theirs might be limited.2 In the tenth century, a son of their doge took arms against his father, but was defeated, banished, and declared incapable of ever being doge; yet, no sooner was the father dead, than this worthless son was elected, and brought back in great pomp to Venice.3 He soon became a tyrant and a monster, and the people tore him to pieces, but took no measure to frame a legal government. The city increased in commerce, and by conquests, and the new subjects were not admitted to the privileges of citizens; this accession of dominion augmented the influence of the doge. There was no assembly but that of the people, and another called the council of forty, for the administration of justice. This body, in the twelfth century, formed something like a plan of government.

Although the descendants of the ancient tribunes and doges were generally rich, and had a spontaneous respect shown to the antiquity of their families, they were not properly a nobility, having no legal rights, titles, or jurisdictions. As any citizen might be elected to a public office, and had a vote in the assemblies, it was necessary for the proudest among them to cultivate the good-will of the multitude, who made and murdered doges. Through all these contests and dissensions among a multitude, always impatient, often capricious, demanding at the same time all the promptitude and secrecy of an absolute monarchy, with all the license of a simple democracy, two things wholly contradictory to each other, the people had, to their honor, still maintained their right of voting in assembly, which was a great privilege, and nobody had yet dared to aim a blow at this acknowledged right of the people.

The council of forty now ventured to propose a plan like that of Mr. Hume, in his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, and like that which our friend, Dr. Price, informs us was proposed in the convention of Massachusetts.

The city was divided into six districts, called sestiers. The council of forty proposed that each of these partitions should name two electors, amounting to twelve in all, who should have the power of choosing from the whole city four hundred and seventy. These should have the whole power of the general assembly, and be called the grand council.

The people were amused with fine promises of order and regularity, and consoled with assertions that their right of election still continued, and that those who should not be chosen one year, might be the next. Not perceiving that this law would be fatal to their power, they suffered that aristocracy to be thus founded, which subsists to this hour. The next proposal was, that a committee of eleven should be appointed to name the doge. Though the design of reducing the people to nothing might have been easily seen in these manœuvres, yet, wearied, irritated, and discouraged by eternal discords, they agreed to both.

The council of forty, having thus secured the people, turned their eyes to the doge, whose authority had often been perverted to the purposes of oppression; and, having no legal check, had never been restrained but by violence, and all the confusions which accompany it. They proposed that a privy council of six should be appointed for the doge, one from each division of the city, by the grand council themselves, and that no orders should be valid without their concurrence. This passed into a law, with unanimous applause. They then proposed a senate of sixty, who were to be elected out of the grand council, and to be called the pregadi.1 This, too, was approved. The grand council of four hundred and seventy, the senate of sixty, the six counsellors, and eleven electors, were accordingly all chosen, and the last were sworn to choose the doge, without partiality, favor, or affection; and the new-chosen doge, having taken care to distribute money among the multitude, was received with universal acclamations. In his reign was instituted, by permission of the pope, the curious ceremony of wedding the sea, by a ring cast into it, in signum veri et perpetui imperii. Under the next doge, the avogadori2 were instituted, to see that the laws were fully executed.

In the thirteenth century, six new magistrates, called correctors, were created by the senate, to inquire into all abuses during the reign of a deceased doge, and report them to the senate; and it was enacted, that the fortune of the doge should indemnify the state for whatever damage it had suffered during his administration; and these correctors have been appointed at the decease of every doge since that time. In the next reign, a new tribunal of forty was erected, for the trial of civil causes.

In the same century, a new method of appointing the doge, by the famous ballot of Venice, a complicated mixture of choice and chance, was adopted. Each of the grand counsellors, now augmented to forty-one, to avoid the inconvenience of an equal division, draws a ball out of a box, containing thirty gilt and the rest white; those who draw the gilt ones go into another room, where is a box with thirty balls, nine of which are gilt, and draw again; and those who obtain the gilt balls are the first electors. They choose forty, comprehending themselves in that number; the forty, by repeating the whole process, are reduced to twelve second electors, the first of whom names three, and the rest two apiece; these twenty-five draw again from as many balls, nine of which are gilt; this reduces them to nine third electors, each of whom chooses five; which forty-five are reduced, by a repetition of the ballot, to eleven fourth electors, and they have the appointment of forty-one, who are the direct electors of the doge. The choice generally turns upon two or three candidates, whose names are put into another box, and drawn out. The first whose name is drawn retires, and proclamation is made for objections against him; if any are made, he comes in, and is heard in his defence. Then the electors proceed to determine by ayes and noes; if there are twenty-five ayes, he is chosen; if not, another name is read, and the same action taken, until there are twenty-five in the affirmative.1

The grand council, ever anxious to limit the power of the doge, soon thought it improper that the public acts should be signed by a chancellor appointed by him, and accordingly determined to appoint this officer themselves.1

The senate then began to think it too great a respect to the people, to have the new doge presented to them for their acclamations, and ordained that a syndic should congratulate him in the name of the people on his election. The populace, who had weakly surrendered their rights, were very angry at being deprived of this show, and proclaimed a doge of their own; but he was afraid of the contest, and retired; and the people, having no man of weight to head them, gave up this point.

The new doge, who had much contempt for popular government, and some resentment for the slight opposition he had met with, procured a law to be passed, that all the members of the grand council should hold their places for life, transmit them to their posterity, and that their elections by the people’s electors should cease. This establishment of a hereditary legislative nobility, no doubt, shocked the citizens in general, but chiefly those of ancient families, who were not at that moment members of the grand council. To silence these, the most powerful of them were received into the grand council, and others had a promise that they should be admitted at a future time. Commerce and wars soon turned the attention of the rest of the people from all thought about the loss of their privileges. A few, however, some time after, formed a plan, not to convene the people in a body, and new-model the constitution, but to assassinate the doge and council all together. The plot, which was carried on by the plebeians, was discovered, and the chiefs executed. Another originated among the nobles, some of them of the grand council, who, being of very ancient families, could not bear to see so many citizens raised to a level with themselves, and others of them, the most distinguished of those who were not of the grand council, and had not been afterwards received, according to promise. This produced a skirmish in the city. A few of the conspiring nobles were killed, the rest routed, and many executed; but it was thought prudent to admit several from the most distinguished families. These two conspiracies produced a council of ten, upon which were afterwards engrafted the state inquisition.

Great care is taken in Venice to balance one court against another, and render their powers mutual checks to each other. The college called the signory, was originally composed of the doge and six counsellors; to these were added six of the grand council chosen by the senate, and called the savii, or sages; then five more for land affairs; and then five for sea affairs, in the room of whom five young noblemen are now chosen every six months, who attend, without a vote, for their education; to these were added the three chiefs of the criminal court, from a jealousy of the power of the college, which is both the cabinet council and the representative of the state, gives audience and answers to ambassadors, to agents of towns and generals of the army, receives all petitions, summons the senate, and arranges its business.

There is one instance of a doge’s concerting a conspiracy to shake off the control of the senate; but as it was an old man of fourscore, whose young wife, on whom he doted, was not treated with sufficient respect by the nobility, we need not wonder that he had not sense enough to think of introducing a regular, well-balanced constitution, by a joint concurrence of the people and the nobility. The whole plan was to massacre the grand council; and, although he engaged in his design some of the highest officers, and a large party, the plot was discovered, the doge himself tried, condemned, and beheaded, as so infamous a piece of mad villany justly deserved.

A punctual execution of the laws is no doubt essential to the existence of this state; and there are striking instances of persons punishing their nearest relations with the most unrelenting severity; without this, the doge on one hand, or the people on the other, would soon think of a union against the ruling nobility. The aristocracy is always sagacious, and knows the necessity of a rigorous impartiality in order to preserve its power, and all the barriers we have described have been erected for this purpose. But all would be insufficient to restrain the popular passions, without the lions’ mouths and the state inquisitors, which were ingrafted on the council of ten.

This terrible tribunal is sovereign in all crimes against the state; it consists of ten, chosen yearly by the grand council; the six of the signory assist, and the doge presides when he pleases. Three chiefs, appointed monthly by lot, to open all letters, seize the accused, take examinations, and prosecute the prisoner, who is closely confined, allowed no council, and finally acquitted or condemned to death, in public or private, by the plurality of voices. This was the original tribunal; but it was not found sufficient, and (in the beginning of the sixteenth century)1 the state inquisitors were created. This tribunal consists only of three persons, all taken from the council of ten, who have2 authority to decide, without appeal, on the life of every citizen, the doge himself not excepted. They employ what spies they please. If they are unanimous, they may order a prisoner to be strangled in jail or drowned in the canal, hanged in the night or by day, as they please. If they are divided, the cause must go before the council of ten; but even here, if the guilt is doubtful, the rule is to execute the prisoner in the night. The three may command access to the house of every individual in the state,3 and have even keys to every apartment in the palace of the doge, may enter his bed-chamber, break his cabinet, and search his papers. By this tribunal have doge, nobility, and people been kept in awe, and restrained from violating the laws, and to this is to be ascribed the long duration of this aristocracy.

Such are the happy effects of the spirit of families, when they are not bridled by an executive authority, in the hands of a first magistrate on one hand, and by an assembly of the people in person, or by adequate representation, on the other! Such are the blessings which, in course of ages, spring from a neglect in the beginning to establish three orders, and a perfect balance between them! There can be, in the nature of things, no balance without three powers. The aristocracy is always more sagacious than an assembly of the people collectively, or by representation, and sooner or later proves an overmatch in policy. It is always more cunning, too, than a first magistrate, and always makes of him a doge of Venice, a mere ceremony, unless he makes an alliance with the people, to support him against it. What is the whole history of the wars of the barons but one demonstration of this truth? What are all the standing armies in Europe but another? These were all given to kings by the people, to defend them against aristocracies. The people have been generally of M. Turgot’s mind, that balances and different orders were unnecessary; and, harassed to death by the domination of noble families, they have generally surrounded the throne with troops to humble them. They have commonly succeeded so far as to make the nobles dependent on the crown; but, having given up the balance which they might have held in their own hands, they are still subject to as much aristocratical domination as the crowns think proper to permit. In Venice, the aristocratical passion for curbing the prince and the people has been carried to its utmost length.1 It is astonishing to many that any man will accept the office of doge. Sagacious nobles, who always know, at least, the vices and weaknesses of the human heart better than princes or people, saw that there would generally be vanity enough in an individual to flatter himself, that he had the qualities to go through his administration without incurring censure, and with applause; and, further, that the frivolous distinction of living in the ducal palace, and being the first man in the nation,2 though it were only the first among equals, would tempt most men to risk their lives and fortunes; and accordingly it has so happened. There has been an uncommon solicitude all along to restrain his power. This, no doubt, was to prevent him from a possibility of negotiating with the people against them; on the other hand, there have been uncommon exertions to annihilate every power, every hope in the people. This was to prevent them from having a legal possibility of applying to the doge for assistance. All this together would not, however, have succeeded, if death, in the shape of the inquisition, had not been made to stare both doge and people in the face, upon the first thought of their conferring together.

The nobles are divided into six classes,—1. Twelve of the most ancient families. 2. Four families that in the year 880 subscribed to the building of the abbey of St. George. 3. Those whose names were written in the golden book, in 1296. 4. Those that were ennobled by the public in 1385. 5. Those who purchased their nobility for one hundred thousand ducats in 1646. And, 6. The strangers who have been received into the number of nobility. The whole make about two thousand five hundred.

There are four councils,—1. The doge and the signoria of six. 2. The consiglio grande, in which all the nobles have seats and voices. 3. The consiglio de’ pregadi, of two hundred and fifty, and is the soul of the republic. 4. The consiglio proprio delli dieci—and the state inquisitors.1

THE REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.

Here were a stadtholder, an assembly of the states-general, a council of state; the stadtholder hereditary had the command of armies and navies, and appointment of all officers, &c.

Every province had an assembly besides, and every city, burgomasters, counsellors, and schepens or judges, besides an hooft officer and his dienders, for the police.

The history of this country, and its complicated constitutions, affords an inexhaustible store of materials to our purpose, but, considering the critical situation of it, prudence dictates to pass it over. With all the sagacity, and more wisdom than Venice or Bern, it has always had more consideration for the people than either, and has given more authority to the first magistrate. It has never had any exclusive preferences of families or nobles. Offices have, by law at least, been open to all men of merit.1

CHAPTER III.

MONARCHICAL OR REGAL REPUBLICS.

ENGLAND.

Poland and England. The history of these countries, the last especially, would confirm the general principle contended for. But who can think of writing upon this subject after De Lolme, whose book is the best defence of the political balance of three powers that ever was written?

If the people are not equitably represented in the house of commons, this is a departure in practice from the theory. If the lords return members of the house of commons, this is an additional disturbance of the balance. Whether the crown and the people in such a case will not see the necessity of uniting in a remedy,1 are questions beyond my pretensions. I only contend that the English constitution is, in theory, both for the adjustment of the balance and the prevention of its vibrations, the most stupendous fabric of human invention; and that the Americans ought to be applauded instead of censured, for imitating it as far as they have done. Not the formation of languages, not the whole art of navigation and ship-building does more honor to the human understanding than this system of government. The Americans have not indeed imitated it in giving a negative upon their legislature to the executive power;2 in this respect their balances are incomplete, very much I confess to my mortification; in other respects, they have some of them fallen short of perfection, by giving the choice of some militia officers, &c. to the people;1 these are, however, small matters at present. They have not made their first magistrates nor their senators hereditary. Here they differ from the English constitution, and with great propriety.2

The agrarian3 in America is divided among the common people in every state, in such a manner, that nineteen twentieths of the property would be in the hands of the commons, let them appoint whom they could for chief magistrate and senators. The sovereignty then, in fact, as well as morality, must reside in the whole body of the people; and a hereditary king and nobility, who should not govern according to the public opinion, would infallibly be tumbled instantly from their places. It is then not only most prudent, but absolutely necessary, in order to avoid continual violence, to give the people a legal, constitutional, and peaceable mode of changing these rulers, whenever they discover improper principles or dispositions in them. In the present state of society, and with the present manners, this may be done, not only without inconvenience, but greatly for the happiness and prosperity of the country. In future ages, if the present states become great nations, rich, powerful, and luxurious, as well as numerous, their own feelings and good sense will dictate to them what to do; they may make transitions to a nearer resemblance of the British constitution, by a fresh convention, without the smallest interruption to liberty. But this will never become necessary, until great quantities of property shall get into few hands.4

The truth is, that the people have ever governed in America; all the force of the royal governors and councils, even backed with fleets and armies, has never been able to get the advantage of them, who have stood by their houses of representatives in every instance, and have always carried their points. No governor ever stood his ground against a representative assembly. So long as he governed by their advice he was happy; so soon as he differed from them he was wretched, and was soon obliged to retire.

POLAND.

The king of Poland is the first magistrate in the republic, and derives all his authority from the nation. He has not the power to make laws, raise taxes, contract alliances, or declare war, nor to coin money, nor even to marry, without the ratification of the diet.

The senate is composed of the clergy and nobility; the third estate, or people, is not so much as known. The grand marshal, the marshal of the court, the chancellor, vice chancellor, and the treasurer, are the first senators.

The nobility or gentry possess the dignities and employments, in which they never permit strangers or the commonalty to have any participation; they elect their king, and never suffer the senate to make themselves masters of this election. The peasants are slaves to the gentry. Having no property, all their acquisitions are made for their masters; they are exposed to all their passions, and are oppressed by them with impunity.

The general diets, which are usually held at Warsaw or Grodno, are preceded by particular assemblies of palatinates, in which the deputies are chosen for the general assembly, and instructed; the deputies assembled in general diet, proceed to the election of a marshal, who has a very extraordinary power, that of imposing silence on whom he pleases; he is the chief or speaker of the assembly.

At the death, abdication, or deposition of a king, the primate calls the assembly of the electors to an open field near Warsaw. Here the electors take an oath, not to separate until they shall have unanimously elected a king, nor to render him when elected any obedience, until he has sworn to observe the pacta conventa and the laws.

The candidates must let their gold glitter, and give splendid entertainments, which must be carried into debauch; the nobility are captivated with the attractions of magnificence and Hungarian wine, and infallibly declare in favor of the candidate who causes it to flow in the greatest profusion. The ambassadors enter upon intrigues, even in public; the nobility receive their presents, sell their suffrages with impunity, and render the throne venal; but they often behave with little fidelity to the candidate in whose interest they pretend to be engaged, and, forgetting the presents they have received, espouse, without hesitation, the cause of a more wealthy competitor. When the candidate has gained all the suffrages, he is declared king, is sworn to observe the pacta conventa and the laws, and then crowned. The Poles are polite and friendly; but magnificence is the foible of the nobility, and they sacrifice all things to luxury; as they seldom see any person superior to them in their own country, and treat their inferiors with an air of absolute authority, they live in all the splendor of princes. This is the account of the Abbé des Fontaines, in the year 1736; it is to be hoped things have since changed for the better; but if this account was true then, who can wonder at what has happened since?

Here again is no balance; a king, and an assembly of nobles, and nothing more. The nobles discover their unalterable disposition whenever they have the power to limit the king’s authority; and there being no mediating power of the people, collectively or representatively, between them, the consequence has been what it always will be in such a case, confusion and calamity.

1 In the most ancient times which records or history elucidate, the monarchy of Poland, like all others denominated feudal, was, in theory and pretension, absolute. The barons, too, in this country as in all others, were very often impatient under such restraint. When the prince was an able statesman and warrior, he was able to preserve order; but when he was weak and indolent, it was very common for two or three barons in conjunction to make war upon him;1 and sometimes it happened that all together leagued against him at once. In every feudal country, where the people had not the sense and spirit to make themselves of importance, the barons became an aristocracy, incessantly encroaching upon the crown; and, under pretence of limiting its authority, they took away from it one prerogative after another, until it was reduced to the state of a mere doge of Venice, or avoyer of Bern; until the kings, by incorporating cities and granting privileges to the people, set them up against the nobles, and obtained by their means standing armies, sufficient to control both nobles and commons.

The monarchy of Poland, nearly absolute, sunk in the course of a few centuries, without any violent convulsion, into an aristocracy.

It came to be disputed whether the monarchy was hereditary or elective, and whether its authority was sovereign or limited. The first question is resolved by supposing that the crown continued always in the same family, although, upon the death of a king, his successor was recognized in an assembly of the nobles. The second may be answered by supposing, that when the king was active and capable, he did as he pleased; but when he was weak, he was dictated to by a licentious nobility. Casimir the Great retrenched the authority of the principal barons, and granted immunities to the lesser nobility and gentry; well aware that no other expedient could introduce order, except a limitation of the vast influence possessed by the palatines or principal nobility. If this prince had been possessed of any ideas of a free government, he might easily have formed the people and inferior gentry into an assembly by themselves, and, by uniting his power with theirs against the encroachments of the nobles upon both, have preserved his own. His nephew, Louis of Hungary, who succeeded him, being a foreigner, was, at his accession, obliged by the nobility to subscribe conditions, not to impose any taxes by his royal authority, without the consent of the nation, that is, of the nobles, for no other nation is thought on; and in case of his demise without male heirs, the privilege of appointing a king should revert to the nobles. In consequence of this agreement, Louis was allowed to ascend the throne. Having no son, with a view of insuring the succession to Sigismund, his son-in-law, he promised to diminish the taxes, repair the fortresses at his own expense, and to confer no offices or dignities on foreigners.

Louis died; but Sigismund was emperor, and therefore powerful, and might be formidable to the new immunities. The Poles, aware of this, violated the compact with Louis, neglected Sigismund, and elected Ladislaus, upon his ratifying Louis’s promises, and marrying his daughter.

Ladislaus, having relinquished the right of imposing taxes, called an assembly of prelates, barons, and military gentlemen, in their respective provinces, in order to obtain an additional tribute. These provincial assemblies gave birth to the dietines; they now no longer retain the power of raising money in their several districts, but only elect the nuncios or representatives for the diet.

Ladislaus III., the son of the former, purchased his right to the succession, during the life of his father, by a confirmation of all the concessions before granted, which, at his accession, he solemnly ratified. Casimir III., brother of Ladislaus III., consented to several further innovations, all unfavorable to regal prerogative. One was the convention of a national diet, invested with the sole power of granting supplies. Each palatinate or province was allowed to send to the general diet, besides the palatines and other principal barons, a certain number of nuncios or representatives, chosen by the nobles and burghers. Is it not ridiculous, that this reign should be considered by the popular party as the era at which the freedom of the constitution was permanently established? This freedom, which consists in a king without authority, a body of nobles in a state of uncontrolled anarchy; and a peasantry groaning under the yoke of feudal despotism; the greatest inequality of fortune in the world; the extremes of riches and poverty, of luxury and misery, in the neighborhood of each other; a universal corruption and venality pervading all ranks; even the first nobles not blushing to be pensioners of foreign courts; one professing himself publicly an Austrian, another a Prussian, a third a Frenchman, and a fourth a Russian; a country without manufactures, without commerce, and in every view the most distressed in the world!

But, to proceed with an enumeration of the measures by which they have involved themselves in these pitiable circumstances.

Casimir was involved in several unsuccessful wars, which exhausted his treasures. He applied to the diet for subsidies.

Every supply was accompanied with a list of grievances, and produced a diminution of the royal prerogative. The barons, at the head of their vassals, were bound to fight, and the king could require such feudal services in defence of the kingdom. But Casimir III., to obtain pecuniary aids, gave up the power of summoning the nobles to his standard, and of enacting any law without the concurrence of the diet. John Albert, to procure an election in preference to his elder brother, assented to all the immunities extorted from his predecessors, and in 1469 swore to their observance. Alexander, his successor, in 1505, declared the following limitations of sovereign authority to be fundamental laws of the kingdom: 1. The king cannot impose taxes. 2. He cannot require the feudal services. 3. Nor alienate the royal domains. 4. Nor enact laws. 5. Nor coin money. 6. Nor alter the process in the courts of justice. Sigismund I. succeeded Alexander, and under his reign the Polish constitution was the most tolerable, as the property of the subject was best secured, and the crown had considerable influence; but this did not satisfy the nobles. Under Sigismund Augustus, son and successor of Sigismund I., that favorite object of the Polish nobles, the free election of the king, was publicly brought forward; and the king was obliged to agree, that no future monarch should succeed to the throne, unless freely elected by the nation. Before this, the sovereigns, upon their accession, though formally raised by the consent of the nation, still rested their pretensions upon hereditary right, always styling themselves heirs of the kingdom of Poland. Sigismund Augustus was the last who bore that title; at his death, in 1572, all title to the crown from hereditary right was formally abolished, and the absolute freedom of election established upon a permanent basis. A charter of immunities was drawn up at a general diet, a ratification of which it was determined to exact of the new sovereign, prior to his election. This charter, called pacta conventa, contained the whole body of privileges obtained from Louis and his successors, with the following additions: 1. That the king should be elective, and that his successor should never be appointed during his life. 2. That the diets, the holding of which depended solely upon the will of the kings, should be assembled every two years. 3. That every nobleman or gentleman in the realm should have a vote in the diet of election. 4. That in case the king should infringe the laws and privileges of the nation, his subjects should be absolved from their oaths of allegiance. From this period the pacta conventa, occasionally enlarged, have been confirmed by every sovereign at his coronation.

Henry of Valois, brother of Charles IX. of France, who ascended the throne after the constitution was thus new modelled, secured his election by private bribes to the nobles, and by stipulating an annual pension to the republic from the revenues of France. His example has been followed by every succeeding king; who, besides an unconditional ratification of the pacta conventa, has always been constrained to purchase the crown by a public largess and private corruption. Such is Polish liberty, and such the blessings of a monarchy elective by a body of nobles.

Under Stephen Bathori, the royal authority, or rather the royal dignity, was further abridged by the appointment of sixteen senators, chosen at each diet, to attend the king, and to give their opinion in all matters of importance, so that he could not issue any decree without their consent. Another fatal blow was given to the prerogative in 1578, by taking from the king the supreme jurisdiction of the causes of the nobles. It was enacted that, without the concurrence of the king, each palatinate should elect in its dietines its own judges, who should form supreme courts of justice, called tribunalia regni, in which the causes of the nobles should be decided without appeal, a mode which prevails to this day.

In the reign of John Casimir, in 1652, was introduced the liberum veto, or the power of each nuncio to interpose a negative and break up a diet, a privilege which the king himself does not enjoy. When the diet was debating upon transactions of the utmost importance, which required a speedy decision, a nuncio cried out, “I stop the proceedings,”1 and quitted the assembly. And a venal faction who supported his protest, unheard of as it was, obtained the majority, and broke up the assembly in confusion. The constitution was thus wholly changed, and an unlimited scope given to faction. The innovation was supported by the great officers of state, the general treasurer and marshal, who, being once nominated by the king, enjoyed their offices for life, responsible only to the diets, conscious that they could at all times engage a nuncio to protest, and thus elude an inquiry into their administration. It was also supported by the adherents of many nobles, accused of capital crimes before the diet, the only tribunal before which they could be tried. All the nuncios who opposed the raising of additional subsidies by taxes, which the exigencies of the state then demanded, seconded the proposal of putting an end to the assembly. But the principal cause of all was the foreign powers, interested to foment confusion in the Polish councils. Before this, they were obliged to secure a majority; afterwards, they might put an end to any diet unfriendly to their views, by corrupting a single member. This veto broke up seven diets in the reign of John Casimir, four under Michael, seven under John Sobieski, and thirty during the reigns of the two Augusti. In consequence of this necessity of unanimity, which they call the dearest palladium of Polish liberty, Poland has continued above a hundred years almost without laws.

But as the king still bestowed the starosties, or royal fiefs, which are held for life, and conferred the principal dignities and great offices of state, he was yet the fountain of honor, and maintained great influence in the councils of the nation; but this last branch of the royal prerogative was lately wrested from the crown by the establishment of the permanent council.

Thus it appears, in the history of Poland, as in that of Venice, Genoa, Bern, Soleure, and all others, that the nobles have continued, without interruption, to scramble for diminutions of the regal authority, to grasp the whole executive power, and augment their own privileges; and they have attained a direct aristocracy under a monarchical name, where a few are above the control, while the many are deprived of the protection of the laws.1

The present wretched state of the towns, compared with their former flourishing condition; the poverty of the peasants, whose oppressions have increased in proportion to the power of the nobles, having lost a protector when the king lost his weight in the constitution; the total confusion in all public affairs; the decline of importance and loss of territory; all show that absolute monarchy is preferable to such a republic. Would twelve millions of inhabitants, under an English constitution, or under the constitution of any one of the United States, have been partitioned and dismembered? No; not by a league of all the absolute sovereigns of Europe against them at once. Such are the effects of “collecting all authority into one centre,” of neglecting an equilibrium of powers, and of not having three branches in the legislature.

The practice of cantoning a body of soldiers near the plain where the kings are elected, has been adopted by several foreign powers for near a century; and, although it may be galling to the nobility, it prevents the effusion of blood that formerly deluged the assembly. This was done at the election of Stanislaus Augustus, by the Empress of Russia and the King of Prussia; five thousand Russian troops were stationed at a small distance from the plain of Vola.

Stanislaus was in the thirty-second year of his age when, in 1764, he ascended the throne. From his virtues and abilities, the fairest hopes were conceived of his raising Poland from its deplorable situation; but his exertions for the public good were fettered by the constitution, by the factions of a turbulent people, and the intrigues of neighboring powers. His endeavors to introduce order at home and independence abroad, which would have increased the power of his country and her consideration with foreign nations, alarmed the neighboring powers. The spirit of religious intolerance produced a civil war, and the senate petitioned the ambassador from Petersburg not to withdraw the Russian troops. The royal troops, aided by the Russians, whose discipline was superior, were in favor of religious liberty. The confederates, secretly encouraged by Austria, assisted by the Turks, and supplied with money and officers by the French, were able to protract hostilities from 1768 to 1772; during which period the attempt was made to assassinate the king.

Count Pulaski, who was killed in the service of the United States, is said to have planned an enterprise so much to his dishonor. No good cause ever was, or ever will be, served by assassination; and this is happily, in the present age, the universal sense of mankind. If a papal nuncio was found in Poland, capable of blessing the weapons of conspirators against this tolerant king, he was a monster, whose bloody bigotry the liberal spirit of the pope himself must, at this enlightened period, abominate. The king did himself immortal honor by his intercession with the diet to remit the tortures and horrid cruelties decreed by the laws of most kingdoms in Europe against treason, and by his moderation towards all the conspirators.

We are now arrived at the consummation of all panegyrics upon a sovereignty in a single assembly—the partition.

Prussia was formerly in a state of vassalage to this republic; Russia once saw its capital and throne possessed by the Poles; and Austria was indebted to John Sobieski, a sovereign of this country, but a century ago, for compelling the Turks to raise the siege of Vienna. A republic so lately the protector of its neighbors would not, in an age of general improvement, without the most palpable imperfections in the orders and balances of its government, have declined, and become a prey to any invader—much less would it have forced the world to acknowledge that the translation of nearly five millions of people from a republican government to that of absolute empires and monarchies, whether it were done by right or by wrong, is a blessing to them. The partition was projected by the King of Prussia, who communicated it to the emperor and empress. The plague was one circumstance, and the Russian war against the Turks another, that favored the design; and the partition treaty was signed at Petersburg, in February, 1772, by the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian plenipotentiaries. The troops of the three courts were already in possession of the greatest part of Poland, and the confederates were soon dispersed. The partitioning powers proceeded with such secrecy, that only vague conjectures were made at Warsaw, and Lord Cathcart, the English minister at Petersburg, obtained no authentic information of the treaty until two months after its signature. The formal notification was made to the king and senate at Warsaw by the imperial and Prussian ambassadors, in September, 1772, of the pretensions of their courts to the Polish territory. Their remonstrances, as well as those of the courts of London, Paris, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, had no effect; and the most humiliating record that ever appeared in the annals of a republic, is seen in the king’s summons:—“Since there are no hopes from any quarter, and any further delays will only tend to draw down the most dreadful calamities upon the remainder of the dominions which are left to the republic, the diet is convened for the nineteenth of April, 1773, according to the will of the three courts; nevertheless, in order to avoid all cause of reproach, the king, with the advice of the senate, again appeals to the guaranties of the treaty of Oliva.” It is not to be doubted that if there had been a people in existence in Poland, as there is in Holland, to have given this amiable prince only the authority of a stadtholder, he would have said, “I will die in the last ditch.”

Of the dismembered provinces, the Russian portion, which is the largest territory, contains only one million and a half of souls; the Austrian, which is the most populous, contains two millions and a half; the Prussian, which is the most commercial, commanding the navigation of the Vistula, contains only eight hundred and sixty thousand. This has given a fatal blow to the commerce of Poland, by transferring it from Dantzic to Memel and Königsberg.

The finishing stroke of all remains.

The three ambassadors, on the thirteenth of September, 1773, delivered “A part of those cardinal laws, to the ratification of which our courts will not suffer any contradiction.

“I. The crown of Poland shall be forever elective, and all order of succession proscribed. Any person who shall endeavor to break this law shall be declared an enemy to his country, and liable to be punished accordingly.

“II. Foreign candidates to the throne, being the frequent cause of troubles and divisions, shall be excluded; and it shall be enacted, that, for the future, no person can be chosen king of Poland and great-duke of Lithuania, excepting a native Pole of noble origin, and possessing land within the kingdom. The son, or grandson, of a king of Poland, cannot be elected immediately upon the death of his father or grandfather; and is not eligible excepting after an interval of two reigns.

“III. The government of Poland shall be forever free, independent, and of a republican form.

“IV. The true principle of said government consisting in the strict execution of its laws and the equilibrium of the three estates, namely,—the king, the senate, and the equestrian order, a permanent council shall be established, in which the executive power shall be vested. In this council the equestrian order, hitherto excluded from the administration of affairs in the interval of the diets, shall be admitted, as shall be more clearly laid down in the future arrangements.”

Thus the supreme legislative authority resides in the three estates of the realm,—the king, the senate, and equestrian order, assembled in a national diet; but each estate has no negative upon the other, and, therefore, there is no balance, and very little check. The great families and principal palatines will still govern without any effectual control.

The executive power is now vested in the supreme permanent council; but neither here have they any checks, all being decided by the majority; and the same principal families will always prevail.

These august legislators have acknowledged the principle of a free republican government, that it consists in a strict execution of the laws and an equilibrium of estates or orders. But how are the laws to govern? and how is the equilibrium to be preserved? Like air, oil, and water, shaken together in one bottle and left in repose; the first will rise to the top, the last sink to the bottom, and the second swim between.

Our countrymen will never run delirious after a word or a name. The name republic is given to things, in their nature as different and contradictory as light and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, happiness and misery. There are free republics, and republics as tyrannical as an oriental despotism. A free republic1 is the best of governments, and the greatest blessing which mortals can aspire to. Republics which are not free, by the help of a multitude of rigorous checks, in very small states, and for short spaces of time, have preserved some reverence for the laws, and have been tolerable; but there have been oligarchies carried to such extremes of tyranny, that so far as the happiness of the nation at large is concerned, the despotism of Turkey would perhaps be preferable. An empire of laws is a characteristic of a free republic only, and should never be applied to republics in general. If there should ever be a people in Poland, there will soon be a real king; and if ever there should be a king in reality, as well as in name, there will soon be a people. For, instead of the trite saying, “no bishop, no king,” it would be much more exact and important truth to say, no people, no king, and no king, no people; meaning, by the word king, a first magistrate possessed exclusively of the executive power. It may be laid down as a universal maxim, that every government that has not three independent branches in its legislature will soon become an absolute monarchy; or an arrogant nobility, increasing every day in a rage for splendor and magnificence, will annihilate the people, and, attended with their horses, hounds, and vassals, will run down the king as they would hunt a deer, wishing for nothing so much as to be in at the death.

The philosophical King Stanislaus felt most severely this want of a people. In his observations on the government of Poland,1 he laments, in very pathetic terms, the miseries to which they were reduced.

“The violence,” says he, “which the patricians at Rome exercised over the people of that city, before they had recourse to open force, and, by the authority of their tribunes, balanced the power of the nobility, is a striking picture of the cruelty with which we treat our plebeians. Yet this portion of our state is even more debased among us than it was among the Romans, where it enjoyed a species of liberty, even in the times when it was most enslaved to the first order of the republic.

“We may say, with truth, that the people are, in Poland, in a state of extreme humiliation. We must, nevertheless, consider them as the principal support of the nation; and I am persuaded, that the little value we set on them might have very dangerous consequences.

“Who are they, in fact, who procure abundance in the kingdom? who are they that bear the burdens and pay the taxes? who are they that furnish men to our armies?1 who labor our fields? who gather in the crops? who sustain and nourish us? who are the cause of our inactivity? the refuge of our laziness? the resource for our wants? the support of our luxury? and, indeed, the source of all our pleasures? Is it not that very populace that we treat with so much rigor? Their pains, their sweat, their labors, do not they merit a better return than our scorn and disdain? . . .

“We scarcely distinguish them from the brutes which they maintain for the cultivation of our lands! We frequently have less consideration for their strength than we have for that of those animals! and, too frequently, in a shameful traffic, we sell them to masters as cruel as ourselves, who immediately force them, by an excess of hard labor, to repay the price of their new slavery!

“I cannot recollect without horror, that law which imposes only a fine of fifteen livres upon a gentleman2 who shall have killed a peasant. . . . Poland is the only country where the populace are fallen from all the rights of humanity; . . . we alone regard these men as creatures of another species, and we would almost refuse them the same air which they breathe with us. . . .

“God, in the creation of man, gave him liberty; what right have we to deprive him of it? . . .

“As it is natural to shake off a yoke that is rough, hard, and heavy, may it not happen that this people will make an effort to wrest themselves from our tyranny? Their murmurs and complaints must, sooner or later, lead to this. Hitherto, accustomed to their fetters, they think not of breaking them; but let a single man, with a masculine and daring spirit, arise among these unfortunate wretches, to concert and foment a revolt, what barrier strong enough could we oppose to the torrent?

“We have a recent instance, in the insurrection in the Ukraine, which was only occasioned by the vexations of those among us who had there purchased lands. We despised the courage of the poor inhabitants of that country; they found a resource in despair; and nothing is more terrible than the despair of those who have no courage.

“What is the condition to which we have reduced the people of our kingdom? Reduced by misery to the state of brutes, they drag out their days in a lazy stupidity, which one would almost mistake for a total want of feeling. They love no art; they value themselves on no industry; they labor no longer than the dread of chastisement forces them; convinced that they cannot enjoy the fruit of their ingenuity, they stifle their talents, and do not even try to comprehend what they are. Hence that frightful scarcity of the most common artisans in which we find ourselves. Should we wonder that we are in want of things the most necessary, when those who ought to furnish them cannot hope for the smallest profit from their labor to furnish us! It is only where liberty is found that emulation can exist.”

It would be a pleasure to translate the whole; but it is too long. It is a pity that the whole people, whose misery he describes and laments, were not equally sensible of the necessity of a less circumscribed royal authority.1

NEUCHATEL.

The sovereign, or rather the first magistrate of this monarchical republic, is the King of Prussia. The principality is composed of two countries, Neuchatel and Valengin, which were united in one single sovereignty by the Dukes of Longueville, whose family became extinct in 1707. The country submitted to the King of Prussia, who, by right of reversion, redemanded Neuchatel as a vacant fief of the house of Châlons, inherited by the Princes of Orange, to all the rights of whom he laid claim.

The authority of the king is limited by the great privileges of the country. The sovereignty is exercised conjointly,—1. By the king’s governor, who presides in the assembly of the states. 2. By the body of the three estates, composed of twelve judges, who administer justice in the last resort, and are four counsellors of state for the nobility. Four officers of judicature for the second rank, taken from the four chatellanies and the fifteen mayories. Four counsellors of the city, which is governed by sixty-four persons, who administer ordinary justice, and who are the four ministraux. Twenty-four persons for the little council, and forty for the grand council. The relation of this republican principality with the Helvetic body consists in an ancient fellow-citizenship with the four cantons of Bern, Lucerne, Fribourg, and Soleure; but the canton of Bern is particular protector, and the declared arbiter between it and its prince, since 1406. The city of Neuchatel has also a strict alliance of fellow-citizenship with Bern.1 The whole country subject to it contains twelve leagues in length and six in breadth, and is extremely well peopled; for it contains three cities, one burgh, ninety large villages, and three thousand houses, scattered at a distance from each other. It is consolidated out of two counties, Neuchatel and Valengin; two baronies, Gorgier and Vaumarcus, which belong to a nobleman of Bern; four lordships, Travers, Noiraque, Rosières, and Colombier; one priory, Valtravers; five abbeys. At this day, this princely republic is divided into four chatellanies and fifteen mayories. The first count of Neuchatel that is known is Ulric, who lived towards the end of the twelfth century. He had a son named Berthold, who, in 1214, made a convention with the inhabitants, concerning the rights, liberties, and franchises of the citizens and people of the country.

In 1406, the inhabitants of Neuchatel obtained a confirmation of their liberties of John of Châlons, lord of the county. In 1519, they obtained another confirmation of their rights and liberties, and an acknowledgment that their princes have no power over them but with their own consent. They have even changed their religion; and, in 1530, abolished the mass and all the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church, without the consent of their prince. Yet they suffered the house of Orleans Longueville to continue to enjoy their rights and revenues. The last male of this line died in 1694. The Prince of Conti wanted to succeed by testament; but the three estates were against him, and rejected his demands in 1694 and 1699. At this time William, Prince of Orange and King of Great Britain, maintained that he had pretensions on the county, derived from the house of Châlons. At the death of this prince, in 1702, the King of Prussia declared himself his heir, as the son of the eldest sister of King William’s father; and contended that the principality of Orange and the county of Neuchatel belonged to him. In 1707, after the death of Mary of Orleans, who had been invested in this principality by the three estates in 1694, the King of Prussia demanded the investiture of Neuchatel of the three estates, who granted it him because he was of their religion, and rejected the relations of the deceased and all other pretenders. His son, by the ninth article of the peace of Utrecht, obtained from Louis XIV. an acknowledgment of him as sovereign lord of Neuchatel and Valengin.

Although the inhabitants are jealous of their liberties, they are, nevertheless, attached to their prince. It is to the body of the states alone that it belongs to make statutes, laws, and ordinances, and they represent the sovereignty, and exercise the supreme authority. The king’s governor presides in it, but enters not into consultation with the counsellors. It was this tribunal which gave the investiture to the kings, and before whom every pretender must make out his claim. Without descending to a particular account of this princely republic, let me refer to the Dictionnaire de la Martinière and to Faber, printed at the end of the sixth volume of it, and to Coxe’s Sketches, and conclude with hinting at a few features only of this excellent constitution.

None but natives are capable of holding any office, civil or military, excepting that of governor. The same incapacity is extended to natives who are in the service of any foreign prince. All the citizens have a right to enter into the service of any foreign state, even though at war with Prussia. The three estates of Neuchatel and Valengin shall be assembled every year. The magistrates and officers of justice hold their employments during good behavior; nor is the king the judge of ill behavior. The king, at his accession, takes an oath to maintain all the rights, liberties, franchises, and customs, written or unwritten. The king is considered as resident only at Neuchatel, and, therefore, when absent, can only address the citizens through his governor and the council of state. No citizen can be tried out of the country, or otherwise than by the judges. The prince confers nobility, and nominates to the principal offices of state, civil and military; the chatelains and mayors, who preside in the several courts of justice, are also of his nomination. The prince, in his absence, is represented by a governor of his own appointing. He convokes the three estates; presides in that assembly, has the casting vote and the power of pardon. In his absence, his place is supplied by the senior counsellor of state. The three estates form the superior tribunal; and to them lies an appeal from the inferior courts of justice. They are composed of twelve judges, divided into three estates:—the first consists of the four senior counsellors of state, who are noble; the second, of the four chatelains of Landeron, Boudry, Val de Travers, and Thiel; the third, of four counsellors of the town of Neuchatel. The judges in the first and second division hold their places for life; those in the third are appointed annually.

The council of state is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the administration, and police. They are nominated by the king, and not limited in number.

The legislative authority resides conjunctively in the prince, the council of state, and the town or people, each of which has a negative. Their criminal laws are mild, and the penalty marked out with precision; personal liberty is tenderly and securely protected, as it is in England or America, where the same laws, in substance and spirit, prevail. The liberties of the people, though the most absolute monarch in Germany is first magistrate, are better secured than even in the most democratical cantons of Switzerland, where there is no property to contend for beyond the value of a pail of milk, a kid, or a lamb. Liberal encouragement is given to strangers to settle in the country. They enjoy every privilege of trade and commerce. This enlarged policy has greatly augmented the population; while a narrower principle, in some of the Swiss cantons, occasions a decrease of their people. The ancient constitution of Rhodes was probably much like this of Neuchatel, in three branches, and was accordingly celebrated as one of the best models of government in antiquity, and had effects equally happy upon the order, liberty, commerce, and population of that country. This happy mixture in three branches has been the never-failing means of reconciling law and liberty, in ancient and in modern times. “Ita demum liberam civitatem fore, ita æquatas leges, si sua quisque jura ordo, suam majestatem teneat.”* This is the only constitution in which the citizens can truly be said to be in that happy condition of freedom and discipline, sovereignty and subordination, which the Greeks express so concisely by their ἄϱχειν ϰαι ἄϱχεσθαι.
- - “Who knows in union’s closer bands to draw
  - The opposing claims of liberty and law,
  - Shall gain from virtue’s breath a purer fame
  - Than all the poet or the sage can claim.”*
- - “When will the tutelar gods of Rome awake,
  - To fix the order of our wayward state,
  - That we may once more know each other,—know
  - Th’ extent of laws, prerogatives, and dues;
  - The bounds of rules and magistracy; who
  - Ought first to govern, and who must obey?
  - It was not thus, when godlike Scipio held
  - The scale of power; he who, with temperate poise,
  - Knew how to guide the people’s liberty
  - In its full bounds, nor did the nobles wrong.”†
RECAPITULATION.

As we have taken a cursory view of those countries in Europe where the government may be called, in any reasonable construction of the word, republican, let us now pause a few moments, and reflect upon what we have seen.

Among every people, and in every species of republics, we have constantly found a first magistrate, a head, a chief, under various denominations, indeed, and with different degrees of authority, with the title of stadtholder, burgomaster, avoyer, doge, gonfaloniero, president, syndic, mayor, alcalde, capitaneo, governor, or king; in every nation we have met with a distinguished officer. If there is no example, then, in any free government, any more than in those which are not free, of a society without a principal personage, we may fairly conclude that the body politic cannot subsist, any more than the animal body, without a head. If M. Turgot had made any discovery which had escaped the penetration of all the legislators and philosophers who have lived before him, he ought at least to have communicated it to the world for their improvement; but as he has never hinted at any such invention, we may safely conclude that he had none; and, therefore, that the Americans are not justly liable to censure for instituting governors.

In every form of government we have seen a senate, or little council, a composition, generally, of those officers of state who have the most experience and power, and of a few other members selected from the highest ranks and most illustrious reputations. On these lesser councils, with the first magistrate at their head, generally rests the principal burden of administration, a share in the legislative, as well as executive and judicial authority of government. The admission of such senates to a participation of these three kinds of power, has been generally observed to produce in the minds of their members an ardent aristocratical ambition, grasping equally at the prerogatives of the first magistrate, and the privileges of the people, and ending in the nobility of a few families, and a tyrannical oligarchy. But in those states, where the senates have been debarred from all executive power, and confined to the legislative, they have been observed to be firm barriers against the encroachments of the crown, and often great supporters of the liberties of the people. The Americans, then, who have carefully confined their senates to the legislative power, have done wisely in adopting them.

We have seen, in every instance, another and a larger assembly, composed of the body of the people, in some little states; of representatives chosen by the people, in others; of members appointed by the senate, and supposed to represent the people, in a third sort; and of persons appointed by themselves or the senate, in certain aristocracies; to prevent them from becoming oligarchies. The Americans, then, whose assemblies are the most adequate, proportional, and equitable representations of the people, that are known in the world, will not be thought mistaken in appointing houses of representatives.

In every republic,—in the smallest and most popular, in the larger and more aristocratical, as well as in the largest and most monarchical,—we have observed a multitude of curious and ingenious inventions to balance, in their turn, all those powers, to check the passions peculiar to them, and to control them from rushing into those exorbitancies to which they are most addicted. The Americans will then be no longer censured for endeavoring to introduce an equilibrium, which is much more profoundly meditated, and much more effectual for the protection of the laws, than any we have seen, except in England. We may even question whether that is an exception.

In every country we have found a variety of orders, with very great distinctions. In America, there are different orders of offices, but none of men. Out of office, all men are of the same species, and of one blood; there is neither a greater nor a lesser nobility. Why, then, are the Americans accused of establishing different orders of men? To our inexpressible mortification, we must have observed, that the people have preserved a share of power, or an existence in the government, in no country out of England, except upon the tops of a few inaccessible mountains, among rocks and precipices, in territories so narrow that you may span them with a hand’s breadth, where, living unenvied, in extreme poverty, chiefly upon pasturage, destitute of manufactures and commerce, they still exhibit the most charming picture of life, and the most dignified character of human nature.

Wherever we have seen a territory somewhat larger, arts and sciences more cultivated, commerce flourishing, or even agriculture improved to any great degree, an aristocracy has risen up in a course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families, who have united with each other against both the people and the first magistrate; who have wrested from the former, by art and by force, all their participation in the government; and have even inspired them with so mean an esteem of themselves, and so deep a veneration and strong attachment to their rulers, as to believe and confess them a superior order of beings.

We have seen these noble families, although necessitated to have a head, extremely jealous of his influence, anxious to reduce his power, and to constrain him to as near a level as possible with themselves; always endeavoring to establish a rotation, by which they may all equally be entitled in turn to the preëminence, and likewise anxious to preserve to themselves as large a share as possible of power in the executive and judicial, as well as the legislative departments of the state.

These patrician families have also appeared in every instance to be equally jealous of each other, and to have contrived, by blending lot and choice, by mixing various bodies in the elections to the same offices, and even by a resort to the horrors of an inquisition, to guard against the sin that so easily besets them, of being wholly influenced and governed by a junto or oligarchy of a few among themselves.

We have seen no one government in which is a distinct separation of the legislative from the executive power, and of the judicial from both, or in which any attempt has been made to balance these powers with one another, or to form an equilibrium between the one, the few, and the many, for the purpose of enacting and executing equal laws, by common consent, for the general interest, excepting in England.

Shall we conclude, from these melancholy observations, that human nature is incapable of liberty, that no honest equality can be preserved in society, and that such forcible causes are always at work as must reduce all men to a submission to despotism, monarchy, oligarchy, or aristocracy?

By no means. We have seen one of the first nations in Europe, possessed of ample and fertile territories at home and extensive dominions abroad, of a commerce with the whole world, immense wealth, and the greatest naval power which ever belonged to any nation, which has still preserved the power of the people by the equilibrium we are contending for, by the trial by jury, and by constantly refusing a standing army.1 The people of England alone, by preserving their share in the legislature, at the expense of the blood of heroes and patriots, have enabled their king to curb the nobility, without giving him a standing army.

After all, let us compare every constitution we have seen with those of the United States of America, and we shall have no reason to blush for our country. On the contrary, we shall feel the strongest motives to fall upon our knees, in gratitude to heaven for having been graciously pleased to give us birth and education in that country, and for having destined us to live under her laws! We shall have reason to exult, if we make our comparison with England and the English constitution. Our people are undoubtedly sovereign; all the landed and other property is in the hands of the citizens; not only their representatives, but their senators and governors, are annually chosen; there are no hereditary titles, honors, offices, or distinctions; the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are carefully separated from each other; the powers of the one, the few, and the many are nicely balanced in the legislatures; trials by jury are preserved in all their glory, and there is no standing army; the habeas corpus is in full force; the press is the most free in the world. Where all these circumstances take place, it is unnecessary to add that the laws alone can govern.

CHAPTER IV.

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS.

DR. SWIFT.

The authority of legislators and philosophers, in support of the system we contend for, is not difficult to find. The greatest lights of humanity, ancient and modern, have approved it, which renders it difficult to explain how it comes, in this enlightened age, to be called in question, as it certainly has been, by others as well as M. Turgot. I shall begin with one, who, though seldom quoted as a legislator, appears to have considered this subject, and to have furnished arguments enough forever to determine the question. Dr. Swift observes,* “that the best legislators of all ages agree in this, that the absolute power, which originally is in the whole body, is ‘a trust too great to be committed to any one man or assembly;’ and, therefore, in their several institutions of government, power, in the last resort, was always placed by them in balance among the one, the few, and the many; ‘and it will be an eternal rule in politics among every free people, that there is a balance of power to be carefully held by every state within itself.’

“A mixed government, partaking of the known forms received in the schools, is by no means of Gothic invention, but hath place in nature and reason, and seems very well to agree with the sentiments of most legislators. . . . For, not to mention the several republics of this composition in Gaul and Germany, described by Cæsar and Tacitus, Polybius tells us, the best government is that which consists of three forms, regis, optimatium, et populi imperio.† Such was that of Sparta in its primitive institution by Lycurgus, who, observing the corruptions and depravations to which every one of these was subject, compounded his scheme out of all; so that it was made up of reges, seniores, et populus. Such also was the state of Rome under its consuls; and such, at Carthage, was the power in the last resort; they had their kings, senate, and people.” A limited and divided power seems to have been the most ancient and inherent principle, both of the Greeks and Italians, in matters of government. “The difference between the Grecian monarchies and Italian republics was not very great. The power of those Grecian princes, who came to the siege of Troy, was much of a size with that of the kings of Sparta, the archon of Athens, the suffetes at Carthage, and the consuls at Rome.” Theseus established at Athens rather a mixed monarchy than a popular state, assigning to himself the guardianship of the laws and the chief command in war. This institution continued during the series of kings to the death of Codrus, from whom Solon was descended,

“Who, finding the people engaged in two violent factions, of the poor and the rich, and in great confusion, refusing the monarchy which was offered him, chose rather to cast the government after another model, wherein he made due provision for settling the balance of power, choosing a senate of four hundred, and disposing the magistracies and offices according to men’s estates; leaving to the multitude their votes in electing, and the power of judging certain processes by appeal. This council of four hundred was chosen, one hundred out of each tribe, and seems to have been a body representative of the people, though the people collective reserved a share of power to themselves.”

“In all free states, the evil to be avoided is tyranny; that is to say, the summa imperii, or unlimited power, solely in the hands of the one, the few, or the many.”

“Though we cannot prolong the period of a commonwealth beyond the decree of heaven or the date of its nature, any more than human life beyond the strength of the seminal virtue, yet we may manage a sickly constitution, and preserve a strong one; we may watch, and prevent accidents; we may turn off a great blow from without, and purge away an ill humor that is lurking within; and, by these and other such methods, render a state long-lived, though not immortal. Yet some physicians have thought, that if it were practicable to keep the several humors of the body in an exact balance of each with its opposite, it might be immortal; and so perhaps would a political body, if the balance of power could be always held exactly even.”

All independent bodies of men seem naturally to divide the three powers, of the one, the few, and the many. A free people met together, as soon as they fall into any acts of civil society, do of themselves divide into three ranks. “The first is that of some one eminent spirit, who, having signalized his valor and fortune in defence of his country, or, by the practice of popular arts at home, comes to have great influence on the people, to grow their leader in warlike expeditions, and to preside, after a sort, in their civil assemblies. And this is grounded upon the principles of nature and common reason, which, in all difficulties or dangers, where prudence or courage is required, do rather incite us to fly for counsel or assistance to a single person, than a multitude. The second is, of such men, who have acquired large possessions, and, consequently, dependencies, or descend from ancestors who have left them great inheritances, together with an hereditary authority; these, easily uniting in opinions, and acting in concert, begin to enter upon measures for securing their properties, which are best upheld by preparing against invasions from abroad and maintaining peace at home; this commences a great council or senate for the weighty affairs of the nation. The last division is of the mass of the people, whose part of power is great and indisputable, whenever they can unite, either collectively or by deputation, to exert it.”

“The true meaning of a balance of power is best conceived by considering what the nature of a balance is. It supposes three things,—first, the part which is held, together with the hand that holds it; and then the two scales, with whatever is weighed therein. . . . In a state within itself, the balance must be held by a third hand, who is to deal the remaining power with the utmost exactness into the several scales. . . . The balance may be held by the weakest, who, by his address and conduct, removing from either scale and adding of his own, may keep the scales duly poised.

“When the balance is broken by mighty weights fallen into either scale, the power will never continue long, in equal division, between the two remaining parties; but, till the balance is fixed anew, will run entirely into one.” This is made to appear by the examples of the Decemviri in Rome, the Ephori in Sparta, the four hundred in Athens, the thirty in Athens, and the Dominatio Plebis in Carthage and Argos.

“In Rome, from the time of Romulus to Julius Cæsar, the commons were growing by degrees into power, gaining ground upon the patricians, as it were, inch by inch, till at last they quite overturned the balance, leaving all doors open to popular and ambitious men, who destroyed the wisest republic, and enslaved the noblest people that ever entered on the stage of the world.

“Polybius tells us, that in the second Punic war, the Carthaginians were declining, because the balance was got too much on the side of the people; whereas the Romans were in their greatest vigor, by the power remaining in the senate.”

“The ambition of private men did by no means begin or occasion the war between Pompey and Cæsar, though civil dissensions never fail of introducing and spiriting the ambition of private men; . . . for, while the balance of power is equally held, the ambition of private men, whether orators or commanders, gives neither danger nor fear, nor can possibly enslave their country; but that once broken, the divided parties are forced to unite each to its head, under whose conduct or fortune one side is at first victorious, and at last both are slaves. And to put it past dispute, that the entire subversion of Roman liberty was altogether owing to those measures which had broken the balance between the patricians and plebeians, whereof the ambition of private men was but an effect and consequence, we need only consider, that when the uncorrupted part of the senate, by the death of Cæsar, made one great effort to restore the former liberty, the success did not answer their hopes; but that whole assembly was so sunk in its authority, that those patriots were forced to fly, and give way to the madness of the people, who by their own dispositions, stirred up with the harangues of their orators, were now wholly bent upon single and despotic slavery. Else how could such a profligate as Antony, or a boy of eighteen, like Octavius, ever dare to dream of giving the law to such an empire and people? Wherein the latter succeeded, and entailed the vilest tyranny that Heaven, in its anger, ever inflicted on a corrupt and poisoned people.”1

It is “an error to think it an uncontrollable maxim, that power is always safer lodged in many hands than in one; for if these many hands be made up only from one of those three divisions, it is plain, from the examples produced, and easy to be paralleled in other ages and countries, that they are as capable of enslaving the nation, and of acting all manner of tyranny and oppression, as it is possible for a single person to be, though we should suppose their number not only to be of four or five hundred, but above three thousand.

“In order to preserve a balance in a mixed state, the limits of power deposited with each party ought to be ascertained and generally known. The defect of this is the cause that introduces those strugglings in a state about prerogative and liberty; about encroachments of the few upon the rights of the many, and of the many upon the privileges of the few; which ever did, and ever will, conclude in a tyranny; first, either of the few or the many, but at last, infallibly, of a single person; for, whichever of the three divisions in a state is upon the scramble for more power than its own, (as one or other of them generally is,) unless due care be taken by the other two, upon every new question that arises, they will be sure to decide in favor of themselves, talk much of inherent right; they will nourish up a dormant power, and reserve privileges in petto, to exert upon occasions, to serve expedients, and to urge upon necessities; they will make large demands and scanty concessions, ever coming off considerable gainers. Thus, at length, the balance is broken, and tyranny let in; from which door of the three it matters not.

“The desires of men are not only exorbitant, but endless; they grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less. Ever since men have been united into governments, the hopes and endeavors after universal monarchy have been bandied among them. . . . The Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans, and the Achaians, several times aimed at the universal monarchy of Greece; the commonwealths of Carthage and Rome affected the universal monarchy of the then known world. In like manner has absolute power been pursued by the several parties of each particular state; wherein single persons have met with most success, though the endeavors of the few and the many have been frequent enough; yet, being neither so uniform in their designs, nor so direct in their views, they neither could manage nor maintain the power they had got, but were deceived by the popularity and ambition of some single person. So that it will be always a wrong step in policy, for the nobles and commons to carry their endeavors after power so far as to overthrow the balance.

“With all respect for popular assemblies be it spoken, it is hard to recollect one folly, infirmity, or vice, to which a single man is subject, and from which a body of commons, either collective or represented, can be wholly exempt. . . . Whence it comes to pass, that in their results have sometimes been found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride; the same blindness, and obstinacy, and unsteadiness; the same ungovernable rage and anger; the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual.

“When a child grows easy and content, by being humored; and when a lover becomes satisfied by small compliances, without farther pursuits; then expect to find popular assemblies content with small concessions. If there could one single example be brought from the whole compass of history, of any one popular assembly who, after beginning to contend for power, ever sat down quietly with a certain share; or of one that ever knew, or proposed, or declared, what share of power was their due; then might there be some hopes that it were a matter to be adjusted by reasonings, conferences, or debates.

“A usurping populace is its own dupe, a mere under-worker, and a purchaser in trust for some single tyrant, whose state and power they advance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct as those worms that die with weaving magnificent habits for beings of a superior order to their own.

“The people are much more dexterous at pulling down and setting up, than at preserving what is fixed; and they are not fonder of seizing more than their own, than they are of delivering it up again to the worst bidder, with their own into the bargain. For although, in their corrupt notions of divine worship, they are apt to multiply their gods; yet their earthly devotion is seldom paid to above one idol at a time, of their own creation, whose oar they pull with less murmuring, and much more skill, than when they share the leading, or even hold the helm.”

It will be perceived by the style, that it is Dr. Swift that has been speaking; otherwise the reader might have been deceived, and imagined that I was entertaining him with further reflections upon the short account previously given, in these letters, of the modern republics. There is not an observation here that is not justified by the history of every government we have considered. How much more maturely had this writer weighed the subject than M. Turgot! Perhaps there are not to be found in any library so many accurate ideas of government, expressed with so much perspicuity, brevity, and precision.

DR. FRANKLIN.

As it is impossible to suppose that M. Turgot intended to recommend to the Americans a simple monarchy or aristocracy, we have admitted, as a supposition the most favorable to him, that, by collecting all authority into one centre, he meant a single assembly of representatives of the people, without a governor, and without a senate; and, although he has not explained, whether he would have the assembly chosen for life or years, we will again admit, as the most benign construction, that he meant the representatives should be annually chosen.

Here we shall be obliged to consider the reputed opinion of another philosopher, I mean Dr. Franklin. I say reputed, because I am not able to affirm that it is really his. It is, however, so generally understood and reported, both in Europe and America, that his judgment was in opposition to two assemblies, and in favor of a single one, that in a disquisition like this it ought not to be omitted. Shortly before the date of M. Turgot’s letter, Dr. Franklin had arrived in Paris with the American constitutions, and among the rest that of Pennsylvania, in which there was but one assembly. It was reported, too, that the doctor had presided in the convention when it was made, and there approved it. M. Turgot, reading over the constitutions, and admiring that of Pennsylvania, was led to censure the rest, which were so different from it. I know of no other evidence that the Doctor ever gave his voice for a single assembly, but the common anecdote which is known to everybody. It is said, that in 1776, in the convention of Pennsylvania, of which the Doctor was president, a project of a form of government by one assembly was before them in debate; a motion was made to add another assembly, under the name of a senate or council. This motion was argued by several members, some for the affirmative, and some for the negative; and before the question was put, the opinion of the president was requested. The president rose, and said, that “two assemblies appeared to him like a practice he had somewhere seen, of certain wagoners, who, when about to descend a steep hill with a heavy load, if they had four cattle, took off one pair from before, and chaining them to the hinder part of the wagon drove them up hill; while the pair before and the weight of the load, overbalancing the strength of those behind, drew them slowly and moderately down the hill.”1

The president of Pennsylvania might, upon such an occasion, have recollected one of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, namely,—“that reaction must always be equal and contrary to action,” or there can never be any rest. He might have alluded to those angry assemblies in the heavens, which so often overspread the city of Philadelphia, fill the citizens with apprehension and terror, threatening to set the world on fire, merely because the powers within them are not sufficiently balanced. He might have recollected, that a pointed rod, a machine as simple as a wagoner, or a monarch, or a governor, would be sufficient at any time, silently and innocently, to disarm those assemblies of all their terrors, by restoring between them the balance of the powerful fluid, and thus prevent the danger and destruction to the properties and lives of men, which often happen for the want of it.

However, allusions and illustrations drawn from pastoral and rural life are never disagreeable, and, in this case, might be as apposite as if they had been taken from the sciences and the skies. Harrington, if he had been present in convention, would have exclaimed, as he did when he mentioned his two girls dividing and choosing a cake, “O! the depth of the wisdom of God, which, in the simple invention of a carter, has revealed to mankind the whole mystery of a commonwealth; which consists as much in dividing and equalizing forces; in controlling the weight of the load and the activity of one part by the strength of another, as it does in dividing and choosing.” Harrington, too, instead of his children dividing and choosing their cake, might have alluded to those attractions and repulsions by which the balance of nature is preserved; or to those centripetal and centrifugal forces by which the heavenly bodies are continued in their orbits, instead of rushing to the sun, or flying off in tangents among comets and fixed stars; impelled or drawn by different forces in different directions, they are blessings to their own inhabitants and the neighboring systems; but if they were drawn only by one, they would introduce anarchy wherever they should go. There is no objection to such allusions, whether simple or sublime, so far as they may amuse the fancy and illustrate an argument; all that is insisted on is, that whatever there is in them of wit or argument, is all in favor of a complication of forces, of more powers than one; of three powers indeed, because a balance can never be established between two orders in society, without a third to aid the weakest.

All that is surprising here is, that the real force of the simile should have been misunderstood; if there is any similitude, or any argument in it, it is clearly in favor of two assemblies. The weight of the load itself would roll the wagon on the oxen and the cattle on one another, in one scene of destruction, if the forces were not divided and the balance formed; whereas, by checking one power by another, all descend the hill in safety, and avoid the danger. It should be remembered, too, that it is only in descending uncommon declivities that this division of strength becomes necessary. In travelling in ordinary plains, and always in ascending mountains, the whole team draws together, and advances faster as well as easier on its journey; it is also certain, there are oftener arduous steeps to mount, which require the united strength of all, with all the skill of the director, than there are precipices to descend, which demand a division of it.

Let us now return to M. Turgot’s idea of a government consisting in a single assembly. He tells us our republics are “founded on the equality of all the citizens, and, therefore, ‘orders’ and ‘equilibriums’ are unnecessary, and occasion disputes.” But what are we to understand here by equality? Are the citizens to be all of the same age, sex, size, strength, stature, activity, courage, hardiness, industry, patience, ingenuity, wealth, knowledge, fame, wit, temperance, constancy, and wisdom? Was there, or will there ever be, a nation, whose individuals were all equal, in natural and acquired qualities, in virtues, talents, and riches? The answer of all mankind must be in the negative. It must then be acknowledged, that in every state, in the Massachusetts, for example, there are inequalities which God and nature have planted there, and which no human legislator ever can eradicate. I should have chosen to have mentioned Virginia, as the most ancient state, or indeed any other in the union, rather than the one that gave me birth, if I were not afraid of putting suppositions which may give offence, a liberty which my neighbors will pardon. Yet I shall say nothing that is not applicable to all the other twelve.

In this society of Massachusettensians then, there is, it is true, a moral and political equality of rights and duties among all the individuals, and as yet no appearance of artificial inequalities of condition, such as hereditary dignities, titles, magistracies, or legal distinctions; and no established marks, as stars, garters, crosses, or ribbons; there are, nevertheless, inequalities of great moment in the consideration of a legislator, because they have a natural and inevitable influence in society. Let us enumerate some of them:—1. There is an inequality of wealth; some individuals, whether by descent from their ancestors, or from greater skill, industry, and success in business, have estates both in lands and goods of great value; others have no property at all; and of all the rest of society, much the greater number are possessed of wealth, in all the variety of degrees between these extremes; it will easily be conceived that all the rich men will have many of the poor, in the various trades, manufactures, and other occupations in life, dependent upon them for their daily bread; many of smaller fortunes will be in their debt, and in many ways under obligations to them; others, in better circumstances, neither dependent nor in debt, men of letters, men of the learned professions, and others, from acquaintance, conversation, and civilities, will be connected with them and attached to them. Nay, farther, it will not be denied, that among the wisest people that live, there is a degree of admiration, abstracted from all dependence, obligation, expectation, or even acquaintance, which accompanies splendid wealth, insures some respect, and bestows some influence. 2. Birth. Let no man be surprised that this species of inequality is introduced here. Let the page in history be quoted, where any nation, ancient or modern, civilized or savage, is mentioned, among whom no difference was made between the citizens, on account of their extraction. The truth is, that more influence is allowed to this advantage in free republics than in despotic governments, or than would be allowed to it in simple monarchies, if severe laws had not been made from age to age to secure it. The children of illustrious families have generally greater advantages of education, and earlier opportunities to be acquainted with public characters, and informed of public affairs, than those of meaner ones, or even than those in middle life; and what is more than all, an habitual national veneration for their names, and the characters of their ancestors described in history, or coming down by tradition, removes them farther from vulgar jealousy and popular envy, and secures them in some degree the favor, the affection, and respect of the public. Will any man pretend that the name of Andros, and that of Winthrop, are heard with the same sensations in any village of New England? Is not gratitude the sentiment that attends the latter, and disgust the feeling excited by the former? In the Massachusetts, then, there are persons descended from some of their ancient governors, counsellors, judges, whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, are remembered with esteem by many living, and who are mentioned in history with applause, as benefactors to the country, while there are others who have no such advantage. May we go a step farther,—Know thyself, is as useful a precept to nations as to men. Go into every village in New England, and you will find that the office of justice of the peace, and even the place of representative, which has ever depended only on the freest election of the people, have generally descended from generation to generation, in three or four families at most. The present subject is one of those which all men respect, and all men deride. It may be said of this part of our nature, as Pope said of the whole:—
- “Of human nature, wit her worst may write,
- We all revere it in our own despite.”
If, as Harrington says, the ten commandments were voted by the people of Israel, and have been enacted as laws by all other nations; and if we should presume to say, that nations had a civil right to repeal them, no nation would think proper to repeal the fifth, which enjoins honor to parents. If there is a difference between right and wrong; if any thing can be sacred; if there is one idea of moral obligation; the decree of nature must force upon every thinking being and upon every feeling heart the conviction that honor, affection, and gratitude are due from children to those who gave them birth, nurture, and education. The sentiments and affections which naturally arise from reflecting on the love, the cares, and the blessings of parents, abstracted from the consideration of duty, are some of the most forcible and most universal. When religion, law, morals, affection, and even fashion, thus conspire to fill every mind with attachment to parents, and to stamp deep upon the heart their impressions, is it to be expected that men should reverence their parents while they live, and begin to despise or neglect their memories as soon as they are dead? This is in nature impossible. On the contrary, every little unkindness and severity is forgotten, and nothing but endearments remembered with pleasure.

The son of a wise and virtuous father finds the world about him sometimes as much disposed as he himself is, to honor the memory of his father; to congratulate him as the successor to his estate; and frequently to compliment him with elections to the offices he held. A sense of duty, his passions and his interest, thus conspiring to prevail upon him to avail himself of this advantage, he finds a few others in similar circumstances with himself; they naturally associate together, and aid each other. This is a faint sketch of the source and rise of the family spirit; very often the disposition to favor the family is as strong in the town, county, province, or kingdom, as it is in the house itself. The enthusiasm is indeed sometimes wilder, and carries away, like a torrent, all before it.1

These observations are not peculiar to any age; we have seen the effects of them in San Marino, Biscay, and the Grisons, as well as in Poland and all other countries. Not to mention any notable examples which have lately happened near us, it is not many months since I was witness to a conversation between some citizens of Massachusetts. One was haranguing on the jealousy which a free people ought to entertain of their liberties, and was heard by all the company with pleasure. In less than ten minutes, the conversation turned upon their governor; and the jealous republican was very angry at the opposition to him. “The present governor,” says he, “has done us such services, that he ought to rule us, he and his posterity after him, for ever and ever.” “Where is your jealousy of liberty?” demanded the other. “Upon my honor,” replies the orator, “I had forgot that; you have caught me in an inconsistency; for I cannot know whether a child of five years old will be a son of liberty or a tyrant.” His jealousy was the dictate of his understanding. His confidence and enthusiasm the impulse of his heart.

The pompous trumpery of ensigns, armorials, and escutcheons are not, indeed, far advanced in America. Yet there is a more general anxiety to know their originals, in proportion to their numbers, than in any nation of Europe; arising from the easier circumstances and higher spirit of the common people. And there are certain families in every state equally attentive to all the proud frivolities of heraldry. That kind of pride, which looks down on commerce and manufactures as degrading, may, indeed, in many countries of Europe, be a useful and necessary quality in the nobility. It may prevent, in some degree, the whole nation from being entirely delivered up to the spirit of avarice. It may be the cause why honor is preferred by some to money. It may prevent the nobility from becoming too rich, and acquiring too large a proportion of the landed property. In America, it would not only be mischievous, but would expose the highest pretensions of the kind to universal ridicule and contempt. Those other hauteurs, of keeping the commons at a distance, and disdaining to converse with any but a few of a certain race, may in Europe be a favor to the people, by relieving them from a multitude of assiduous attentions and humiliating compliances, which would be troublesome. It may prevent the nobles from caballing with the people, and gaining too much influence with them in elections and otherwise. In America, it would justly excite universal indignation; the vainest of all must be of the people, or be nothing. While every office is equally open to every competitor, and the people must decide upon every pretension to a place in the legislature, that of governor and senator, as well as representative, no such airs will ever be endured. At the same time, it must be acknowledged, that some men must take more pains to deserve and acquire an office than others, and must behave better in it, or they will not hold it.

We cannot presume that a man is good or bad, merely because his father was one or the other; and we should always inform ourselves first, whether the virtues and talents are inherited, before we yield our confidence. Wise men beget fools, and honest men knaves; but these instances, although they may be frequent, are not general. If there is often a likeness in feature and figure, there is generally more in mind and heart, because education contributes to the formation of these as well as nature. The influence of example is very great, and almost universal, especially that of parents over their children. In all countries it has been observed, that vices, as well as virtues, very often run down in families from age to age. Any man may go over in his thoughts the circle of his acquaintance, and he will probably recollect instances of a disposition to mischief, malice, and revenge, descending in certain breeds from grandfather to father and son. A young woman was lately convicted at Paris of a trifling theft, barely within the law which decreed a capital punishment. There were circumstances, too, which greatly alleviated her fault; some things in her behavior that seemed innocent and modest; every spectator, as well as the judges, was affected at the scene, and she was advised to petition for a pardon, as there was no doubt it would be granted. “No,” says she; “my grandfather, father, and brother were all hanged for stealing; it runs in the blood of our family to steal, and be hanged. If I am pardoned now, I shall steal again in a few months more inexcusably; and, therefore, I will be hanged now.” An hereditary passion for the halter is a strong instance, to be sure, and cannot be very common; but something like it too often descends, in certain breeds, from generation to generation.

If vice and infamy are thus rendered less odious, by being familiar in a family, by the example of parents and by education, it would be as unhappy as unaccountable, if virtue and honor were not recommended and rendered more amiable to children by the same means.

There are, and always have been, in every state, numbers possessed of some degree of family pride, who have been invariably encouraged, if not flattered in it, by the people. These have most acquaintance, esteem, and friendship with each other, and mutually aid each other’s schemes of interest, convenience, and ambition. Fortune, it is true, has more influence than birth. A rich man, of an ordinary family and common decorum of conduct, may have greater weight than any family merit commonly confers without it.

It will be readily admitted, there are great inequalities of merit, or talents, virtues, services, and what is of more moment, very often of reputation. Some, in a long course of service in an army, have devoted their time, health, and fortunes, signalized their courage and address, exposed themselves to hardships and dangers, lost their limbs, and shed their blood, for the people. Others have displayed their wisdom, learning, and eloquence in council, and in various other ways acquired the confidence and affection of their fellow-citizens to such a degree, that the public have settled into a kind of habit of following their example and taking their advice.

There are a few, in whom all these advantages of birth, fortune, and fame are united.

These sources of inequality, which are common to every people, and can never be altered by any, because they are founded in the constitution of nature; this natural aristocracy among mankind, has been dilated on, because it is a fact essential to be considered in the institution of a government. It forms a body of men which contains the greatest collection of virtues and abilities in a free government, is the brightest ornament and glory of the nation, and may always be made the greatest blessing of society, if it be judiciously managed in the constitution. But if this be not done, it is always the most dangerous; nay, it may be added, it never fails to be the destruction of the commonwealth.

What shall be done to guard against it? Shall they be all massacred? This experiment has been more than once attempted, and once at least executed. Guy Faux attempted it in England; and a king of Denmark,1 aided by a popular party, effected it once in Sweden; but it answered no good end. The moment they were dead another aristocracy instantly arose, with equal art and influence, with less delicacy and discretion, if not principle, and behaved more intolerably than the former. The country, for centuries, never recovered from the ruinous consequences of a deed so horrible, that one would think it only to be met with in the history of the kingdom of darkness.

There is but one expedient yet discovered, to avail the society of all the benefits from this body of men, which they are capable of affording, and at the same time, to prevent them from undermining or invading the public liberty; and that is, to throw them all, or at least the most remarkable of them, into one assembly together, in the legislature; to keep all the executive power entirely out of their hands as a body; to erect a first magistrate over them, invested with the whole executive authority; to make them dependent on that executive magistrate for all public executive employments;1 to give that first magistrate a negative on the legislature, by which he may defend both himself and the people from all their enterprises in the legislature; and to erect on the other side an impregnable barrier against them, in a house of commons, fairly, fully, and adequately representing the people, who shall have the power both of negativing all their attempts at encroachment in the legislature, and of withholding from them and from the crown all supplies, by which they may be paid for their services in executive offices, or even the public service may be carried on to the detriment of the nation.

We have seen, both by reasoning and in experience, what kind of equality is to be found or expected in the simplest people in the world. There is not a city nor a village, any more than a kingdom or a commonwealth, in Europe or America; not a horde, clan, or tribe, among the negroes of Africa, or the savages of North or South America; nor a private club in the world, in which inequalities are not more or less visible. There is, then, a certain degree of weight, which property, family, and merit, will have in the public opinion and deliberations. If M. Turgot had discovered a mode of ascertaining the quantity which they ought to have, and had revealed it to mankind, so that it might be known to every citizen, he would have deserved more of gratitude than is due to all the inventions of philosophers. But, as long as human nature shall have passions and imagination, there is too much reason to fear that these advantages, in many instances, will have more influence than reason and equity can justify.

Let us then reflect, how the single assembly in the Massachusetts, in which our great statesman wishes all authority concentrated, will be composed. There being no senate nor council, all the rich, the honorable, and meritorious will stand candidates for seats in the house of representatives, and nineteen in twenty of them will obtain elections. The house will be found to have all the inequalities in it that prevailed among the people at large. Such an assembly will be naturally divided into three parts. The first is, some great genius,—some one masterly spirit, who unites in himself all the qualities which constitute the natural foundations of authority, such as benevolence, wisdom, and power; and all the adventitious attractions of respect, such as riches, ancestry, and personal merit. All eyes are turned upon him for president or speaker. The second division comprehends a third, or a quarter, or, if you will, a sixth or an eighth of the whole; and consists of those who have the most to boast of resembling their head. In the third class are all the rest, who are nearly on a level in understanding and in all things. Such an assembly has in it, not only all the persons of the nation, who are most eminent for parts and virtues, but all those who are most inflamed with ambition and avarice, and who are most vain of their descent. These latter will, of course, constantly endeavor to increase their own influence, by exaggerating all the attributes they possess, and by augmenting them in every way they can think of; and will have friends, whose only chance of rising into public view will be under their protection, who will be even more active and zealous in their service than themselves. Notwithstanding all the equality that can ever be hoped for among men, it is easy to see that the third class will, in general be but humble imitators and followers of the second. Every man in the second class will have constantly about him a circle of members of the third, who will be his admirers, perhaps afraid of his influence in the districts they represent, or related to him by blood, or connected with him in trade, or dependent upon him for favors. There will be much envy, too, among individuals of the second class, against the speaker, although a sincere veneration is shown him by the majority, and great external respect by all. I said there would be envy; because there will be among the second class several whose fortunes, families, and merits, in the acknowledged judgment of all, approach near to the first; and, from the ordinary illusions of self-love and self-interest, they and their friends will be much disposed to claim the first place as their own right. This will introduce controversy and debate, as well as emulation; and those who wish for the first place, and cannot obtain it, will of course endeavor to keep down the speaker as near upon a level with themselves as possible, by paring away the dignity and importance of his office, as we saw was the case in Venice, Poland, and, indeed, everywhere else.

A single assembly thus constituted, without any counterpoise, balance, or equilibrium, is to have all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial, concentrated in it. It is to make a constitution and laws by its own will, execute those laws at its own pleasure, and adjudge all controversies that arise concerning the meaning and application of them, at its own discretion. What is there to restrain it from making tyrannical laws, in order to execute them in a tyrannical manner? Will it be pretended, that the jealousy and vigilance of the people, and their power to discard them at the next election, will restrain them? Even this idea supposes a balance, an equilibrium, which M. Turgot holds in so much contempt; it supposes the people at large to be a check and control over the representative assembly. But this would be found a mere delusion. A jealousy between the electors and the elected neither ought to exist, nor is it possible to exist. It is a contradiction to suppose that a body of electors should have at one moment a warm affection and entire confidence in a man, so as to intrust him with authority, limited or unlimited, over their lives and fortunes; and the next moment after his election, to commence a suspicion of him, that shall prompt them to watch all his words, actions, and motions,1 and dispose them to renounce and punish him. They choose him, indeed, because they think he knows more, and is better disposed than the generality, and very often even than themselves. Indeed, the best use of a representative assembly, arises from the cordial affection and unreserved confidence which subsists between it and the collective body of the people. It is by such kind and candid intercourse alone, that the wants and desires of the people can be made known, on the one hand, or the necessities of the public communicated or reconciled to them, on the other. In what did such a confidence in one assembly end, in Venice, Geneva, Biscay, Poland, but in an aristocracy and an oligarchy? There is no special providence for Americans, and their nature is the same with that of others.

DR. PRICE.

To demonstrate the necessity of two assemblies in the legislature, as well as of a third branch in it, to defend the executive authority, it may be laid down as a first principle, that neither liberty nor justice can be secured to the individuals of a nation, nor its prosperity promoted, but by a fixed constitution of government, and stated laws, known and obeyed by all. M. Turgot, indeed, censures the “falsity of the notion, so frequently repeated by almost all republican writers, ‘that liberty consists in being subject only to the laws;’ as if a man could be free while oppressed by an unjust law. This would not be true, even if we could suppose that all laws were the work of an assembly of the whole nation; for certainly every individual has his rights, of which the nation cannot deprive him, except by violence and an unlawful use of the general power.”

We often hear and read of free states, a free people, a free nation, a free country, a free kingdom, and even of free republics; and we understand, in general, what is intended, although every man may not be qualified to enter into philosophical disquisitions concerning the meaning, or to give a logical definition of the word liberty.

Our friend Dr. Price has distinguished very well, concerning physical, moral, religious, and civil liberty; and has defined the last to be “the power of a civil society to govern itself, by its own discretion, or by laws of its own making, by the majority, in a collective body, or by fair representation. In every free state every man is his own legislator. Legitimate government consists only in the dominion of equal laws made with common consent, and not in the dominion of any men over other men.”

M. Turgot, however, makes the doctor too great a compliment at the expense of former English writers, when he represents him as “the first of his countrymen who has given a just idea of liberty, and shown the falsity, so often repeated by almost all republican writers, that liberty consists in being subject only to the laws.”

I shall cheerfully agree with M. Turgot, that it is very possible that laws, and even equal laws, made by common consent, may deprive the minority of the citizens of their rights. A society, by a majority, may govern itself, even by equal laws, that is by laws to which all, majority and minority, are equally subject, so as to oppress the minority. It may establish a uniformity in religion; it may restrain trade; it may confine the personal liberty of all equally, and against the judgment of many, even of the best and wisest, without reasonable motives, use, or benefit. We may go farther, and say that a nation may be unanimous in consenting to a law restraining its natural liberty, property, and commerce, and its moral and religious liberties too, to a degree that may be prejudicial to the nation and to every individual in it. A nation of catholics might unanimously consent to prohibit labor upon one half the days in the year, as feast days. The whole American nation might unanimously consent to a Sunday law and a warden act, which should deprive them of the use of their limbs one day in seven. A nation may unanimously agree to a navigation act, which should shackle the commerce of all. Yet Dr. Price’s definition of civil liberty is as liable to this objection as any other. These would be all equal laws made with common consent; these would all be acts of legitimate government. To take in M. Turgot’s idea, then, we must add to Dr. Price’s ideas of equal laws by common consent, this other—for the general interest or the public good. But it is generally supposed that nations understand their own interest better than another; and, therefore, they may be trusted to judge of the public good; and in all the cases above supposed, they will be as free as they desire to be; and, therefore, they may with great propriety be called free nations, and their constitutions free republics. There can be no way of compelling nations to be more free than they choose to be.

But M. Turgot has mistaken the sense of republican writers, especially of the English ones. What republican writers he had in view, I know not. There is none that I remember, of any name, who has given so absurd a definition of liberty. His countryman, Montesquieu, who will scarcely be denominated a republican writer, has said something the most like it; but it is manifest that his meaning was confined to equal laws, made by common consent. Although there may be unjust and unequal laws, obedience to which would be incompatible with liberty; yet no man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws. All other government than that of permanent known laws, is the government of mere will and pleasure, whether it be exercised by one, a few, or many. Republican writers in general, and those of England in particular, have maintained the same principle with Dr. Price, and have said that legitimate governments, or well ordered commonwealths, or well constituted governments, were those where the laws prevailed; they have always explained their meaning to be equal laws made by common consent or the general will—that is to say, made by the majority, and equally binding upon majority and minority. As it is of importance to rescue the good old republican writers from such an imputation, let me beg your patience while we look into some of them.

Aristotle says, that “a government where the laws alone should prevail, would be the kingdom of God.” This indeed shows that this great philosopher had much admiration of such a government. But it is not the assertion that M. Turgot condemns, namely,—that liberty consists in being subject to the laws only.

Aristotle says too, in another place, “Order is law, and it is more proper that law should govern, than any one of the citizens; upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians and the servants of the laws.” These too are very just sentiments, but not a formal definition of liberty.

Livy, too, speaks of happy, prosperous, and glorious times, when “Imperia legum potentiora fuerunt quam hominum.” But he nowhere says that liberty consists in being subject only to the legum imperio.

Sidney says, “No sedition was hurtful to Rome, until, through their prosperity, some men gained a power above the laws.”

In another place he tells us too, from Livy, that some, whose ambition and avarice were impatient of restraint, complained that “leges rem surdam esse, inexorabilem, salubriorem inopi quam potenti.”

And, in another, that “no government was thought to be well constituted, unless the laws prevailed against the commands of men.” But he has nowhere defined liberty to be subjection to the laws only.

Harrington says, “Government de jure, or, according to ancient prudence, is an art, whereby a civil society of men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is an empire of laws and not of men. And government, to define it according to modern prudence, or de facto, is an art by which some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or a few families, may be said to be the empire of men and not of laws.”

Harrington1 agrees, that law proceeds from the will of man, whether a monarch or people; and that this will must have a mover; and that this mover is interest. But the interest of the people is one thing—it is the public interest; and where the public interest governs, it is a government of laws, and not of men. The interest of a king, or of a party, is another thing—it is a private interest; and where private interest governs, it is a government of men, and not of laws. If in England there has ever been any such thing as a government of laws, was it not magna charta? and have not our kings broken magna charta thirty times? Did the law govern when the law was broken? or was that a government of men? On the contrary, hath not magna charta been as often repaired by the people? and, the law being so restored, was it not a government of laws, and not of men? Why have our kings, in so many statutes and oaths engaged themselves to govern by law, if there were not in kings a capacity of governing otherwise? It is true, that laws are neither made by angels, nor by horses, but by men. The voice of the people is as much the voice of men as the voice of a prince is the voice of a man; and yet the voice of the people is the voice of God, which the voice of a prince is not. The government of laws, said Aristotle, is the government of God. In a monarchy, the laws, being made according to the interest of one man, or a few men, must needs be more private and partial than suits with the nature of justice; but in a commonwealth, the laws, being made by the whole people, must come up to the public interest, which is common right and justice; and if a man know not what is his own interest, who should know it? and that which is the interest of the most or greatest number of particular men, being summed up in the common vote, is the public interest.

Sidney says, “Liberty consists solely in an independency on the will of another; and, by a slave, we understand a man who can neither dispose of his person or goods, but enjoys all at the will of his master.” And again, “As liberty consists only in being subject to no man’s will, and nothing denotes a slave but a dependence upon the will of another; if there be no other law in a kingdom but the will of a prince, there is no such thing as liberty.”

M. Turgot might have perceived in these writers that a government of laws and not of men was intended by them as a description of a commonwealth, not a definition of liberty. There may be various degrees of liberty established by the laws, and enjoyed by the citizens, in different commonwealths; but still the general will, as well as the general interest, as far as it is understood by the people, prevails in all that can be denominated free. As the society governs itself, it is free, according to the definition of Dr. Price. The inquiry of these writers, in such passages, was not into the highest point of liberty, or greatest degree of it, which might be established by the general will and the common sense of interest, in their results or laws. They have taken it for granted that human nature is so fond of liberty, that, if the whole society were consulted, a majority would never be found to put chains upon themselves by their own act and voluntary consent.

But all men, as well as republican writers, must agree, that there can be no uninterrupted enjoyment of liberty, nor any good government in society, without laws, or where standing laws do not govern. In despotic states, in simple monarchies, in aristocracies, in democracies, in all possible mixtures of these, the individual continually enjoys the benefit of law, as he does that of light and air, although, in most of those governments, he has no security for the continuance of it. If the laws were all repealed at once, in any great kingdom, and the event made known suddenly to all, scarcely a house in the great cities would remain in possession of its present inhabitants.

The great question therefore is, What combination of powers in society, or what form of government, will compel the formation, impartial execution, and faithful interpretation of good and equal laws, so that the citizens may constantly enjoy the benefit of them, and may be sure of their continuance? The controversy between M. Turgot and me is, whether a single assembly of representatives be this form? He maintains the affirmative. I am for the negative. Because such an assembly will, upon the first day of its existence, be an aristocracy; in a few days, or at least years, an oligarchy; and then it will divide into two or three parties, who will soon have as many armies; after which, when the battle is decided, the victorious general will govern without or with the advice of any council or assembly, as he pleases; or else, if the assembly continues united, it will in time exclude the people from all share even in elections, and make the government hereditary in a few families.

In order to be fully convinced of this, we must take an extensive view of the subject; and the first inquiry should be, what kind of beings men are? You and I admire the fable of Tristram Shandy more than the fable of the Bees, and agree with Butler rather than Hobbes. It is weakness rather than wickedness, which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power. The passions are all unlimited; nature has left them so; if they could be bounded, they would be extinct; and there is no doubt they are of indispensable importance in the present system. They certainly increase too, by exercise, like the body. The love of gold grows faster than the heap of acquisition; the love of praise increases by every gratification, till it stings like an adder, and bites like a serpent; till the man is miserable every moment when he does not snuff the incense. Ambition strengthens at every advance, and at last takes possession of the whole soul so absolutely, that a man sees nothing in the world of importance to others or himself, but in his object. The subtlety of these three passions, which have been selected from all the others because they are aristocratical passions, in subduing all others, and even the understanding itself, if not the conscience too, until they become absolute and imperious masters of the whole mind, is a curious subject of speculation. The cunning with which they hide themselves from others, and from a man himself too; the patience with which they wait for opportunities; the torments they voluntarily suffer for a time, to secure a full enjoyment at length; the inventions, the discoveries, the contrivances they suggest to the understanding, sometimes in the dullest dunces in the world, if they could be described in writing, would pass for great genius.

We are not enough acquainted with the physical or metaphysical effects produced on our bodies or minds, to be able to explain the particular reason why every instance of indulgence strengthens and confirms the subsequent emotions of desire. The cause has hitherto been too deep, remote, and subtle, for the search of corporeal or intellectual microscopes; but the fact is too decided to deceive or escape our observation. Men should endeavor at a balance of affections and appetites, under the monarchy of reason and conscience, within, as well as at a balance of power without. If they surrender the guidance for any course of time to any one passion, they may depend upon finding it, in the end, a usurping, domineering, cruel tyrant. They were intended by nature to live together in society, and in this way to restrain one another, and in general they are a very good kind of creatures; but they know each other’s imbecility so well, that they ought never to lead one another into temptation.* The passion that is long indulged and continually gratified becomes mad; it is a species of delirium; it should not be called guilt, but insanity. But who would trust his life, liberty, and property to a madman or an assembly of them? It would be safer to confide in knaves. Five hundred or five thousand together, in an assembly, are not less liable to this extravagance than one. The nation that commits its affairs to a single assembly, will assuredly find that its passions and desires augment as fast as those of a king. And, therefore, a constitution with a single assembly must be essentially defective.

Others have seen this quality in human nature through a more gloomy medium.

Machiavel says, “those who have written on civil government lay it down as a first principle, and all historians demonstrate the same, that whoever would found a state, and make proper laws for the government of it, must presume that all men are bad by nature; that they will not fail to show that natural depravity of heart whenever they have a fair opportunity;* and that though it may possibly lie for a while concealed, on account of some secret reason, which does not then appear to men of small experience, yet time, which is therefore justly called the father of truth, commonly brings it to light in the end.” Machiavel’s translator remarks, that although this seems a harsh supposition, does not every Christian daily justify the truth of it, by confessing it before God and the world? and are we not expressly told the same in several passages of the Holy Scriptures, and in all systems of human philosophy?

Montesquieu says, “Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it. He pushes on till he comes to something that limits him. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits? To prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary, that, by the very disposition of things, power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as that no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.”

“So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men, that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less. It is hard to recollect one folly, infirmity, or vice, to which a single man is subjected, and from which a body of commons, collective or representative,” (and he might have added a body of nobles,) “can be wholly exempt.” Swift.

“Laws are intended not to trust to what men will do, but to guard against what they may do.” Junius.

“Ogni uomo si fa centro di tutte le combinazioni del globo.”

Beccaria.

“The ambitious deceive themselves, when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means.” Rochefoucauld.

“Experience evinces that the happiest dispositions are not proof against the allurements of power, which has no charms but as it leads on to new advances. Authority endures not the very idea of restraint; nor does it cease to struggle, till it has beaten down every boundary.” De Lolme.

Hobbes, Mandeville, Rochefoucauld, have drawn still more detestable pictures; and Rousseau, in his Inequalities among Mankind, gives a description of a civilized heart, too black and horrible to be transcribed.*

Even our amiable friends, those benevolent Christian philosophers, Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley, acquaint us that they are constrained to believe human nature no better than it should be. The latter says, there is no power on earth but has grown exorbitant when it has met with no control.

The former: “Such are the principles that govern human nature; such the weakness and folly of men; such their love of domination, selfishness, and depravity, that none of them can be raised to an elevation above others, without the utmost danger. The constant experience of the world has verified this, and proved that nothing intoxicates the human mind so much as power. In the establishment, therefore, of civil government, it would be preposterous to rely on the discretion of any men. A people will never oppress themselves or invade their own rights; but if they trust the arbitrary will of a body or succession of men, they trust enemies.”

Shall we say that all these philosophers were ignorant of human nature? With all my soul, I wish it were in my power to quote any passages in history or philosophy, which might demonstrate all these satires on our species to be false. But the phenomena are all in their favor; and the only question to be raised with them is, whether the cause is wickedness, weakness, or insanity?

In all events, we must agree, that human nature is not fit to be trusted with M. Turgot’s system, of all authority in a single assembly.

A single assembly will never be a steady guardian of the laws, if Machiavel is right when he says: “Men are never good but through necessity. On the contrary, when good and evil are left to their choice, and they can practise the latter with impunity, they will not fail to throw every thing into disorder and confusion.1 Hunger and poverty may make men industrious, but laws only can make them good; for, if men were so of themselves, there would be no occasion for laws; but, as the case is far otherwise, they are absolutely necessary. After the Tarquins were dead, who had been such a check upon the nobility, some other expedient was wanting that might have the same effect; so that, after much confusion and disorder, and many dangerous contests between the patricians and plebeians, certain officers, called tribunes, were created for the security of the latter; who, being vested with such privileges and authority as enabled them to become arbiters betwixt those two estates, effectually curbed the insolence of the former.” Or, in the language of Dr. Franklin, the people insisted upon hitching a yoke of cattle behind the wagon, to draw up hill, when the patricians before should attempt to go too fast; or, in the style of Harrington, the commons, finding the patricians disposed to divide the cake unequally, demanded the privilege of choosing.

If Harrington’s authority is not of great weight with some men, the reasons he assigns in support of his judgment are often eternal and unanswerable by any man. In his Oceana, he says: “Be the interest of popular government right reason, a man does not look upon reason as it is right or wrong in itself, but as it makes for him or against him. Wherefore, unless you can show such orders of a government as, like those of God in nature, shall be able to constrain this or that creature to shake off that inclination which is more peculiar to it, and take up that which regards the common good or interest; all this is to no more end, than to persuade every man in a popular government not to carve for himself of that which he desires most, but to be mannerly at the public table, and give the best from himself to decency and the common interest. But that such orders may be established, as may, nay must, give the upper hand in all cases to common right or interest, notwithstanding the nearness of that which sticks to every man in private, and this in a way of equal certainty and facility, is known even to girls; being no other than those which are of common practice with them in divers cases. For example,—two of them have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them. That each of them, therefore, might have that which is due, ‘divide,’ says one, ‘and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose.’ If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough; for the divident, dividing unequally loses, in regard that the other takes the better half; wherefore; she divides equally, and so both have right. And thus, what great philosophers are disputing upon in vain, is brought to light by two harmless girls; even the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing.”

Now, if all authority is to be collected into one central assembly, it will have the whole power of division and choice; and we may easily conjecture what division and choice it will be. It will soon have possession of all the cakes, loaves, and fishes.

Harrington proceeds: “Nor has God, if his works in nature be understood, left so much to mankind to dispute upon, as who shall divide and who choose, but distributed them forever into two orders; whereof the one has the natural right of dividing, and the other of choosing. For example,—a commonwealth is but a civil society of men. Let us take any number of men, as twenty, and immediately make a commonwealth. Twenty men, if they be not all idiots, perhaps if they be, can never come so together but there will be such a difference in them, that about a third will be wiser, or at least less foolish, than all the rest. These, upon acquaintance, though it be but small, will be discovered, and (as stags that have the largest heads) lead the herd. For, while the six, discoursing and arguing one with another, show the eminence of their parts, the fourteen discover things that they never thought on, or are cleared in divers truths which had formerly perplexed them. Wherefore, in matter of common concernment, difficulty, or danger, they hang upon their lips as children upon their fathers; and the influence thus acquired by the six, the eminence of whose parts are found to be a stay and comfort to the fourteen, is the authority of the fathers—auctoritas patrum. Wherefore, this can be no other than a natural aristocracy, diffused by God throughout the whole body of mankind, to this end and purpose; and, therefore, such as the people have not only a natural, but a positive obligation to make use of as their guides; as where the people of Israel are commanded to take wise men, and understanding, and known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them. The six then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate; not by hereditary right, or in regard to the greatness of their estates only, which would tend to such power as might force or draw the people; but by election for their excellent parts, which tends to the advancement of the influence of their virtue or authority, that leads the people. Wherefore, the office of the senate is not to be commanders, but counsellors of the people; and that which is proper to counsellors, is first to debate, and afterwards to give advice in the business whereon they have debated; whence the decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called—senatus consulta; and these, being maturely framed, it is their duty to propose to the people. Wherefore, the senate is no more than the debate of the commonwealth. But to debate is to discern, or put a difference between things, that, being alike, are not the same; or it is separating and weighing this reason against that, and that reason against this; which is dividing.

“The senate, then, having divided, who shall choose? Ask the girls; for, if she that divided must have chosen also, it had been little worse for the other, in case she had not divided at all, but kept the whole cake to herself; in regard that, being to choose too, she divided accordingly.

“Wherefore, if the senate have any further power than to divide, the commonwealth can never be equal. But, in a commonwealth consisting of a single council, there is no other to choose than that which divided. Whence it is, that such a council fails not to scramble, that is, to be factious; there being no other dividing of the cake, in that case, but among themselves; nor is there any other remedy, but to have another council to choose. The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind, nor of a commonwealth. Wherefore, seeing we have granted interest to be reason, they must not choose, lest it put out their light. But as the council dividing consists of the wisdom of the commonwealth, so the assembly or council choosing should consist of the interest of the commonwealth; as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted as it can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people. But, in the present case, the six dividing, and the fourteen choosing, must of necessity take in the whole interest of the twenty. Dividing and choosing, in the language of a commonwealth, is debating and resolving; and whatsoever, upon debate of the senate, is proposed to the people, and resolved by them, is enacted by the authority of the fathers, and by the power of the people—auctoritate patrum et jussu populi; which concurring make a law.”

Upon these principles, and to establish a method of enacting laws that must of necessity be wise and equal, the people of most of the United States of America agreed upon that division of the legislative power into two houses, the house of representatives and the senate, which have given so much disgust to M. Turgot. Harrington will show us equally well the propriety and necessity of the other branch, the governor. But, before we proceed to that, it may be worth while to observe the similitude between this passage and some of those sentiments and expressions of Swift, which were quoted in a former letter; and there is in the Idea of a Patriot King, written by his friend, Lord Bolingbroke, a passage to the same purpose, so nobly expressed, that I cannot forbear the pleasure of transcribing it. “It seems to me that, in order to maintain the moral system of the universe at a certain point, far below that of ideal perfection, (for we are made capable of conceiving what we are not capable of attaining,) it has pleased the Author of Nature to mingle, from time to time, among the societies of men a few, and but a few of those on whom he has been graciously pleased to confer a larger proportion of the ethereal spirit, than in the ordinary course of his providence he bestows on the sons of men. These are they who engross almost the whole reason of the species. Born to direct, to guide, and to preserve, if they retire from the world their splendor accompanies them, and enlightens even the darkness of their retreat. If they take a part in public life, the effect is never indifferent. They either appear the instruments of Divine vengeance, and their course through the world is marked by desolation and oppression, by poverty and servitude; or they are the guardian angels of the country they inhabit, studious to avert the most distant evil, and to procure peace, plenty, and the greatest of human blessings, liberty.”

If there is, then, in society such a natural aristocracy as these great writers pretend, and as all history and experience demonstrate, formed partly by genius, partly by birth, and partly by riches, how shall the legislator avail himself of their influence for the equal benefit of the public? and how, on the other hand, shall he prevent them from disturbing the public happiness? I answer, by arranging them all, or at least the most conspicuous of them, together in one assembly, by the name of a senate; by separating them from all pretensions to the executive power, and by controlling in the legislative their ambition and avarice, by an assembly of representatives on one side, and by the executive authority on the other. Thus you will have the benefit of their wisdom, without fear of their passions. If among them there are some of Lord Bolingbroke’s guardian angels, there will be some of his instruments of Divine vengeance too. The latter will be here restrained by a threefold tie,—by the executive power, by the representative assembly, and by their peers in the senate. But if these were all admitted into a single popular assembly, the worst of them might in time obtain the ascendency of all the rest. In such a single assembly, as has been observed before, almost the whole of this aristocracy will make its appearance, being returned members of it by the election of the people. These will be one class. There will be another set of members, of middling rank and circumstances, who will justly value themselves upon their independence, their integrity, and unbiased affection to their country, and will pique themselves upon being under no obligation. But there will be a third class, every one of whom will have his leader among the members of the first class, whose character he will celebrate, and whose voice he will follow; and this party, after a course of time, will be the most numerous. The question then will be, whether this aristocracy in the house will unite or divide? and it is too obvious, that destruction to freedom must be the consequence equally of their union or of their division. If they unite generally in all things, as much as they certainly will in respecting each other’s wealth, birth, and parts, and conduct themselves with prudence, they will strengthen themselves by insensible degrees, by playing into each other’s hands more wealth and popularity, until they become able to govern elections as they please, and rule the people at discretion. An independent member will be their aversion; all their artifices will be employed to destroy his popularity among his constituents, and bring in a disciple of their own in his place.

But if they divide, each party will, in a course of time, have the whole house, and consequently the whole state, divided into two factions, which will struggle in words, in writing, and at last in arms, until Cæsar or Pompey must be emperor, and entail an endless line of tyrants on the nation. But long before this catastrophe, and indeed through every scene of the drama, the laws, instead of being permanent, and affording constant protection to the lives, liberties, and properties of the citizens, will be alternately the sport of contending factions, and the mere vibrations of a pendulum. From the beginning to the end it will be a government of men, now of one set, and then of another; but never a government of laws.

CHAPTER V.

WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT.

MACHIAVEL.

Discourses upon the First Decade of Livy.*

The whole chapter is very much to the purpose, but the following paragraphs more particularly so:—

“According to some authors, there are but three sorts of government, namely,—monarchy or principality, aristocracy, and democracy; and that those who intend to erect a new state, must have recourse to some one of these which they like best. Others, and, as many think, with more judgment, say there are six sorts; three of which are very bad, and the other three good in themselves, but liable to be so corrupted that they may become the worst. The three good sorts have been just now mentioned. The other three proceed from these; and every one of them bears such a resemblance to that on which it respectively depends, that the transition from one to the other is short and easy; for monarchy often degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into licentious anarchy and confusion. So that, whoever sets up any one of the former three sorts of government, may assure himself it will not be of any long duration; for no precaution will be sufficient to prevent its falling into the other that is analogous to it, on account of the affinity which there seems to be in this case betwixt perfection and imperfection.

“This variety of governments among mankind appears to have been the effect of chance. For in the beginning of the world, the inhabitants being few, they some time lived separate from each other, like beasts; but afterwards, as they multiplied, they began to unite for their mutual defence, and put themselves under the protection of such as were most eminent amongst them for courage and strength, whom they engaged to obey and acknowledge as their chiefs. Hence arose the distinction betwixt honest and dishonest, just and unjust. For when any one injured his benefactor, his ingratitude excited a sort of fellow-feeling and indignation in others, as well as kindness and respect for those that behaved differently; and, as they considered that they might, some time or other, perhaps, be treated in the same manner themselves, if proper measures were not taken to prevent it, they thought fit to make laws for the reward of good men, and the punishment of offenders. This first gave rise to justice in the world; and from this consideration it came to pass in process of time, that, in the election of a new chief, they had not so much regard to courage and bodily strength, as to wisdom and integrity. But, afterwards, as this kind of government gradually became hereditary, instead of elective, the heirs of these chieftains soon began to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors, and to behave themselves as if they thought the main duty of a prince consisted in surpassing all other men in luxury, extravagance, effeminacy, and every sort of voluptuousness; by which, beginning to be odious to their subjects, they, in turn, became fearful of them, and quickly passing from distrust to the commission of offences, there sprung up at once a tyranny. This first occasioned combinations and conspiracies for the destruction of princes; not amongst the weak and pusillanimous part of their subjects; but among such as, being more eminent for their generosity, magnanimity, riches, and birth, could not endure any longer to submit to the shameful life of such sovereigns.

“The multitude, therefore, swayed by the authority of the nobles, rose in arms against their prince; and, being freed from his yoke, they transferred their allegiance to their deliverers, who, being thoroughly disgusted at monarchy, changed the form of government, and took it into their own hands. At first, they conducted both themselves and the state according to the plan they had formed, preferring the common good to any particular advantage; and behaving, in private as well as public affairs, with assiduity and moderation, whilst the remembrance of their past sufferings continued fresh upon their minds. But this authority afterwards devolving upon their sons, who had not known changes of fortune, nor experienced evil, these began to grow so dissatisfied with that sort of civil equality, that they cast off all restraint, and giving themselves up to rapine, ambition, and lust, soon changed the government again from aristocracy into an oligarchy. Their administration, however, becoming as insupportable, in a while, as the tyranny of the other had formerly been, the people naturally began to look out for some deliverer; and, having fixed upon a leader, they put themselves under his banners, and destroyed the oligarchy. But when they had done this, and came to reflect upon the oppressions they sustained under a tyrant, they resolved never to be again governed by any one man, and therefore agreed to set up a popular government; which was constituted in such a manner, that no authority was vested either in a prince or in a powerful few.

“Now, as all new establishments are held in some degree of reverence and veneration at first, this form subsisted for some time; though no longer than those people lived who had been the founders of it; for, after their death, their descendants degenerated into licentiousness, and such a contempt for all authority and distinction, that, every man living after his own caprice, there was nothing to be seen but confusion and violence. So that, either by the advice of some good and respectable man, or compelled by the absolute necessity of providing a remedy for these disorders and enormities, they at last determined once more to submit to the dominion of one. From which state they fell again in time, through the same gradations, and from the above-mentioned causes into misrule and licentiousness.

“And this is the rotation to which all states are subject; nevertheless, they cannot often revert to the same kind of government, because it is not possible that they should so long exist as to undergo many of these mutations. For it frequently happens that, when a state is laboring under such convulsions, and is destitute both of strength and counsel, it falls a prey to some other neighboring community or nation, that is better governed; otherwise, it might go the round of the several above-mentioned revolutions to infinity.

“All these sorts of government, then, in my opinion, are infirm and insecure; the three former from the usual shortness of their duration, and the three latter from the malignity of their own principles. The wisest legislators, therefore, being aware of these defects, never established any one of them in particular, but contrived another, that partakes of them all, consisting of a prince, lords, and commons, which they looked upon as more firm and stable, because every one of these members would be a check upon the other; and of those legislators, Lycurgus certainly merits the highest praise, who constituted an establishment of this kind in Sparta, which lasted above eight hundred years, to his own great honor, as well as the tranquillity of the citizens.

“Very different was the fate of the government established by Solon at Athens, which, being a simple democracy only, was of so short continuance, that it gave way to the tyranny of Pisistratus before the death of the legislator. And though, indeed, the heirs of that tyrant were expelled about forty years after, and the Athenians not only recovered their liberty, but reëstablished Solon’s laws and plan of government; yet they did not maintain it above one hundred years, notwithstanding they made several new regulations to restrain the insolence of the nobles and the licentiousness of the commons, the necessity of which Solon had not foreseen. So that, for want of tempering his democracy with a share of aristocracy and princely power, it was of short duration in comparison of the constitution of Sparta.

“But, to return to Rome. Though that city had not a Lycurgus to model its constitution at first, in such a manner as might preserve its liberty for a long course of time; yet, so many were the accidents which happened in the contests betwixt the patricians and plebeians, that chance effected what the lawgiver had not provided for; so that if it was not lucky at the beginning, it became so after a while; for though the first laws were deficient, yet they were not absolutely out of the right road to lead to its future perfection; since not only Romulus, but all the rest of the kings that succeeded him, made many and good laws, and such as were well calculated for the support of liberty. But, as it was their intention to found a monarchy, and not a republic; when that city had shaken off the yoke of a tyrant, there seemed to be many provisions still wanting for the further maintenance of its freedom. And though the kings finally lost their power, by the ways and means above mentioned, yet those who had chiefly contributed to it, immediately created two consuls to supply the place of royalty; by which it came to pass, that the name alone, and not the authority of princes was extinguished; so that the supreme power being lodged only in the consuls and senate, the government consisted of no more than two of the three estates, which we have spoken of before, that is, of royalty and aristocracy; it remained, therefore, still necessary to admit the people into some share of the government; and the patricians growing so insolent in time, (as I shall show hereafter,) that the plebeians could no longer endure it, the latter took arms, and obliged them to relinquish part of their authority, lest they should lose the whole. On the other hand, the consuls and senators still retained so much power in the commonwealth as enabled them to support their rank and dignity with honor. This struggle gave birth to certain officers, called tribunes of the people; after the creation of whom, that state became more firm and compact, every one of the three degrees above mentioned having its proper share in the government. And so propitious was fortune to it, that although it was changed from a monarchy into an aristocracy, and afterwards into a democracy, by the steps and for the reasons already assigned, yet the royal power was never entirely abolished and given to the patricians, nor that of the patricians wholly to the plebeians. On the contrary, the authority of the three estates being duly proportioned and mixed together, made it a perfect commonwealth. And this was owing in a great measure, if not altogether, to the dissensions that happened betwixt the patricians and plebeians, as shall be shown more at large in the following chapters.

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

“Some small numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock, the right which they had of governing themselves and children, and, by common consent, joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole; and this, men call perfect democracy. Others chose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy. When one man excelled all others, the government was put into his hands under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and by far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting these simple species, did form governments, mixed or composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter, which commonly received their respective denomination from the great part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame, as they were well or ill proportioned.” p. 22, § 9.

“The best governments of the world have been composed of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.”

“As for democracy, I believe it can suit only with the convenience of a small town, accompanied with such circumstances as are seldom found. But this no way obliges men to run into the other extreme, inasmuch as the variety of forms, between mere democracy and absolute monarchy, is almost infinite. And if I should undertake to say, there never was a good government in the world that did not consist of the three simple species of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, I think I might make it good. This at the least is certain, that the government of the Hebrews, instituted by God, had a judge, the great sanhedrim, and general assemblies of the people. Sparta had two kings, a senate of twenty-eight chosen men and the like assemblies. All the Dorian cities had a chief magistrate, a senate, and occasional assemblies. The cities of Ionia, Athens, and others, had an Archon, the Areopagi, &c., and all judgments concerning matters of the greatest importance, as well as the election of magistrates, were referred to the people. Rome, in the beginning, had a king and a senate, while the election of kings and judgments upon appeals remained in the people; afterwards, consuls representing kings and vested with equal power, a more numerous senate, and more frequent meetings of the people. Venice has at this day a duke, the senate of the pregadi, and the great assembly of the nobility, which is the whole city; the rest of the inhabitants being only incolæ, not cives; and those of the other cities or countries are their subjects, and do not participate in the government.

“Genoa is governed in like manner. Lucca not unlike to them. Germany is at this day governed by an emperor, the princes or great lords in their several precincts; the cities by their own magistrates; and by general diets, in which the whole power of the nation resides, and where the emperor, princes, nobility, and cities have their places in person, or by their deputies. All the northern nations which, upon the dissolution of the Roman empire, possessed the best provinces that had composed it, were under that form, which is usually called the Gothic polity. They had king, lords, commons, diets, assemblies of estates, cortes, and parliaments, in which the sovereign powers of those nations did reside, and by which they were exercised. The like was practised in Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, Poland; and, if things are changed in some of those places within a few years, they must give better proofs of having gained by the change, than are yet seen in the world, before I think myself obliged to change my opinion.

“Some nations, not liking the name of king, have given such a power as kings enjoyed in other places to one or more magistrates, either limited to a certain time, or left to be perpetual, as best pleased themselves; others, approving the name, made the dignity purely elective. Some have in their elections principally regarded one family as long as it lasted; others considered nothing but the fitness of the person, and reserved to themselves a liberty of taking where they pleased. Some have permitted the crown to be hereditary as to its ordinary course; but restrained the power, and instituted officers to inspect the proceedings of kings, and to take care that the laws were not violated. Of this sort were the Ephori of Sparta, the Maires du Palais, and afterwards the constable of France, the justiciar in Aragon, the reichshofmeeter in Denmark, the high steward in England; and in all places, such assemblies as are beforementioned under several names, who had the power of the whole nation, &c.” p. 138, ch. ii. § 16.

“It is confessed, that a pure democracy can never be good, unless for a small town, &c.” p. 147, § 18.

“As to popular government in the strictest sense, that is, pure democracy, where the people in themselves, and by themselves, perform all that belongs to government, I know of no such thing; and, if it be in the world, have nothing to say for it.

“If it be said that those governments in which the democratical part governs most, do more frequently err in the choice of men, or the means of preserving that purity of manners which is required for the well-being of a people, than those wherein aristocracy prevails, I confess it, and that in Rome and Athens, the best and wisest men did for the most part incline to aristocracy. Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, and others were of this sort. But if our author there seek patrons for his absolute monarchy, he will find none but Phalaris, Agathocles, Dionysius, Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, with the corrupted crew of mercenary rascals who did, or endeavored to set them up; these are they, quibus ex honesto nulla est spes; they abhor the dominion of the law, because it curbs their vices, and make themselves subservient to the lusts of a man who may nourish them.” p. 161, ch. ii. § 19.

“Being no way concerned in the defence of democracy, &c., I may leave our knight, like Don Quixote, fighting against the phantasms of his own brain, and saying what he pleases against such governments as never were, unless in such a place as San Marino, near Sinigaglia, in Italy, where a hundred clowns govern a barbarous rock that no man invades, and relates nothing to our question.” p. 165, § 21.

The republic of San Marino, next to that of Millingen in Switzerland, is the smallest republic in Europe. The limits of it extend no farther than the base of the mountain on which it is seated. Its insignificance is its security. No neighboring prince ever thought it worth his while to destroy the independency of such a beehive.*

“However, more ignorance cannot be expressed, than by giving the name of democracy to those governments that are composed of the three simple species, as we have proved that all the good ones have ever been; for, in a strict sense, it can only suit with those where the people retain to themselves the administration of the supreme power; and more largely, when the popular part, as in Athens, greatly overbalances the other two, and the denomination is taken from the prevailing part.” p. 258.

MONTESQUIEU.

Spirit of Laws.† —Of the Constitution of England.

“In every government there are three sorts of power,—the legislative; the executive, in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive, in regard to things that depend on the civil law.

“By virtue of the first, (that is, the legislative power,) the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other simply the executive power of the state.

“The political liberty of the citizen, is a tranquillity of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted, as that one citizen need not be afraid of another citizen.

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate, or the same senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

“Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the citizens would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would then be legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.

“There would be an end of every thing (tout seroit perdu) were the same man, or the same body, whether of princes, of the nobles, or of the people, to exercise those three powers,—that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.

“Most kingdoms in Europe enjoy a moderate government; because the prince who is invested with the two first powers, leaves the third to his subjects. In Turkey, where these three powers are united in the sultan’s person, the subjects groan under the weight of a most frightful oppression. In the republics of Italy, where these three powers are united, there is less liberty than in our monarchies. Hence their government is obliged to have recourse to as violent methods for its support as even that of the Turks; witness the state inquisitors at Venice, and the lion’s mouth, into which every informer may at all hours throw his written accusations. What a situation must the poor citizen be in under those poor republics! The same body of magistrates are possessed, as executors of the laws, of the whole power they have given themselves in quality of legislators. They may plunder the state by their general determinations; and, as they have likewise the judiciary power in their hands, every private citizen may be ruined by their particular decisions. The whole power is here united in one body; and, though there is no external pomp that indicates a despotic sway, yet the people feel the effects of it every moment.

“Hence it is, that many of the princes of Europe, whose aim has been levelled at arbitrary power, have constantly set out with uniting in their own persons all the branches of magistracy, and all the great offices of state.

“I allow, indeed, that the mere hereditary aristocracy of the Italian republics does not answer exactly to the despotic power of the eastern princes. The number of magistrates sometimes softens the power of the magistracy; the whole body of the nobles do not always concur in the same designs; and different tribunals are erected, that temper each other. Thus, at Venice, the legislative power is in the council, the executive in the pregadi, and the judiciary in the quarantia. But the mischief is, that these different tribunals are composed of magistrates all belonging to the same body, which constitutes almost one and the same power.

“The judiciary power ought not to be given to a standing senate; it should be exercised by persons taken from the body of the people, as at Athens, at certain times of the year, and pursuant to a form and manner prescribed by law, in order to erect a tribunal that should last only as long as necessity requires.

“By this means, the power of judging, a power so terrible to mankind, not being annexed to any particular state or profession, becomes, as it were, invisible. People have not then the judges continually present to their view. They fear the office, but not the magistrate.

“In accusations of a deep or criminal nature, it is proper the person accused should have the privilege of choosing, in some measure, his judges, in concurrence with the law; or, at least, he should have a right to except against so great a number, that the remaining part may be deemed his own choice. The other two powers may be given rather to magistrates, or permanent bodies, because they are not exercised on any private subject; one being no more than the general will of the state, and the other the execution of that general will.

“But, though the tribunals ought not to be fixed, yet the judgments ought, and to such a degree as to be always conformable to the exact letter of the law. Were they to be the private opinion of the judge, people would then live in society without knowing exactly the obligations it lays them under.

“The judges ought, likewise, to be in the same station as the accused, or, in other words, his peers, to the end that he may not imagine he is fallen into the hands of persons inclined to treat him with rigor.

“If the legislative leaves the executive power in possession of a right to imprison those subjects who can give security for their good behavior, there is an end of liberty; unless they are taken up in order to answer, without delay, to a capital crime; in this case they are really free, being subject only to the power of the law.

“But should the legislative think itself in danger, by some secret conspiracy against the state, or by a correspondence with a foreign enemy, it might authorize the executive power, for a short and limited time, to imprison suspected persons, who, in that case, would lose their liberty only for a while, to preserve it for ever. And this is the only reasonable method that can be substituted to the tyrannical magistracy of the Ephori, and to the state inquisitors of Venice, who are also despotical.

“As, in a free state, every man, who is supposed a free agent, ought to be his own governor; so the legislative power should reside in the whole body of the people. But since this is impossible in large states, and in small ones is subject to many inconveniences, it is fit the people should execute by their representatives, what they cannot execute by themselves.

“The inhabitants of a particular town are much better acquainted with its wants and interests than with those of other places; and are better judges of the capacity of their neighbors than of that of the rest of their countrymen. The members, therefore, of the legislature should not be chosen from the general body of the nation; but it is proper that, in every considerable place, a representative should be elected by the inhabitants.

“The great advantage of representatives is, their being capable of discussing affairs; for this the people collectively are extremely unfit, which is one of the greatest inconveniences of a democracy.

“It is not at all necessary that the representatives, who have received a general instruction from their electors, should wait to be particularly instructed on every affair, as is practised in the diets of Germany. True it is that, by this way of proceeding, the speeches of the deputies might, with greater propriety, be called the voice of the nation. But, on the other hand, this would throw them into infinite delays; would give each deputy a power of controlling the assembly; and, on the most urgent and pressing occasions, the springs of the nation might be stopped by a single caprice.”

HARRINGTON.

In searching for the principles of government, we may divide them into two kinds; the principles of authority and the principles of power. The first are virtues of the mind and heart, such as wisdom, prudence, courage, patience, temperance, justice, &c. The second are the goods of fortune, such as riches, extraction, knowledge, and reputation. I rank knowledge among the goods of fortune, because it is the effect of education, study, and travel, which are either accidents, or usual effects of riches or birth, and is by no means necessarily connected with wisdom or virtue; but, as it is universally admired and respected by the people, it is clearly a principle of power. The same may be said of reputation, which, abstracted from all consideration whether it is merited or not, well, or ill-founded, is another source of power.

Riches will hold the first place, in civilized societies, at least, among the principles of power, and will often prevail, not only over all the principles of authority, but over all the advantages of birth, knowledge, and fame. For, as Harrington says, “Men are hung upon riches; not of choice, as upon the other, but of necessity, and by the teeth. Forasmuch as he who wants bread, is his servant that will feed him; and if a man thus feeds a whole people, they are under his empire.” It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction. And, indeed, as Harrington says, “an army may as well consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without soldiers, as a commonwealth consist of a people without a gentry, or of a gentry without a people.”

“Let states take heed,” says Lord Bacon, “how their nobility and gentlemen multiply too fast, for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain driven out of heart, and, in effect, but a gentleman’s laborer. How shall the plough, then, be kept in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings? how shall the country attain to the character which Virgil gives of ancient Italy, Terra potens armis, atque ubere gleba? how, but by the balance of dominion or property?”

Notwithstanding M. Turgot’s aversion to balances, Harrington discovered, and made out, as Toland, his biographer, informs us, that “empire follows the balance of property, whether lodged in one, a few, or many hands.” A noble discovery, of which the honor solely belongs to him, as much as the circulation of the blood to Harvey, printing to Laurence Coster, or the invention of guns, compasses, or optic glasses to the several authors. If this balance is not the foundation of all politics, as Toland asserts, it is of so much importance, that no man can be thought a master of the subject, without having well weighed it. M. Turgot, it is plain, had not the least idea of it.

“Tillage,” says Harrington, “bringing up a good soldiery, brings up a good commonwealth; for, where the owner of the plough comes to have the sword too, he will use it in defence of his own. Whence it has happened, that the people of England, in proportion to their property, have been always free; and the genius of this nation has ever had some resemblance with that of ancient Italy, which was wholly addicted to commonwealths, and where Rome came to make the greatest account of her rustic tribes, and to call her consuls from the plough. For, in the way of parliaments, which was the government of this realm, men of country lives have been still entrusted with the greatest affairs, and the people have constantly had an aversion to the ways of the court. Ambition, loving to be gay and to fawn, has been a gallantry looked upon as having something in it of the livery; and husbandry, or the country way of life, though of a grosser spinning, as the best stuff of a commonwealth, according to Aristotle, such a one being the most obstinate assertress of her liberty, and the least subject to innovation or turbulency. Commonwealths, upon which the city life has had the stronger influence, as Athens, have seldom or never been quiet; but, at the best are found to have injured their own business by overdoing it. Whence, the Urban tribes of Rome, consisting of the turba forensis, and libertins, that had received their freedom by manumission, were of no reputation in comparison of the rustics. A commonwealth, consisting of but one city, would doubtless be stormy, in regard that ambition would be every man’s trade; but where it consists of a country, the plough in the hands of the owner finds him a better calling, and produces the most innocent and steady genius of a commonwealth.

“Domestic empire is founded upon dominion, and dominion is property, real or personal; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods. Lands, or the parcels of a territory, are held by the proprietor or proprietors of it in some proportion; and such, (except it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose revenue is in trade,) as is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land, such is the nature of the empire. If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people—for example, three parts in four—he is grand signior; for so the Turk is called from his property; and his empire is absolute monarchy. If the few, as a nobility and clergy, be landlords, or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic balance, and the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and once of England; and if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them, that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few, or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire is a commonwealth.

“If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame the government to the foundation, or the foundation to the government; or, holding the government not according to the balance, it is not natural, but violent; and, therefore, if it be at the devotion of a prince, it is tyranny; if, at the devotion of the few, oligarchy; or if in the power of the people, anarchy. Each of which confusions, the balance standing otherwise, is but of short continuance, because against the nature of the balance; which not destroyed, destroys that which opposes it.” Oceana, p. 37.

Here, it would be entertaining to apply these observations to the force of fleets and armies, &c., applied by Great Britain in the late contest with America. The balance of land, especially in New England, where the force was first applied, was neither in the king nor a nobility, but immensely in favor of the people. The intention of the British politicians was to alter this balance, “frame the foundation to the government, by bringing the lands more and more into the hands of the governors, judges, counsellors, &c. &c., who were all to be creatures of a British ministry.” We have seen the effects. The balance destroyed that which opposed it.

Harrington proceeds,—“But there are certain other confusions, which being rooted in the balance, are of longer continuance and of worse consequence; as, first, where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance, there is no remedy, but the one must eat out the other; as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly, when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other half, which was the case of the Roman emperors, (planted partly upon their military colonies, and partly upon the senate and the people,) the government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people. It being unlawful in Turkey that any should possess land but the grand signior, the balance is fixed by the law, and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often fell, was the throne of England known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the pillars, by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While Lacedæmon held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was immovable; but, breaking that, could stand no longer. This kind of law, fixing the balance in lands, is called agrarian, and was first introduced by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lot.

“The public sword, without a hand to hold it, is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field, or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a great belly, and must be fed; wherefore this will come to what pastures you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of property, without which the public sword is but a name. He that can graze this beast with the great belly, as the Turk does his timariots, may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant. But if the property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master’s crib; and it is impossible for a king, in such a constitution, to reign otherwise than by covenant; or, if he breaks it, it is words that come to blows.

“Aristotle is full of this balance in divers places, especially where he says that immoderate wealth, as where one man, or the few, have greater possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends, for the greater part, in monarchy; and that, for this cause, the ostracism has been received in divers places, as in Argos and Athens; but that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek the remedy of such an evil.

“Machiavel, not perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry, it is by their overbalance, speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments, and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry; which can never be proved by any one example, unless in civil war; seeing that, even in Switzerland, the gentry are not only safe, but in honor. But the balance, as I have laid it down, though unseen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, where he concludes,—‘That he who will go about to make a commonwealth where there be many gentlemen, unless he first destroys them, undertakes an impossibility. And that he who goes about to introduce monarchy, where the condition of the people is equal, shall never bring it to pass, unless he cull out such of them as are the most turbulent and ambitious, and make them gentlemen or noblemen, not in name, but in effect; that is, by enriching them with lands, castles, and treasures, that may gain them power among the rest, and bring in the rest to dependence upon them; to the end that they, maintaining their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by them.’

“Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility or gentry overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and destruction of it, so I shall show in another, that a nobility or gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the very life and soul of it.

“The public sword, or right of the militia, be the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable from the overbalance in dominion.

“The balance of dominion* in land is the natural cause of empire; and this is the principle which makes politics a science undeniable throughout, and the most demonstrable of any whatever. If a man, having one hundred pounds a year, may keep one servant, or have one man at his command, then, having one hundred times so much, he may keep one hundred servants; and this multiplied by a thousand, he may have one hundred thousand men at his command. Now, that the single person or nobility of any country in Europe, that had but half so many men at command, would be king or prince, is that which I think no man will doubt. But ‘No money, no Swiss.’ The reason why a single person or the nobility, that has one hundred thousand men, or half so many, at command, will have the government, is, that the estate in land, whereby they are able to maintain so many, in any European territory, must overbalance the rest that remains to the people, at least three parts in four. Now, for the same reason, if the people hold three parts in four of the territory, it is plain there can neither be any single person or nobility able to dispute the government with them. In this case, therefore, except force be interposed, they govern themselves. So that by this computation of the balance of property or dominion in the land, you have, according to the threefold foundation of property, the root or generation of the threefold kind of government or empire. If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the whole people, three parts in four, or thereabouts, he is grand signior; for so the Turk, not from his empire, but his property, is called; and the empire, in this case, is absolute monarchy. If the few, or a nobility, or a nobility with a clergy, be landlords to such a proportion as overbalances the people in the like manner, they may make whom they please king; or, if they be not pleased with their king, down with him, and set up whom they like better; a Henry IV. or VII., a Guise, a Montfort, a Nevil, or a Porter, should they find that best for their own ends and purposes; for, as not the balance of the king, but that of the nobility, in this case, is the cause of the government, so not the estate of the prince or captain, but his virtue or ability, or fitness for the ends of the nobility, acquires that command or office. This for aristocracy or mixed monarchy. But if the whole people be landlords, or hold the land so divided among them, that no one man or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy overbalance them, it is a commonwealth. Such is the branch in the root, or the balance of property naturally producing empire.”

Then follows a curious account of the laws in Israel against usury, and in Lacedæmon against trade, &c., which are well worth studying.

“That which, introducing two estates, causes division, or makes a commonwealth unequal, is not that she has a nobility, without which she is deprived of her most special ornament, and weakened in her conduct, but when the nobility only is capable of magistracy or of the senate; and where this is so ordered, she is unequal, as Rome. But where the nobility is no otherwise capable of magistracy, nor of the senate, than by election of the people, the commonwealth consists but of one order, and is equal, as Lacedæmon or Venice. Where the nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and the people the other half, the shares of the land may be equal; but, in regard the nobility have much among few, and the people little among many, the few will not be contented to have authority, which is all their proper share in a commonwealth, but will be bringing the people under power, which is not their proper share in a commonwealth; wherefore this commonwealth must needs be unequal; and, except by altering the balance, as the Athenians did by the rescission of debts, or as the Romans went about to do, by an agrarian, it be brought to such an equality that the whole power be in the people, and there remain no more than authority in the nobility, there is no remedy, but the one with perpetual feuds will eat out the other, as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Where the carcass is, there will be the eagles also; where the riches are, there will be the power. So if a few be as rich as all the rest, a few will have as much power as all the rest; in which case the commonwealth is unequal, and there can be no end of staving and tailing till it be brought to equality.” p. 254.

“The estates, be they one, or two, or three, are such as was said by virtue of the balance upon which the government must naturally depend,” exemplified in France, &c.

“All government is of three kinds,—a government of servants, a government of subjects, or a government of citizens. The first is absolute monarchy, as that of Turkey; the second, aristocratical monarchy, as that of France; the third, a commonwealth, as Israel, Rome, Holland. Of these, the government of servants is harder to be conquered and the easier to be held. The government of subjects is the easier to be conquered and the harder to be held. The government of citizens is both the hardest to be conquered and the hardest to be held.

“The reason why a government of servants is hard to be conquered, is, that they are under a perpetual discipline and command. Why a government of subjects is easily conquered, is on account of the factions of the nobility.

“The reasons why a government of citizens, where the commonwealth is equal, is hardest to be conquered, are, that the invader of such a society must not only trust to his own strength, inasmuch as, the commonwealth being equal, he must needs find them united; but in regard that such citizens, being all soldiers, or trained up to their arms, which they use not for the defence of slavery, but of liberty, a condition not in this world to be bettered, they have, more especially upon this occasion, the highest soul of courage, and, if their territory be of any extent, the vastest body of a well-disciplined militia that is possible in nature. Wherefore an example of such a one, overcome by the arms of a monarch, is not to be found in the world.” p. 256.

In the art of lawgiving, chap. i. he enlarges still farther upon this subject; and instances Joseph’s purchase of all the lands of the Egyptians for Pharaoh, whereby they became servants to Pharaoh; and he enlarges on the English balance, &c.

In America, the balance is nine tenths on the side of the people. Indeed, there is but one order; and our senators have influence chiefly by the principles of authority, and very little by those of power; but this must be postponed.

CHAPTER VI.

OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS.

My design is more extensive than barely to show the imperfection of M. Turgot’s idea. This might be done in a few words and a very short process of reasoning; but I wish to assemble together the opinions and reasonings of philosophers, politicians, and historians, who have taken the most extensive views of men and societies, whose characters are deservedly revered, and whose writings were in the contemplation of those who framed the American constitutions. It will not be contested that all these characters are united in Polybius, who, in a fragment of his sixth book, translated by Edward Spelman, at the end of his translation of the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, says,—

“It is customary, with those who professedly treat this subject, to establish three sorts of government,—kingly government, aristocracy, and democracy. Upon which one may very properly ask them, whether they lay these down as the only forms of government, or as the best; for in both cases they seem to be in an error; since it is manifest that the best form of government is that which is compounded of all three. This is founded not only in reason, but also in experience, Lycurgus having set the example of this form of government in the institution of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth.” . . .

“Six kinds of government must be allowed,—kingly government and monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy, democracy and the government of the multitude. . . .

“Lycurgus concluded that every form of government that is simple, by soon degenerating into that vice that is allied to it, must be unstable. The vice of kingly government is monarchy; that of aristocracy, oligarchy; that of democracy, rage and violence; into which, in process of time, all of them must degenerate. Lycurgus, to avoid these inconveniences, formed his government not of one sort, but united in one all the advantages and properties of the best governments; to the end that no branch of it, by swelling beyond its due bounds, might degenerate into the vice which is congenial to it; and that, while each of them were mutually acted upon by opposite powers, no one part might incline any way, or outweigh the rest; but that the commonwealth being equally poised and balanced, like a ship “or a wagon,” acted upon by contrary powers, might long remain in the same situation; while the king was restrained from excess by the fear of the people, who had a proper share in the commonwealth; and, on the other side, the people did not dare to disregard the king, from their fear of the senate, who, being all elected for their virtue, would always incline to the justest side; by which means, that branch which happened to be oppressed became always superior, and, by the accessional weight of the senate, outbalanced the other. This system preserved the Lacedæmonians in liberty longer than any other people we have heard of ever enjoyed it.

“All the three principal orders of government were found in the Roman commonwealth; every thing was constituted and administered with that equality and propriety by these three, that it was not possible, even for a Roman citizen, to assert positively, whether the government, in the whole, was aristocratical, democratical, or monarchical. For, when we cast our eyes on the power of the consuls, the government appeared entirely monarchical and kingly; when on that of the senate, aristocratical; and when any one considered the power of the people, it appeared plainly democratical.

“The consuls, when they are at Rome, and before they take the field, have the administration of all public affairs; for all other magistrates obey them, except the tribunes of the people. They introduce ambassadors into the senate. They also propose to the senate those subjects of debate that require immediate despatch; and are solely intrusted with the execution of their decrees. To them belongs the consideration of all public affairs of which the people have cognizance; whom they are to assemble upon all occasions, and lay before them the decrees of the senate, then pursue the resolutions of the majority. They have almost an absolute power in every thing that relates either to the preparations of war, or to the conduct of it in the field; for they may give what orders they please to their allies, and appoint the tribunes; they may raise forces, and enlist those who are proper for the service. They also have power, when in the field, of punishing any who serve under them; and of expending as much as they please of the public money, being always attended by a quæstor for that purpose, whose duty it is to yield a ready obedience to all their commands. So that whoever casts his eyes on this branch may with reason affirm, that the government is merely monarchical and kingly.

“The senate have, in the first place, the command of the public money. For they have the conduct of all receipts and disbursements; since the quæstors cannot issue money for any particular service without a decree of the senate, except those sums they pay by the direction of the consuls. The senate have also the power over all disbursements made by the censors, every fifth year, in erecting and repairing public buildings; takes cognizance of all crimes committed in Italy, such as treasons, conspiracies, poisonings, and assassinations; sends embassies out of Italy to reconcile differences, use exhortations, signify commands, admit alliances, or declare war; determines when ambassadors come to Rome, in what manner they are to be treated, and the answer to be given them. For these reasons, when a foreigner comes to Rome, in the absence of the consuls, the government appears to him purely aristocratical.

“There is still a share in the government left for the people, and that the most considerable. They only have the power of distributing honors and punishments, to which alone both monarchies and commonwealths, and, in a word, all human institutions, owe their stability. For, wherever the difference between rewards and punishments is not understood, or injudiciously applied, there nothing can be properly administered, since the worthy and unworthy are equally honored!

“They often take cognizance of those causes where the fine is considerable, if the criminals are persons who have exercised great employments; but in capital cases they alone have jurisdiction; and a custom prevails with them, to give those who are tried for their lives a power of departing openly to voluntary banishment.

“They have the power of conferring the magistracy upon those they think worthy of it, which is the most honorable reward of merit any government can bestow.

“They have the power of rejecting and confirming laws, and determine concerning peace and war, alliances, accommodations, and conventions.

“So that, from hence again, one may with reason assert, that the people have the greatest share in the government, and that the commonwealth is democratical.

“These orders, into which the commonwealth is divided, have the power to oppose, assist, and balance each other, as occasion may require.

“Though the consul, at the head of his army in the field, seems to have an absolute power to carry every thing he proposes into execution; yet he still stands in need of the people and senate, and without their assistance can effect nothing; for, neither corn, clothes, nor pay can be furnished to the army without the consent of the senate; who have also the power of sending another general to succeed him, as soon as the year is expired, or of continuing him in the command. Again, they may either magnify and extol, or obscure and extenuate, the victories of the generals; for these cannot celebrate their triumphs, unless the senate consents to it, and furnishes the necessary expense.

“As the power of putting an end to the war is in the people, the generals are under a necessity of having their approbation, who have the right of ratifying and annulling all accommodations and conventions. It is to the people that the generals, after the expiration of their command, give an account of their conduct; so that it is by no means safe for them to disregard the favor either of the senate or of the people.

“The senate is under a necessity of showing a regard to the people, and of aiming at their approbation; as, not having the power to punish crimes of the first magnitude with death, unless the people confirm the previous decree. If a law is proposed, by which part of the power of the senate is to be taken away, their dignities abolished, or even their fortunes diminished, the people have it in their power either to receive or reject it. If one of the tribunes of the people opposes the passing of a decree, the senate are so far from being able to enact it, that it is not even in their power to consult or assemble at all. For all these reasons, the senate stands in awe of the people.

“The people, also, are subject to the power of the senate, and under an obligation of cultivating the good-will of all the senators, who have many opportunities both of prejudicing and advantaging individuals. Judges are appointed out of the senate in most causes that relate to contracts, public or private. There are many rivers, ports, gardens, mines, and lands, and many works relating to erecting and repairing public buildings, let out by the censors, under the care of the senate; all these are undertaken by the people; some are purchasers, others partners, some sureties for the contracts. All these things are under the control of the senate, which has power to give time, to mitigate, and, if any thing has happened to render the performance of the contract impracticable, to cancel it. The people, thus dependent on the senate, and apprehending the uncertainty of the occasions in which they may stand in need of their favor, dare not resist or oppose their will.

“In like manner, they are not easily brought to obstruct the designs of the consuls; because all of them in general, and every one in particular, become subject to their authority, when in the field.

“Such being the power of each order to hurt and assist each other, their union is adapted to all contingencies, and it is not possible to invent a more perfect system. When the common fear of a foreign enemy compels them to act in concert, such is the strength of the government, that nothing necessary is omitted, or comes too late, since all vie with each other in directing their thoughts to the public good, and their endeavors to carry their designs into execution. The commonwealth, from the peculiar frame of it, becomes irresistible, and attains whatever it proposes.

“When, in consequence of victory, they live in prosperity and affluence, enjoying their good fortune free from the fear of a foreign enemy, they grow, through ease and flattery, insolent and proud; their commonwealth is then chiefly observed to relieve itself. For, when any branch of it becomes ambitious, and, swelling beyond its bounds, aims at unwarrantable power, being subject to the control of the other two, it cannot run into any excess of power or arrogance; but all three must remain in the terms prescribed by the constitution.”

Thus, my dear sir, you see that Polybius’s opinion of different orders, checks, and balances, in a commonwealth, is very different from that of M. Turgot. The Roman constitution formed the noblest people and the greatest power that has ever existed. But if all the powers of the consuls, senate, and people had been centred in a single assembly of the people, collectively or representatively, will any man pretend to believe that they would have been long free, or ever great?

The distribution of power was, however, never accurately or judiciously made in that constitution. The executive was never sufficiently separated from the legislative, nor had these powers a control upon each other defined with sufficient accuracy. The executive had not power to interpose and decide between the people and the senate.

As we advance, we may see cause to differ widely from the judgment of Polybius, ‘that it is impossible to invent a more perfect system of government.’ We may be convinced that the constitution of England, if its balance is seen to play, in practice, according to the principles of its theory; that is to say, if the people are fairly and fully represented, so as to have the power of dividing or choosing, of drawing up hill or down, instead of being disposed of by a few lords, is a system much more perfect. The constitutions of several of the United States, it is hoped, will prove themselves improvements both upon the Roman, the Spartan, and the English commonwealths.

The generation and corruption of governments, which may, in other words, be called the progress and course of human passions in society, are subjects which have engaged the attention of the greatest writers; and whether the essays they have left us were copied from history, or wrought out of their own conjectures and reasonings, they are very much to our purpose, to show the utility and necessity of different orders of men, and of an equilibrium of powers and privileges. They demonstrate the corruptibility of every species of simple government, by which I mean a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many. It might be sufficient to show this tendency in simple democracy alone, for such is the government of one assembly, whether of the people collectively or representatively; but, as the generation and corruption of all kinds of government have a similitude with one another, and proceed from the same qualities in human nature, it will throw the more light upon our subject, the more particularly we examine it. I shall confine myself chiefly to the writings of Plato, Polybius, and Sir Thomas Smith.

Polybius thinks it manifest, both from reason and experience, that the best form of government is not simple, but compounded, because of the tendency of each of the simple forms to degenerate. Even democracy, in which it is an established custom to worship the gods, honor their parents, respect the elders, and obey the laws, has a strong tendency to change into a government where the multitude have a power of doing whatever they desire, and where insolence and contempt of parents, elders, gods, and laws soon succeed.

“From whence do governments originally spring? From the weakness of men, and the consequent necessity to associate; and he who excels in strength and courage, gains the command and authority over the rest; as among inferior animals, who are not influenced by opinion, the strongest are, by common consent, allowed to be masters. This is monarchy. But when the nation, by living together, acquire some tincture of honor and justice, gratitude, duty, and their opposites; and the monarch countenances these moral qualities, and treats every one according to his merit, they are no longer afraid of violence, but submit to him, and unite in supporting his government, although he may again become weak and advanced in years. By this means, a monarch insensibly becomes a king, that is, when the power is transferred from courage and strength to reason. This is the origin of true kingly government; for the people preserve the command, not only to them, but to their descendants, being persuaded, that those who have received their birth and education from such men will resemble them also in their principles. But if they are dissatisfied with their descendants, they then choose magistrates and kings with regard only to superior sense and reason, and not to bodily strength and courage; having, by experience, been convinced of the difference between them. Those who were once chosen, and invested with the royal dignity, grew old in the enjoyment of it, possessed themselves of a territory, surrounded it with walls, and fortified advantageous posts; thus consulting the security of their subjects, and supplying them with plenty of provisions, differing little in their clothes or table from the people with whom they passed their lives, they continued blameless and unenvied. But their posterity, succeeding to the government by right of inheritance, and finding every thing provided for security and support, they were led by superfluity to indulge their appetites, and to imagine that it became princes to appear in a different dress, to eat in a more luxurious manner, and enjoy, without contradiction, the forbidden pleasures of love. The first produced envy, the other resentment and hatred. By which means kingly government degenerated into tyranny.

“At the same time a foundation was laid, and a conspiracy formed, for the destruction of those who exercised it; the accomplices of which were, not men of inferior rank, but persons of the most generous, exalted, and enterprising spirit; for such men can least bear the insolence of those in power. The people, having these to lead them, and uniting against their rulers, kingly government and monarchy were extirpated, and aristocracy began to be established.

“For the people, as an immediate acknowledgment to those who had destroyed monarchy, chose these leaders for their governors, and left all their concerns to them. These, at first, preferred the advantage of the public to all other considerations, and administered all affairs, both public and private, with care and vigilance. But their sons, having succeeded them in the same power, unacquainted with evils, strangers to civil equality and liberty, educated from their infancy in the splendor of the power and dignities of their parents, some giving themselves up to avarice, others to intemperance, and others to the abuse of women, by this behavior changed the aristocracy into an oligarchy.

“Their catastrophe became the same with that of the tyrants; for, if any person, observing the general envy and hatred which these rulers have incurred, has the courage to say or do any thing against them, he finds the whole body of the people inspired with the same passions they were before possessed with against the tyrant, and ready to assist him. Thereupon, they put some of them to death, and banish others; but dare not, after that, appoint a king to govern them, being still afraid of the injustice of the first. Neither dare they intrust the government with any number of men, having still before their eyes the errors which those had before committed. So that, having no hope but in themselves, they convert the government from an oligarchy to a democracy, and take upon themselves the care and charge of public affairs.

“And as long as any are living who felt the power and dominion of the few, they acquiesce under the present establishment, and look upon equality and liberty as the greatest of blessings. But when a new race of men grows up, these, no longer regarding equality and liberty, from being accustomed to them, aim at a greater share of power than the rest, particularly those of the greatest fortunes, who, grown now ambitious, and being unable to attain the power they aim at by their own merit, dissipate their wealth in alluring and corrupting the people by every method; and when, to serve their wild ambition, they have once taught them to receive bribes and entertainments, from that moment the democracy is at an end, and changes to force and violence. For the people, accustomed to live at the expense of others, and to place their hopes of a support in the fortunes of their neighbors, if headed by a man of a great and enterprising spirit, will then have recourse to violence, and, getting together, will murder, banish, and divide among themselves the lands of their adversaries, till, grown wild with rage, they again find a master and a monarch.

“This is the rotation of governments, and this the order of nature, by which they are changed, transformed, and return to the same point of the circle.

“Lycurgus observing that all this was founded on necessity and the laws of nature, concluded that every form of government that is simple, by soon degenerating into that vice that is allied to it, and naturally attends it, must be unstable. For as rust is the natural bane of iron, and worms of wood, by which they are sure to be destroyed, so there is a certain vice implanted by the hand of nature in every simple form of government, and by her ordained to accompany it. The vice of kingly government is monarchy; that of aristocracy, oligarchy; and of democracy, rage and violence; into which all of them, in process of time, must necessarily degenerate. To avoid which, Lycurgus united in one all the advantages of the best governments, to the end that no branch of it, by swelling beyond its bounds, might degenerate into the vice that is congenial to it, and that, while each was mutually acted upon by opposite powers, no one part might outweigh the rest. The Romans arrived at the same end by the same means.”

Polybius, you perceive, my dear sir, is more charitable in his representation of human nature than Hobbes, Mandeville, Rochefoucauld, Machiavel, Beccaria, Rousseau, De Lolme, or even than our friend Dr. Price. He candidly supposes that the first kingly government will be wisely and honestly administered, during the life of the father of his people; that the first aristocracy will be conducted with caution and moderation, by the band of patriots to whom is due the glory of the expulsion of the tyrant; and that the people, for a generation at least, who have deposed the oligarchy, will behave with decorum.

But perhaps it might be more exactly true and natural to say, that the king, the aristocracy, and the people, as soon as ever they felt themselves secure in the possession of their power, would begin to abuse it.

In M. Turgot’s single assembly, those who should think themselves most distinguished by blood and education, as well as fortune, would be most ambitious; and if they found an opposition among their constituents to their elections, would immediately have recourse to entertainments, secret intrigues, and every popular art, and even to bribes, to increase their parties. This would oblige their competitors, though they might be infinitely better men, either to give up their pretensions, or to imitate these dangerous practices. There is a natural and unchangeable inconvenience in all popular elections. There are always competitions, and the candidates have often merits nearly equal. The virtuous and independent electors are often divided; this naturally causes too much attention to the most profligate and unprincipled, who will sell or give away their votes for other considerations than wisdom and virtue. So that he who has the deepest purse, or the fewest scruples about using it, will generally prevail.

It is from the natural aristocracy in a single assembly that the first danger is to be apprehended in the present state of manners in America; and with a balance of landed property in the hands of the people, so decided in their favor, the progress to degeneracy, corruption, rage, and violence, might not be very rapid; nevertheless it would begin with the first elections, and grow faster or slower every year.

Rage and violence would soon appear in the assembly, and from thence be communicated among the people at large.

The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands; if you give them scope with the people at large or their representatives, they will destroy all equality and liberty, with the consent andacclamations of the people themselves. They will have much more power, mixed with the representatives, than separated from them. In the first case, if they unite, they will give the law and govern all; if they differ, they will divide the state, and go to a decision by force. But placing them alone by themselves, the society avails itself of all their abilities and virtues; they become a solid check to the representatives themselves, as well as to the executive power, and you disarm them entirely of the power to do mischief.

DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS.

Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in his seventh book, has given us an excellent speech in the senate, made by Manlius Valerius, a man venerable for his age and wisdom, and remarkable for his constant friendship for the people.

“If any of you, fathers, are alarmed with an apprehension that you will introduce a pernicious custom into the commonwealth, if you grant the people a power of giving their suffrages against the patricians, and entertain an opinion that the tribunitian power, if considerably strengthened, will prove of no advantage, let them learn that their opinion is erroneous, and their imagination contrary to sound reasoning. For if any measure can tend to preserve this commonwealth, to assure both her liberty and power, and to establish a perpetual union and harmony in all things, the most effectual will be to give the people a share in the government; and the most advantageous thing to us will be, not to have a simple and unmixed form of government; neither a monarchy, an oligarchy, nor a democracy, but a constitution tempered with all of them; for each of these forms, when simple, very easily deviates into abuse and excess; but when all of them are equally mixed, that part which happens to innovate and to exceed the customary bounds, is always restrained by another that is sober, and adheres to the established order. Thus monarchy, when it becomes cruel and insolent, and begins to pursue tyrannical measures, is subverted by an oligarchy, consisting of good men; and an oligarchy, composed of the best men, which is your form of government, when, elated with riches and dependents, it pays no regard to justice or to any other virtue, is destroyed by a wise people. And in a democracy, when the people, from being modest in their deportment, and observant of the laws, begin to run into disorders and excesses, they are forced to return to their duty by the power with which, upon those occasions, the best man of the commonwealth is invested.

“You, fathers, have used all possible precautions to prevent monarchical power from degenerating into tyranny; for, instead of a single person, you have invested two with the supreme power; and though you committed this magistracy to them, not for an indefinite time, but only for a year, you nevertheless appointed three hundred patricians, the most respectable both for their virtue and their age, of whom this senate is composed, to watch over their conduct; but you do not seem hitherto to have appointed any to watch over your own, and to keep you within proper bounds. As for yourselves, I am as yet under no apprehensions, lest you should suffer your minds to be corrupted by great and accumulated prosperity, who have lately delivered your country from a long tyranny; and, through continual and lasting wars, have not as yet had leisure to grow insolent and luxurious. But with regard to your successors, when I consider how great alterations length of time brings with it, I am afraid, lest the men of power in the senate should innovate, and silently transform our constitution to a monarchical tyranny.

Whereas, if you admit the people to a share in the government, no mischief can spring from the senate; but the man who aims at greater power than the rest of his fellow citizens, and has formed a faction in the senate of all who are willing to partake of his councils and his crimes, (for those who deliberate concerning public affairs ought to foresee every thing that is probable,) this great, this awful person, I say, when called upon by the tribunes to appear before the people, must give an account both of his actions and thoughts to this people, inconsiderable as they are, and so much his inferiors; and, if found guilty, suffer the punishment he deserves. And, lest the people themselves, when vested with so great a power, should grow wanton, and, seduced by the worst of demagogues, become dangerous to the best citizens, (for the multitude generally give birth to tyranny,) some person of consummate prudence, created dictator by yourselves, will guard against this evil, and not allow them to run into excess; and being invested with absolute power, and subject to no account, will cut off the infected part of the commonwealth, and not suffer that which is not yet infected to be vitiated; reform the laws; excite the citizens to virtue, and appoint such magistrates as he thinks will govern with the greatest prudence. And having effected these things within the space of six months, he will again become a private man, without receiving any other reward for these actions than that of being honored for having performed them.

“Induced, therefore, by these considerations, and convinced that this is the most perfect form of government, debar the people from nothing; but as you have granted them a power of choosing the annual magistrates who are to preside over the commonwealth, of confirming and repealing laws, of declaring war, and making peace, which are the greatest and most important affairs that come under the consideration of our government, not one of which you have submitted to the absolute determination of the senate, allow them, in like manner, the power of trying offenders, particularly such as are accused of crimes against the state, of raising a sedition, of aiming at tyranny, of concerting measures with our enemies to betray the commonwealth, or of any other crimes of the like nature; for the more formidable you render the transgression of the laws and the alteration of discipline, by appointing many inspectors and many guards over the insolent and the ambitious, the more will your constitution be improved.”

It is surprising that Valerius should talk of an equal mixture of monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical powers, in a commonwealth where they were so unequally mixed as they were in Rome. There can be no equal mixture without a negative in each branch of the legislature. But one example of an equal mixture has ever existed in Europe, and that is in England. The consuls in Rome had no negative; the people had a negative, but a very unequal one, because they had not the same time and opportunity for cool deliberation. The appointment of tribunes was a very inadequate remedy. What match for a Roman senate was a single magistrate seated among them? His abilities could not be equal; his firmness could not always be depended on. But, what is worse, he was liable to be intimidated, flattered, and bribed. It is really astonishing that such people as Greeks and Romans should ever have thought four or five ephori, or a single tribune, or a college of ten tribunes, an adequate representation of themselves. If Valerius had proposed that the consul should have been made an integral part of the legislature, and that the Roman people should choose another council of two or three hundred, equally representing them, to be another integral part, he would then have seen that the appointment of a dictator could never, in any case, become necessary.

PLATO.

Plato has given us the most accurate detail of the natural vicissitudes of manners and principles, the usual progress of the passions in society, and revolutions of governments into one another.

In the fourth book of his Republic, he describes his perfect commonwealth, where kings are philosophers, and philosophers kings; where the whole city might be in the happiest condition, and not any one tribe remarkably happy beyond the rest; in one word, where the laws govern, and justice is established; where the guardians of the laws are such in reality, and preserve the constitution instead of destroying it, and promote the happiness of the whole city, not their own particularly; where the state is one, not many; where there are no parties of the poor and the rich at war with each other; where, if any descendant of the guardians be vicious, he is dismissed to the other classes, and if any descendant of the others be worthy, he is raised to the rank of the guardians; where education, the grand point to be attended to, produces good geniuses, and good geniuses, partaking of such education, produce still better than the former; where the children, receiving from their infancy an education agreeable to the laws of the constitution, grow up to be worthy men, and observant of the laws; where the system, both of laws and education, is contrived to produce the virtues of fortitude, temperance, wisdom, and justice, in the whole city, and in all the individual citizens; where, if among the rulers or guardians of the laws, there be one surpassing the rest, it may be called a monarchy, or kingly government; if there be several, an aristocracy.

Although there is but one principle of virtue, those of vice are infinite; of which there are four which deserve to be mentioned. There are as many species of soul as there are of republics,—five of each. That which is above described is one.

In the eighth book of his Republic he describes the other four, and the revolutions from one to another. The first he calls the Cretan or Spartan, or the ambitious1 republic; the second oligarchy;2 the third democracy; and the fourth tyranny, the last disease of a city.

“As republics are generated by the manners of the people, to which, as into a current, all other things are drawn, of necessity there must be as many species of men as of republics. We have already, in the fourth book, gone over that which we have pronounced to be good and just. We are now to go over the contentious and ambitious man, who is formed according to the Spartan republic; and then him resembling an oligarchy; then the democratic; and then the tyrannic man; that we may contemplate the most unjust man, and set him in opposition to the most just, that our inquiry may be completed! The ambitious republic is first to be considered. It is indeed difficult for a city constituted in this manner, that is, like Sparta, to be changed; but, as every thing which is generated is liable to corruption, even such a constitution as this will not remain forever, but be dissolved.”

I shall pass over all the astrological and mystical whimsies which we meet with so often in Plato, interspersed among the most sublime wisdom and profound knowledge, and insert only what is intelligible. The amount of what he says in this place about numbers and music is, that mistakes will insensibly be made in the choice of persons for guardians of the laws; and by these guardians, in the rewards and promotion of merit. “They will not always expertly distinguish the several species of genius,—the golden, the silver, the brazen, and the iron. Whilst iron shall be mixed with silver, and brass with gold, dissimilitude and discord arise, and generate war, and enmity, and sedition. When sedition is risen, two of the species of genius, the iron and brazen, will be carried away after gain, and the acquisition of lands and houses, gold and silver. But the golden and silver geniuses, as they are not in want, but naturally rich, will lead the soul towards virtue and the original constitution. Thus divided, drawing contrary ways, and living in a violent manner, will not this republic be in the middle, between aristocracy and oligarchy, imitating, in some things, the former republic, and in others oligarchy? They will honor their rulers; their military will abstain from agriculture and mechanic arts; they will have common meals, gymnastic exercises, and contests of war, as in the former republic; but they will be afraid to bring wise men into the magistracy, because they have no longer any such as are truly simple and inflexible, but such as are of a mixed kind, more forward and rough, more fitted by their natural genius for war than peace, esteeming tricks and stratagems. Such as these shall desire wealth, and hoard up gold and silver, as those who live in oligarchies. While they spare their own, they will love to squander the substance of others upon their pleasures. They will fly from the law as children from a father, who have been educated not by persuasion but by force. Such a republic, mixed of good and ill, will be most remarkable for the prevalence of the contentious and ambitious spirit.”

“What now shall the man be, correspondent to this republic? He will be arrogant and rough towards inferiors, mild towards equals, but extremely submissive to governors; fond of dignity and the magistracy, but thinking that political management and military performances, not eloquence, nor any such thing, should entitle him to them. While young, he may despise money; but the older he grows, the more he will value it, because he is of a covetous temper, and not sincerely affected to virtue and reason. Such an ambitious youth resembles such a city, and is formed somehow in this manner:—His father, a worthy man in an ill-regulated city, shuns honors, and magistracies, and law-suits, and all public business, that, as he can do no good, he may have no trouble. The son hears his mother venting her indignation, and complaining that she is neglected among other women, because her husband is not in the magistracy, nor attentive to the making of money; that he is unmanly and remiss, and such other things as wives are apt to whine about concerning husbands. The domestics, too, privately say the same things to the sons, stimulating them to be more of men than their father, and more attentive to their money. When they go abroad, they hear the same things, and see that those who mind their own affairs are called simple, and such as mind not their affairs are commended. The young man, comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the other the concupiscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within himself to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of contention, and so he becomes a haughty and ambitious man.”

We have now the second republic, and the second man.

“This second republic will be succeeded by oligarchy, founded on men’s valuations, in which the rich bear rule, and the poor have no share in the government. The change from the ambitious republic to oligarchy is made by that treasury which every one has filled with gold. For, first of all, they and their wives find out methods of expense, and to this purpose strain and disobey the laws, one observing and rivalling another, the generality become of this kind; and, proceeding to greater desires of making money, the more honorable they account this to be, the more will virtue be thought dishonorable. Virtue is so different from wealth, that they always weigh against each other. Whilst wealth and the wealthy are held in honor in the city, both virtue and the good must be more dishonored, and what is honored is pursued, and what is dishonored is neglected. Instead, then, of ambitious men, they will become lovers of gain. The rich they praise and admire, and bring into the magistracy; but the poor man they despise. They then make laws, marking out the boundary of the constitution, and regulating the quantity of oligarchic power according to the quantity of wealth; more to the more wealthy, and less to the less. So that he who hath not the valuation settled by law is to have no share in the government.

“What think you of this constitution? If we should appoint pilots according to their valuation, but never intrust a ship with a poor man, though better skilled in his art, we should make very bad navigation. Again, such a city is not one, but of necessity two; one, consisting of the poor, and the other of the rich, dwelling in one place, and always plotting against one another. They are, moreover, incapable to wage war, because of the necessity they are under, either of employing the armed multitude, and of dreading them more than the enemy, or to appear in battle, truly oligarchic, and at the same time be unwilling to advance money for the public service, through a natural disposition of covetousness.

“In such a government almost all are poor, except the governors; and where there are poor, there are somewhere concealed thieves and pursecutters and sacrilegious persons and workers of all other evils; these the magistracy with diligence and force restrains; these are drones in a city, with dangerous stings.

“This is oligarchy. Now let us consider the man who resembles it. The change from the ambitious to the oligarchic man is chiefly in this manner,—the ambitious man has a son who emulates his father and follows his steps; afterwards he dashes on the city, as on a rock, wasting his substance in the office of a general or some other principal magistracy; then falling into courts of justice, destroyed by sycophants, stripped of his dignities, disgraced, and losing all his substance. When he has thus suffered and lost his substance, in a terror he pushes headlong from the throne of his soul that ambitious disposition; and, being humbled by his poverty, turns to the making of money, lives sparingly and meanly, and applying to work, scrapes together substance. He then seats in that throne the avaricious disposition, and makes it a mighty king within himself, decked out with Persian crowns, bracelets, and sceptres. Having placed the virtuous and ambitious disposition low on the ground, he reasons on nothing but how lesser substance shall be made greater, admires and honors nothing but riches and rich people. This is the change from an ambitious youth to a covetous one, and this is the oligarchic man.

“Democracy is next to be considered, in what manner it arises, and what kind of man it produces when arisen. The change from oligarchy to democracy is produced through the insatiable desire of becoming as rich as possible. As those who are governors in it govern on account of their possessing great riches, they will be unwilling to restrain by law such of the youth as are dissolute, from having the liberty of squandering and wasting their substance; that so, by purchasing the substance of such persons, and lending them on usury, they may still become richer, and be held in greater honor. While they neglect education, and suffer the youth to grow licentious, they sometimes lay under a necessity of becoming poor, such as are of no ungenerous disposition. These sit in the city, some of them in debt, others in contempt, hating and conspiring against those who possess their substance, and with others very desirous of a change. But the money-catchers, still brooding over it, and drawing to themselves exorbitant usury, fill the city with drones and poor. They neglect every thing but making of money, and make no more account of virtue than the poor do. When these governors and their subjects meet on the road, at public shows, in military marches, as fellow-soldiers or sailors, or in common dangers, the poor are by no means contemned by the rich. A robust fellow, poor and sunburnt, beside a rich man, bred up in the shade, swollen with flesh, and panting for breath, and in agony in battle, thinks it is through his own and his fellows’ fault that such men grow rich, and says, Our rich men are good for nothing. The city soon grows into sedition between the oligarchic and democratic parties; and the poor prevailing over the rich, kill some and banish others, and share the places in the republic and the magistracies equally among the remainder, and for the most part the magistracies are disposed in it by lot. In what manner do these live, and what sort of republic is this? A democracy. The city is full of all freedom of action and speech, and liberty to do in it what any one inclines. Every one will regulate his own method of life in whatever way he pleases. In such a republic will arise men of all kinds. This is the finest of all republics, variegated like a robe with all kinds of flowers, and diversified with all sorts of manners. The multitude, it is likely, judge this republic the best, like children and women gazing at variegated things. In truth, it contains all kinds of republics, and it appears necessary for any one, who wants to constitute a city, as we do at present, to come to a democratic city, as to a general fair of republics, and choose the form that he fancies; he will not be in want of models. Is not this a sweet and divine manner of life for the present? To be under no necessity to govern, although you were able to govern; nor to be subject, unless you incline; nor to be engaged in war when others are; nor to live in peace when others do so, unless you be desirous of peace; and though there be a law restraining you from governing or administering justice, to govern nevertheless, and administer justice if you incline? Have you not observed, in such a republic, men condemned to death or banishment continuing still, or returning like heroes, and walking up and down openly, as if no one observed them? Is not this indulgence of the city very generous, in magnificently despising all care of education and discipline, and in not regarding from what sort of pursuits one comes to act in public affairs, but honoring him, if he only say he is well affected towards the multitude? These things, and such as these, are to be found in a democracy; and it would be a pleasant sort of republic, anarchical and variegated, distributing a certain equality to all alike, without distinction.

“Let us consider now the character of a democratical man, and how he arises out of that parsimonious one who, under the oligarchy, was trained up by his father in his manners. Such a one by force governs his own pleasures, which are expensive, and tend not to making money, and are called unnecessary. Eating, so far as conduces to preserve life, health, and a good habit of body, is a pleasure of the necessary kind; but the desire of these things beyond these purposes, is capable of being curbed in youth; and, being hurtful to the body and to the soul, with reference to her attaining wisdom and temperance, may be called unnecessary. In the same manner we shall say of venereal desires and others. We just now denominated a drone the man who was full of such desires and pleasures; but the oligarchic man, him who was under the necessary ones. The democratic appears to arise from the oligarchic man in this manner.

When a young man, bred up without proper instruction, and in a parsimonious manner, comes to taste the honey of the drones, and associates with those vehement and terrible creatures, who are able to procure pleasures every way diversified, from every quarter; thence imagine there is the beginning of a change in him, from the oligarchic to the democratic. And as the city was changed by the assistance of an alliance from without, with one party of it, with which it was of kin, shall not the youth be changed in the same manner, by the assistance of one species of desires from without to another within him, which resembles it, and is akin to it? By all means. If any assistance be given to the oligarchic party within him, by his father or the others of his family admonishing and upbraiding him, then truly arises sedition and opposition and a fight within him with himself. Sometimes the democratic party yields to the oligarchic; some of the desires are destroyed, others retire on the rise of a certain modesty in the soul of the youth, and he is again rendered somewhat decent. Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them which grow up, and, through inattention to the father’s instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies, and generate a multitude. They seize the citadel of the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated of noble learning and pursuits and of true reasoning, which are the best watchmen and guardians in the understandings of men beloved of the gods; and then false and boastful reasonings and opinions, rushing up in their stead, possess the same place in this person. These false and boastful reasonings, denominating modesty to be stupidity; temperance, unmanliness; moderation, rusticity; decent expense, illiberality; thrust them all out disgracefully, expel them their territories, and introduce insolence and anarchy, luxury and impudence, in triumph, with encomiums and applauses, shining with a great retinue, and crowned with crowns. Insolence they denominate education; anarchy, liberty; luxury, magnificence; and impudence, manhood. In this manner, a youth bred up with the necessary desires, changes into the licentiousness and remissness of the unnecessary and unprofitable pleasures; his life is not regulated by any order, but deeming it pleasant, free, and happy, he puts all laws whatever on a level; like the city, he is fine and variegated, and many men and women too would desire to imitate his life, as he hath in him a great many patterns of republics and of manners.

“It remains that we go over the most excellent republic, which is tyranny, and the most excellent man, who is the tyrant. The change is from democracy to tyranny, as from oligarchy to democracy. An insatiable desire of riches, and a neglect of other things, through attention to making money, destroys oligarchy; and an insatiable thirst of liberty destroys democracy. When a city is under a democracy, and is thirsting after liberty, and happens to have bad cup-bearers, and grows drunk with an insufficiently diluted draught of it, it punishes even the governors, if they will not be entirely tame, and afford a deal of liberty, accusing them as corrupted, and leaning towards oligarchy. Such as are obedient to magistrates are abused, as willing slaves and good for nothing. Magistrates who resemble subjects, and subjects who resemble magistrates, are commended and honored, both in public and private; in such a city they of necessity soon go to the highest pitch of liberty, and this inbred anarchy descends into private families. The father resembles the child, and is afraid of his sons. The sons accustom themselves to resemble the father, and neither revere nor stand in awe of their parents. Strangers are equalled with citizens. The teacher fears and flatters the scholars, and the scholars despise their teachers and tutors. The youth resemble the more advanced in years, and rival them in words and deeds. The old men, sitting down with the young, are full of merriment and pleasantry, mimicking the youth, that they may not appear to be morose and despotic. The slaves are no less free than those who purchase them; and wives have a perfect equality and liberty with their husbands, and husbands with their wives. The sum of all these things, collected together, makes the souls of the citizens so delicate, that if any one bring near to them any thing of slavery, they are filled with indignation, and cannot endure it; and at length they regard not the laws, written or unwritten, that no one whatever, by any manner of means, may become their master. This is that government so beautiful and youthful, whence tyranny springs. But any thing in excess, in animal or vegetable bodies, in seasons or in republics, is wont to occasion a mighty change to the reverse; and excessive liberty seems to change into nothing but excessive slavery, both with a private person and a city. Thus licentiousness destroys the democracy.

“Out of no other republic is tyranny constituted but out of democracy; and out of the most excessive liberty, the greatest and most savage slavery. The race of idle and profuse men, one part of which was more brave, and were leaders, the other more cowardly, and followers, we compared to drones, the one with, and the other without stings. These two springing up in a republic, raise disturbance, as phlegm and bile in a natural body. Let us divide a democratic city into three, as it really is; for one such species as the above grows through licentiousness in it, no less than in the oligarchic, but is much more fierce. In oligarchy, because it is not in places of honor, but is debarred from the magistracies, it is unexercised, and does not become strong; but in a democracy this is the presiding party, excepting a few; and now it says and does the most outrageous things. Some other party is now always separated from the multitude; and while the whole are somehow in pursuit of gain, such as are the most temperate become the wealthiest, and have the greatest quantity of honey; hence the greatest quantity of honey, and what comes with the greatest case, is pressed out of these by the drones. Such wealthy people are the pasture of the drones. The people who mind their own affairs, and meddle not with any others, who have not much property, but yet are the most numerous and the most prevalent in democracy, whenever it is fully assembled, would be a third species; but it will not often fully assemble, if it does not get some share of the honey. It does, however, always get a share, for their leaders rob those who have substance, and give it to the people, that they may have the most themselves. These, then, who are thus despoiled, are obliged to defend themselves, saying and doing all they can among the people. Others, then, give them occasion to form designs against the people, and so they become oligarchic, even although they should have no inclination to introduce a change of government; thence they go to accusations, lawsuits, and contests, one with another, the leaders slandering and the drones stinging.

“The people are wont always to set some one in a conspicuous manner over themselves, to cherish him, and greatly to increase his power. Whenever a tyrant rises, it is from this root, and from nothing else, that he blossoms. What, then, is the beginning of a change, from a president into a tyrant? The wolf in the temple of Arcadia, dedicated to Lycæan Jupiter, had this inscription: “That whoever tasted human entrails, mixed with other sacrifices, necessarily became a wolf.” In the same manner, he who, being president of the people, and receiving an extremely submissive multitude, abstaineth not from kindred blood, but unjustly accusing them, and bringing them into courts of justice, stains himself with bloodshed, and banishes and slays, and proposes the abolition of debts, and division of lands, must not such a one either be destroyed by his enemies, or exercise tyranny, and from being a man become a wolf? He now becomes seditious towards those who have substance, and when he fails, he goes against his enemies with open force, and becomes an accomplished tyrant; and if they be unable to expel him, or put him to death by an accusation before the city, they conspire to cut him off privately, by a violent death. On this account, all those who mount up to tyranny, invent the celebrated tyrannical demand of the people, certain guards for their persons, that the assistance of the people may be secured to them. The people, afraid of his safety, but secure as to their own, grant them. Then those who have substance, and the crime of hating the people, fly; and if any one of them is caught he is put to death. This president of a city, thus not behaving like a truly great man, tumbles down many others, and sits in his chair a consummate tyrant, instead of a president of a city.

“Consider, now, the happiness of the man and the city in which such a mortal arises. In the first days, he smiles and salutes every one he meets; says he is no tyrant; promises many things, both in private and in public; frees from debts; distributes lands, both to the people in general, and those about him; affects to be mild, and of the patriot spirit, towards all. But when he has reconciled to himself some of his foreign enemies, and tranquillity is restored, he raises wars, that the people may want a leader, and that, being rendered poor by the payment of taxes, they may be under a necessity of becoming intent on a daily sustenance, and less ready to conspire against him. If he suspects any of them, who are of free spirits, will not allow him to govern, in order to have some pretext for destroying them, he exposes them to the enemy. On these accounts, a tyrant is always under a necessity of raising war. While he is doing these things, he must become more hateful to his citizens. Some of those who have been promoted along with him, and are in power, speak out freely, both to him and among themselves, finding fault with the transactions. It behoves the tyrant, then, to cut off all those who are of a more manly spirit, if he means to govern, till he leave no one, friend or foe, worth any thing. He must carefully observe who is courageous, magnanimous, wise, rich, and of necessity he must be an enemy to all these, and lay snares, until he cleanse the city of them. Thus he must live with wicked people, and be hated by them too, or not live at all. The more he is hated, the more guards he will want. But the worthy men being destroyed, the worst must be his guards. What a blessed possession! But this army of the tyrant, so beautiful, so numerous, and multiform, must be maintained. If there be any sacred things in the city, these they will spend, and the people obliged to pay the lighter taxes. When these fail, he and his drunken companions and associates, male and female, shall be maintained out of the paternal inheritance; and the people who have made the tyrant shall nourish him. If the people be enraged, and say that they did not make him to be slaves to his slaves, but that they might be set at liberty from the rich in the city, who are now called good and worthy men, and order him and his companions to be gone out of the city, as a father drives out of his house his son, with his tumultuary, drunken companions; then, indeed, the people shall know what a beast they are themselves, and what a beast they have generated, hugged, and bred up. While they are the weaker, they attempt to drive out the stronger. The tyrant will strip them of their armor. The people, defending themselves against the smoke of slavery, have fallen into the fire of despotism; instead of that excessive and unseasonable liberty, embracing the most rigorous and wretched slavery of bondmen. Thus, to speak modestly, we have sufficiently shown how tyranny arises out of democracy, and what it is after it is risen.

“The tyrannical man, himself, remains yet to be considered, in what manner he arises out of the democratic, and what kind of man he is, and whether he is wretched or happy. Of those pleasures and desires which are not necessary, some are repugnant to law. These, indeed, appear to spring up in every one; but, being chastised by the laws and the better desires, along with reason, they either forsake some men altogether, or are less in number and feeble; in others they are in greater number and more powerful. These lawless desires are such as are excited in sleep, when the rational part of the soul which governs it is asleep, and the part which is brutal and savage, being filled with meats and drunkenness, frisks about, and, pushing away sleep, wants to go and accomplish its practices. In such a one, it dares to do every thing, as being loosed and disengaged from all modesty and discretion; for it scruples not the embraces, as it imagines, of gods, men, or beasts; nor to kill any one; in one word, is wanting in no folly nor impudence. There is in every one a certain species of desires, which is terrible, savage, and irregular, even in some who seem to us to be entirely moderate.

“Recollect, now, what kind of man we said the democratic one was; educated from his infancy under a parsimonious father, who valued the avaricious desires alone; but being afterwards conversant with those who are more refined, running into their manner, and all sort of insolence, from a detestation of his father’s parsimony. However, having a better natural temper than those who corrupt him, and being drawn opposite ways, he settles into a manner in the middle of both, and participating moderately, as he imagines, of each of them, he leads a life neither illiberal nor licentious, becoming a democratic man from an aristocratic. His son is educated in his manners; but the same things happening to him as to his father, he is drawn into all kinds of licentiousness, which is termed, however, by those who draw him off, the most complete liberty. His father, the domestics, and others, are aiding to those desires which are in the middle. But when the tyrant-makers have no hopes of retaining the youth in their power any other way, they contrive to excite in him a certain love, which presides over the indolent desires, and such as minister readily to their pleasures; and when other desires make a noise about him, full of their odors and perfumes, and crowns and wines, and the pleasures of the most dissolute kind, then, truly, he is surrounded with madness as a life-guard, and that president of the soul rages with frenzy, till he kills all modesty, is cleansed of temperance, and filled with additional madness. This is the formation of a tyrannical man. After this, there are feastings among them, and revellings, banqueting, and mistresses, and all such things as may be expected where the tyrant’s love, drunkenness, and madness govern all in the soul. After this, there is borrowing and pillaging of substance, and searching for every thing which they are able, by rage and frenzy, deceit and violence, to carry off; pilfering and beguiling parents. When the substance of father and mother fails, he will break into houses, rob in the streets, rifle temples. Those desires which heretofore were only loose from their slavery in sleep, when he was yet under the laws and his father, when under democratic government, now, when he is tyrannized over by his passions, shall be equally loose when he is awake, and from no horrid slaughter or deed shall he abstain; but the tyrant within him, living without any restraint of law and government, shall lead him on to every mad attempt. Such as these establish as tyrant the man who among them hath himself most of the tyrant, and in greatest strength, within his own soul. If the city relucts, he shall bring in other young people, and chastise his formerly beloved mother and father country, as the Cretans say. But liberty and true friendship the tyrannic disposition never tasted. Let us finish then our worst man. He will be awake such as we described him asleep, and he who appears the most wicked, shall really be the most wretched; as many men, as many minds; as city is to city, in regard to virtue and happiness, so will man be to man; kingly government is the best, and tyranny is the worst. No city is more wretched than that which is under tyranny, nor any more happy than that under regal power. Both the city and the tyrant shall be slavish, poor, timorous; and you will find more lamentations and groans, weepings and torments, than in any other city. We should not merely conjecture about matters of such importance, but most thoroughly inquire into them, by reasoning of this kind, for the inquiry is concerning the most important matter, a good life and a bad.

“Such private men as are rich, and possess many slaves, have this resemblance at least of tyrants, that they rule over many. If they live securely, and are not afraid of their domestics, it is because the whole city gives assistance to each particular man. But if a god should lift a man, his wife, and children, with fifty slaves, out of the city, and let them down in a desert, in what kind of fear would he be about himself, his wife, and children, lest they should be destroyed by the domestics!

“Such, and much worse is the tyrant in his tyrannical city; envious, faithless, cowardly, unjust, unfriendly, unholy, and a sink and breeder of all wickedness.

“Now tell me which is the first and which the last, as to happiness, the regal, the ambitious, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannic man and city. The best and justest is the happiest.”

Let me add to the researches of Polybius and Plato, concerning the mutability of governments, those of Sir Thomas Smith, who, as he tells us, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1565, in the seventh of Elizabeth and fifty-first year of his age, was ambassador from that queen to the court of France, and then published, “The Commonwealth of England,” not as Plato made his republic, Xenophon his kingdom of Persia, or Sir Thomas More his Utopia, feigned commonwealths, such as never were nor shall be, vain imaginations, fantasies of philosophers, but as England stood and was governed at that day.

In his seventh chapter and the two following he gives us his opinion of the origin of a kingdom, an aristocracy and democracy. The third he supposes to grow naturally out of the second, and the second out of the first, which originated in patriarchal authority. But as there is nothing remarkable, either in favor of our system or against it, I should not have quoted the book in this place, but for the sake of its title. The constitution of England is in truth a republic, and has been ever so considered by foreigners, and by the most learned and enlightened Englishmen, although the word commonwealth has become unpopular and odious, since the unsuccessful and injudicious attempts to abolish monarchy and aristocracy, between the years 1640 and 1660.

Let me proceed then to make a few observations upon the Discourses of Plato and Polybius, and show how forcibly they prove the necessity of permanent laws, to restrain the passions and vices of men, and to secure to the citizens the blessings of society, in the peaceable enjoyment of their lives, liberties, and properties; and the necessity of different orders of men, with various and opposite powers, prerogatives, and privileges, to watch over one another, to balance each other, and to compel each other at all times to be real guardians of the laws.

Every citizen must look up to the laws, as his master, his guardian, and his friend; and whenever any of his fellow-citizens, whether magistrates or subjects, attempt to deprive him of his right, he must appeal to the laws; if the aristocracy encroach, he must appeal to the democracy; if they are divided, he must appeal to the monarchical power to decide between them, by joining with that which adheres to the laws; if the democracy is on the scramble for power, he must appeal to the aristocracy and the monarchy, which by uniting may restrain it. If the regal authority presumes too far, he must appeal to the other two. Without three divisions of power, stationed to watch each other, and compare each other’s conduct with the laws, it will be impossible that the laws should at all times preserve their authority and govern all men.

Plato has sufficiently asserted the honor of the laws and the necessity of proper guardians of them; but has nowhere delineated the various orders of guardians, and the necessity of a balance between them. He has, nevertheless, given us premises from whence the absolute necessity of such orders and equipoises may be inferred; he has shown how naturally every simple species of government degenerates. The aristocracy, or ambitious republic, becomes immediately an oligarchy. What shall be done to prevent it? Place two guardians of the laws to watch the aristocracy,—one, in the shape of a king, on one side of it; another, in the shape of a democratical assembly, on the other side. The aristocracy become an oligarchy, changes into a democracy. How shall it be prevented? By giving the natural aristocracy in society its rational and just weight, and by giving it a regal power to appeal to, against the madness of the people. Democracy becomes a tyranny. How shall this be prevented? By giving it an able, independent ally, in an aristocratical assembly, with whom it may unite against the unjust and illegal designs of any one man.

LOCKE.

Chimerical systems of legislation are neither new nor uncommon, even among men of the most resplendent genius and extensive learning. It would not be too bold to say, that some parts of Plato and Sir Thomas More are as wild as the ravings of Bedlam. A philosopher may be perfect master of Descartes and Leibnitz, may pursue his own inquiries into metaphysics to any length, may enter into the inmost recesses of the human mind, and make the noblest discoveries for the benefit of his species; nay, he may defend the principles of liberty and the rights of mankind with great abilities and success; and, after all, when called upon to produce a plan of legislation, he may astonish the world with a signal absurdity. Mr. Locke, in 1663, was employed to trace out a plan of legislation for Carolina; and he gave the whole authority, executive and legislative, to the eight proprietors, the Lords Berkley, Clarendon, Albemarle, Craven, and Ashley; and Messieurs Carteret, Berkley, and Colleton, and their heirs. This new oligarchical sovereignty created at once three orders of nobility; barons,1 with twelve thousand acres of land; caciques, with twenty-four thousand, &c.; and landgraves, with eighty thousand. Who did this legislator think would live under his government?* He should have first created a new species of beings to govern, before he instituted such a government.

MILTON.

A man may be a greater poet than Homer, and one of the most learned men in the world; he may spend his life in defence of liberty, and be at the same time one of the most irreproachable moral characters; and yet, when called upon to frame a constitution of government, he may demonstrate to the world that he has reflected very little on the subject. There is a great hazard in saying all this of John Milton; but truth and the rights of mankind demand it. In his “Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth,” this great author says, “I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free commonwealth, without single person or house of lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had; . . .

“For the ground and basis of every just and free government, is a general council of ablest men chosen by the people to consult of public affairs, from time to time, for the common good. In this grand council must the sovereignty, not transferred, but delegated only, and, as it were, deposited, reside; with this caution, they must have the forces by sea and land committed to them for preservation of the common peace and liberty; must raise and manage the public revenue, at least with some inspectors deputed for satisfaction of the people how it is employed; must make or propose civil laws, treat of commerce, peace, or war with foreign nations; and, for the carrying on some particular affairs with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own number and others, a council of state.

“And although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men’s minds are prepossessed with the notion of successive parliaments, I affirm that the grand or general council, being well chosen, should be perpetual; for so their business is, or may be, and ofttimes urgent; the opportunity of affairs gained or lost in a moment. The day of council cannot be set as the day of a festival; but must be ready always to prevent or answer all occasions. By this continuance they will become every way skilfullest, best provided of intelligence from abroad, best acquainted with the people at home and the people with them. The ship of the commonwealth is always under sail; they sit at the stern, and if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this, that the grand council is both foundation and main pillar of the whole state; and to move pillars and foundations, not faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not, therefore, how we can be advantaged by successive and transitory parliaments; but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle, rather than to settle a free government; to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties; to bring neglect upon present affairs and opportunities, while all minds are in suspense with expectation of a new assembly, and the assembly, for a good space, taken up with the new settling of itself. . . . But if the ambition of such as think themselves injured, that they also partake not of the government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them; or if it be feared that long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient is, that annually, (or if the space be longer, so much perhaps the better,) the third part of senators may go out,” &c.

Can one read, without shuddering, this wild reverie of the divine, immortal Milton? If no better systems of government had been proposed, it would have been no wonder that the people of England recalled the royal family, with all their errors, follies, and crimes about them. Had Milton’s scheme been adopted, England would have been a scene of revolutions, carnage, and horror, from that time to this, or its liberties would have been at this hour the liberties of Poland, or the island would have been a province of France. What! a single assembly to govern England? an assembly of senators for life too? What! did Milton’s ideas of liberty and free government extend no further than exchanging one house of lords for another, and making it supreme and perpetual? What! Cromwell, Ireton, Lambert, Ludlow, Waller, and five hundred others of all sects and parties, one quarter of them mad with enthusiasm, another with ambition, a third with avarice, and a fourth of them honest men, a perpetual council to govern such a country! It would have been an oligarchy of decemvirs on the first day of its sitting; it would have instantly been torn with all the agitations of Venice, between the aristocracy and oligarchy, in the assembly itself. If, by ballots and rotations and a thousand other contrivances, it could have been combined together, it would have stripped the people of England of every shadow of liberty, and grown in the next generation a lazy, haughty, ostentatious group of palatines; but if they had fallen into divisions, they would have deluged the nation in blood, till one despot would have ruled the whole. John Milton was as honest a man as his nation ever bred, and as great a friend of liberty; but his greatness most certainly did not consist in the knowledge of the nature of man and of government, if we are to judge from this performance, or from “The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth,” in his letter to General Monk.

HUME.

Americans in this age are too enlightened to be bubbled out of their liberties, even by such mighty names as Locke, Milton, Turgot, or Hume; they know that popular elections of one essential branch of the legislature, frequently repeated,* are the only possible means of forming a free constitution, or of preserving the government of laws from the domination of men, or of preserving their lives, liberties, or properties in security; they know, though Locke and Milton did not, that when popular elections are given up, liberty and free government must be given up. Upon this principle, they cannot approve the plan of Mr. Hume, in his “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.” “Let all the freeholders of twenty pounds a year in the county, and all the householders worth five hundred pounds in the town parishes, meet annually in the parish church, and choose, by ballot, some freeholder of the county for their member, whom we shall call the county representative. Let the hundred county representatives, two days after their election, meet in the county town, and choose by ballot, from their own body, ten county magistrates and one senator. There are, therefore, in the whole commonwealth, one hundred senators, eleven hundred county magistrates, and ten thousand county representatives; for we shall bestow on all senators the authority of county magistrates, and on all county magistrates the authority of county representatives. Let the senators meet in the capital, and be endowed with the whole executive power of the commonwealth; the power of peace and war, of giving orders to generals, admirals, and ambassadors, and, in short, all the prerogatives of a British king, except his negative. Let the county representatives meet in their particular counties, and possess the whole legislative power of the commonwealth; the greater number of counties deciding the question; and where these are equal, let the senate have the casting vote. Every new law must first be debated in the senate; and, though rejected by it, if ten senators insist and protest, it must be sent down to the counties. The senate, if they please, may join to the copy of the law their reasons for receiving or rejecting it,” &c.

The senate, by the ballot of Venice or Malta, are to choose a protector, who represents the dignity of the commonwealth, and presides in the senate; two secretaries of state and a council of state, a council of religion and learning, a council of trade, a council of laws, a council of war, a council of the admiralty—each of five persons, all senators; and seven commissioners of the treasury.

If you compare this plan, as well as those of Locke and Milton, with the principles and examples, you will soon form a judgment of them; it is not my design to enlarge upon them. That of Hume is a complicated aristocracy, and would soon behave like all other aristocracies. It is enough to say that the representatives of the people may by the senators be deprived of a voice in the legislature; because the senate have their choice of sending the laws down, either to the county magistrates or county representatives. It is an ingenious device, to be sure, to get rid of the people and their representatives; besides that the delays and confusions would be endless, in sending the laws to be debated in as many separate commonwealths as there are counties. But the two decisive objections are,—1. Letting the nobility or senate into the management of the executive power; and 2. Taking the eyes of the people off from their representatives in the legislature. The liberty of the people depends entirely on the constant and direct communication between them and the legislature, by means of their representatives.

The improvements to be made in the English constitution lie entirely in the house of commons. If county members were abolished,1 and representatives proportionally and frequently chosen in small districts, and if no candidate could be chosen but an established, long-settled inhabitant of that district, it would be impossible to corrupt the people of England, and the house of commons might be an immortal guardian of the national liberty. Instead of projects to abolish kings and lords, if the house of commons had been attended to, wild wars would not have been engaged in, nor countless millions thrown away, nor would there have remained an imperfection, perhaps, in the English constitution. Let the people take care of the balance, and especially their part of it. But the preservation of their peculiar part of it will depend still upon the existence and independence of the other two. The instant the other branches are destroyed, their own branch, their own deputies, become their tyrants.

CHAPTER VII.

ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

CARTHAGE.

In order to show the theory of Socrates, as reported by Plato, in a clearer light, and to be convinced that he has not exaggerated in his description of the mutability in the characters of men and the forms of government, we should look into the history of those ancient republics from whence he drew his observations and reasonings. Although it is probable that Greece was his principal theatre, yet we may reasonably suppose that Carthage and a multitude of other republics in Italy, besides that of Rome, were not unknown to him.

The history of Greece should be to our countrymen what is called in many families on the continent a boudoir, an octagonal apartment in a house, with a full-length mirror on every side, and another in the ceiling. The use of it is, when any of the young ladies, or young gentlemen if you will, are at any time a little out of humor, they may retire to a place where, in whatever direction they turn their eyes, they see their own faces and figures multiplied without end. By thus beholding their own beautiful persons, and seeing, at the same time, the deformity brought upon them by their anger, they may recover their tempers and their charms together. A few short sketches of the ancient republics will serve to show, not only that the orders we defend were common to all of them; but that the prosperity and duration of each was in proportion to the care taken to balance them; and that they all were indebted, for their frequent seditions, the rise and progress of corruption, and their decline and fall, to the imperfection of their orders, and their defects in the balance.

As there are extant no writings of any Carthaginian philosopher, statesman, or historian, we have no exact information concerning the form of their commonwealth, but what appears in a few hints of Greek and Roman authors. Their commerce and riches, their empire of the sea, and extensive dominion of two thousand miles on the sea coast, their obstinate military contests with Rome, and the long duration of their government, prove both that their population and power were very great, and their constitution good; especially as, for the space of five hundred years, their tranquillity was never interrupted by sedition, nor their liberties attempted by the ambition of any of their citizens.

The national character was military, as well as commercial; and, although they were avaricious, they were not effeminate.

The monarchical power was in two suffetes, the aristocratical in the senate, and the democratical was held by the people in a body. These are said to have been nicely balanced, but we know not in what manner. The chief magistrates were annually elected by the people. The senators were elected too, and, although it is not certain, it is most probable, by the people; but it appears that three qualifications were indispensable in every senator,—birth, merit, and wealth. This last requisite rendered commerce honorable, even in the first of the patricians and senators themselves, and animated the commercial genius of the nation. This government, thus far, resembles those of the States of America, more than any other of the ancient republics, perhaps more than any of the modern; but when we inquire for the balance, it is not to be found. The suffetes had not more authority than Roman consuls; they had but a part of the executive, and none of the legislative power. Much of the executive and all the legislative was in the senate and people. The balance, then, could only be between these two. Now, it is impossible to balance two assemblies without introducing a third power; one or other will be most powerful, and, whichever it is, will continually scramble till it gets the whole. In fact, the people here had the whole as much as in any of our states; so that, while the citizens were uncorrupted and gave their votes honestly for suffetes and senators, all went well. And it is extremely remarkable that, with all their acknowledged eagerness for money, this people were so many centuries untainted with luxury and venality, and preserved their primitive frugality of manners and integrity in elections. As to the Roman accusations of insincerity, there is no more reason to believe them, than there would be to believe a Carthaginian who should retort the reproach. This, as well as other instances, may lead us to doubt the universality of the doctrine, that commerce corrupts manners. There was another remarkable institution, that the senate should always be unanimous; and if any one senator insisted upon his own opinion against all the rest, there could be no decision, but by an appeal to the people. This, again, gave a strong democratical cast to the constitution. Such a tendency could only be balanced by the laws, which, requiring a large fortune for every senator and public officer, in order to support his dignity, and secure him against the temptations to corruption, confined the choice to the first families and abilities united. This was liable to great objection; because great abilities might often be possessed by men of obscure original and smaller property, who were thereby excluded. To this law, nevertheless, may be ascribed the duration of the republic.

Another remarkable check, which was, perhaps, the model from whence the Venetian inquisition was copied, was a committee of one hundred and four members of the senate appointed to watch the ambition of the great families. To this body all their admirals and generals were required to render an account of their conduct at the end of every year.

Out of this body were elected a sub-committee of five, who had very great power. Their office was for life; and they filled up their own vacancies out of the one hundred and four, and all the vacancies, even in the one hundred and four, out of the senate; they had the supreme tribunal of criminal jurisdiction. This power must have been terrible to all,—to the people, senate, and suffetes; yet it was the check which preserved the state from sedition and convulsions. It grew unpopular; and the law which at last made it annual and elective, probably laid the foundation of the ruin of the commonwealth, by changing the balance, and introducing the dominatio plebis. The balances in this, the most democratical republic of antiquity, contrived by the people themselves to temper their own power, are extremely remarkable. The suffetes represented, like the consuls at Rome, the majesty of the commonwealth, and had a share of executive authority; the council of five had criminal jurisdiction and inquisitorial power; the one hundred and four were a body chosen out of the senate, by the five, for their support; then comes the senate at large; and, last of all, the people at large. Here are five orders completely distinct, besides the necessary legal qualification of great wealth; yet all these checks, although they preserved the state five hundred years, could not prolong its period above seven hundred; because, after all, the balance was not natural nor effectual. The executive power was not separated from the legislative; nor the different parts of the legislature properly divided or balanced. Both the executive and judicial power were chiefly in legislative hands.

The noble families, thus secured in possession both of legislative and executive power, could not be restrained by all the ligaments which had been contrived to preserve the equipoise between them and the people. They divided into two factions, with the family of Hanno at the head of one, and that of Barcas of the other. They first attacked the council of five, whose power was unpopular, as well as odious to the nobles; then easily procured a law to make it annually elective, or, in other words, an instrument always in the hands of the prevailing faction, as such a small body, so changeable, must ever be; and, lastly, overturned the constitution. The Romans had all the advantage of these dissensions in the war, by which they finally destroyed their rival power so effectually, that scarce a trace of it remains to be seen, even in ruins. Their virtues were not extinguished to the last; and some of the greatest examples of patriotism and heroism were exhibited even in their expiring agonies.

ATHENS.

Cecrops, an Egyptian, conducted a colony that settled in Athens, and first engaged the wandering shepherds and hunters of Attica to unite in villages of husbandmen. Although the government of Egypt was an absolute monarchy, he found it necessary to establish his own upon a more limited plan.

The two rival families of Perseus and Pelops, anciently contended for the dominion of the Grecian peninsula. The fortune of the descendants of the latter prevailed, and their superior prosperity led them to persecute their enemies. The descendants of Hercules, who was a son of Jupiter by Alcmena, of the line of Perseus, were stripped of all their possessions, and driven into exile. After a series of misfortunes, Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, descendants in the fifth degree from Hercules, conducted an expedition into Greece and conquered the whole country.

The governments of the little states of Greece in the first ages, though of no very regular and certain constitution, were all limited monarchies. When, therefore, the Heraclides possessed themselves of Peloponnesus, they established everywhere that hereditary limited monarchy, which was the only government assimilated to the ideas and temper of the age, and an equality among themselves. Those vigorous principles of aristocracy, and some traces of the spirit of democracy, which had always existed in the Grecian governments, began to ferment; and, in the course of a few ages, monarchy was everywhere abolished. The very name of king was proscribed; a republic was thought the only government to which it became men to submit; and the term tyrant was introduced to denote those who, in opposition to these new political principles, acquired monarchical authority. Absolute monarchy was unknown as a legal constitution. The title of king implied a superiority of lawful dignity and authority in one person, above all others, for their benefit, not a right of absolute power. Legislation was never within their prerogative.

A distinction of families into those of higher and lower rank obtained very early throughout Greece, and nowhere more than at Athens, where, by the constitution of Theseus, the Eupatridæ, or nobly born, formed a distinct order of the state with great privileges. Afterwards wealth became the principal criterion of rank, which amounted probably to the same thing, as the nobly born were generally most wealthy. Every citizen in every Grecian state was bound to military service, as in modern times, among the feudal kingdoms. It was natural that the rich should serve on horseback; and this was the origin of knighthood both in ancient and modern nations. Where the noble or the rich held all the power, they called their own government aristocracy, or government of the better sort, or optimacy, government of the best sort. The people allowed the appellation of aristocracy only to those governments where persons, elected by themselves for their merit, held the principal power. Democracy signified a government by all the freemen of the state or the people at large, forming in assembly the legal, absolute sovereign. But as this, above all others, was subject to irregularity, confusion, and absurdity, when unchecked by some balancing power lodged in fewer hands, it was called ochlocracy, or mob rule. Most of the Grecian states had some mixture of two or more of these forms. The mixture of oligarchy and democracy, in which the former was superior, yet the latter sufficed to secure liberty and equal right to the people, might, according to Aristotle, be called aristocracy. That mixture where the democratic power prevailed, yet was in some degree balanced by authority lodged in steadier hands, is distinguished by that great author by the name of polity. An equal mixture of all three was never known in Greece, and, therefore, never obtained a distinct name in that language.

A war happened between the Athenians and Peloponnesians; the armies were encamped near each other, and the Delphian oracle was consulted. The answer of the Pythoness implied, that the Peloponnesians would be victorious, provided they did not kill the Athenian king. Codrus, disguising himself like a clown, with a fagot on his shoulder and a fork in his hand, determined to devote his life, entered the enemy’s camp, and was killed. The Peloponnesian chiefs finding the body to be Codrus, and fearing the prophecy, withdrew their forces, and a peace ensued. Medon, the eldest son of Codrus, was lame; and bodily ability was held in so high rank in popular esteem, that his younger brother disputed the succession. Each had a powerful party; but the dispute brought forward a third, which was for abolishing the royalty, and having no king but Jupiter. Fatal dissensions were apprehended, when a declaration of the oracle was procured in favor of Medon; and it was amicably accommodated that Medon should be first magistrate, with the title of archon, but not king. Although the honor was to be hereditary, and the archon to be accountable to the assembly of the people for his administration, it was agreed that a colony should be sent to Asia Minor, under Nelius and Androclus, younger sons of Codrus. The most restless spirits joined in the migration, and no further materials for history remain for several generations.

From the period where Homer’s history ceases, to that in which the first prose historians lived, a space of two hundred and fifty years, there is little light to be obtained. Twelve archons are named, who followed Medon by hereditary succession, and filled up three hundred years. On the death of Alcmæon, Charops was raised to the archonship, upon condition of holding it for ten years only. Six archons followed Charops, by appointment, for ten years; but on the expiration of the archonship of Eryxias, it was resolved that the office should be annual, and that there should be nine persons to execute it. They had not all equal dignity, nor the same functions; one represented the majesty of the state, and was usually called the archon; the second had the title of king, and was head of the church; the polemarch was third, and chief of military affairs. The other six had the title of thesmothetes; they presided as judges in ordinary courts of justice. The nine together formed the council of state. Here methinks I see the Polish nobles running down the king, or those of Venice the doge, and dividing the spoils of his prerogative among themselves. Legislation was in the assembly of the people; but the whole administration, civil, military, religious, and judiciary, was with the archons, who were commonly appointed by lot; but sometimes the assembly of the people interfered, and exercised the power of naming them. From the appointment of annual archons there was nothing but intestine troubles. That weight which, from earliest times, a few principal families possessed among the Attic people, and which was in a great degree confirmed to them by the constitution of Theseus, remained, amid all the turbulence of democracy, to a late period. Among those families the Alcmæonides, claiming some connection by blood with the perpetual archons and kings of the ancient Neleid line, were of great fame. Megacles, head of this family, was archon when Cylon, a man of a very ancient and powerful family, attempted to acquire the sovereignty of his country. He seized the citadel of Athens, with some troops he received from Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, whose daughter he had married. His vanity was excited not only by his birth and marriage, but his personal merit, having been victor in a chariot race at the Olympic games. The people ran to arms under their archons, and laid siege to the citadel. Cylon fled, and his party fled to the altars. They were promised pardon, but condemned and executed. This was an atrocious infidelity, and made the actors in it as odious, as it rendered Cylon and his party again popular and powerful.

The miseries of a fluctuating jurisprudence became insufferable, and all parties united at last in the resolution to appoint a lawgiver. Draco was raised to this important office; a man whose morals and integrity recommended him to the people, but whose capacity was equal to no improvement in the political constitution, and to no greater invention for reforming the judicatures, than that of inflicting capital punishments in all offences; and the knowing ones had no other remedy than to get the oracle to pronounce that the laws of Draco were written in blood; an expression which struck the imagination and touched the heart, and, therefore, soon rendered this system unpopular.1

Salamis, perceiving the divisions at Athens, revolted, and allied itself to Megara. Several attempts to recover it having failed, the lower people, in opposition to their chiefs, carried a law, making it capital to propose a renewal of the enterprise. Solon, of an ancient royal family, who had hitherto pursued nothing but literature and poetry, perceiving that this rash act of the populace began to give general disgust and repentance, especially to the young Athenians, ventured to lead the people to repeal it. He caused it to be reported that he was mad, and for some time kept his house; in this retirement he composed a poem, such as he thought would excite the multitude; then watching his opportunity, during an assembly of the people, he ran into the Agora like one frantic, mounted on a rock, and read his poem to the people. Some of his friends, who were in the secret, were present, and ready to wonder and applaud. The enthusiasm spread, the law was repealed, and an expedition sent under Solon’s friends, which, being skilfully conducted, recovered the island. But the party of Cylon were still clamorous against the partisans of Megacles, for their breach of faith. Solon persuaded the accused to submit to a trial. They were condemned to banishment; but this punishment not being sufficient to appease the deity, the bones of those who had been executed were removed beyond the mountains.

During these troubles Salamis was retaken. Superstition now gained the ascendant; phantoms and omens were seen, and expiations and purifications were necessary. Epimenides, a Cretan philosopher, of great reputation for religious knowledge, and an intimate friend of Solon, was invited to superintend the religion of Athens. Epimenides was the ostensible director, but Solon concerted with him the various improvements in jurisprudence. By means of religious pomp, ceremony, sacrifices, and processions, he amused the people into some degree of order and suspension of their factions; but the tranquillity was not likely to be lasting. Three political parties existed,—one for democracy, composed of the landholders of the mountains; another for an aristocracy of the rich, consisting of the possessors of the plain; a third preferred a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, consisting of the inhabitants of the coast, and the most disinterested men. There was another division of the people, into the parties of the rich and the poor. Dangerous convulsions were so apprehended, that many sober men thought the establishment of a tyranny, in one, necessary to prevent greater evils. Solon’s reputation for wisdom and integrity was universal; and, as he had friends in all parties, they procured the place of archon, with power to reform the constitution. His first object was to reconcile the rich with the poor; this he accomplished by lowering the interest without annulling the debt,1 and by taking from the creditor the exorbitant powers over the person and family of the debtor. He found such a predilection for democracy in the minds of the citizens, that he preserved to every free Athenian his equal vote in the assembly of the people, which he made supreme in all cases, legislative, executive, and judicial. He had not, probably, tried the experiment of a democracy in his own family, before he attempted it in the city, according to the advice of Lycurgus; but was obliged to establish such a government as the people would bear, not that which he thought the best, as he said himself.

As the laws of Solon were derived from Crete and Egypt, were afterwards adopted by the Romans as their model, and have by them been transmitted to all Europe, they are a most interesting subject of inquiry; but it is not possible to ascertain exactly which were his, which were those of Epimenides or Theseus, or what was, in fact, the constitution of Athens. The first inquiry is, who were citizens? By a poll that was taken in the time of Pericles, they were found to be fourteen thousand persons. By another, in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, they were twenty-one thousand. At the same time, there were ten thousand freemen, consisting of foreigners and freed slaves, and four hundred thousand souls in actual bondage, who had no vote in the assembly of the people. The persons, therefore, who shared the power being not a tenth part of the nation,1 were excused from labor, in agriculture as well as manufactures, and had time for education; they were paid, too, for attendance on public affairs, which enabled the poorer citizens to attend their duty. This is one circumstance which rendered a government so popular practicable for a time. Another was, the division of Attica into tribes and boroughs, or districts, like the American counties, towns, and parishes, or the shires, hundreds, and tithings of England. The tribes, at first, were four, afterwards ten. Each tribe had its presiding magistrate, called phylarchus, analogous to the English Sheriff; and each borough, of which there were one hundred and seventy-four, its demarchus, like a constable or headborough. As the title of king was preserved to the high-priest, so the person presiding over the religion of each tribe was called philobasileus, king’s friend, and was always appointed from among the nobly born, eupatridæ. Thus religion was always in the hands of the aristocratical part of the community. As the oracles and priests were held by the people in so much sacred veneration, the placing them, with all their splendid shows and rites, always in the power of the aristocratical families, or persons of best education, was as great a check to the democracy as can well be imagined. It should be here recollected, too, that almost all these eupatridæ, or nobles, among the Greeks, were believed to be descended from the gods, nearly or remotely. Nobility, as well as royalty, was believed of divine right, because the gods and goddesses had condescended to familiar intercourse with women and men, on purpose to beget persons of a superior order to rule among nations. The superiority of priests and nobles was assumed and conceded with more consistency than it is in Poland, Switzerland, and Venice; and they must have had a proportional influence with the people.

Another check to this “authority in one centre,” the nation, established by Solon, was countenanced by precedent introduced by Theseus, who divided the Attic people into three ranks. All magistrates were taken exclusively out of the first. Solon, by a new division, made four ranks, determined by property, and confined all magistracies to the first three. By this regulation, he excluded all those who had no will of their own, and were dependent on others; but by still allowing to the fourth, who were more numerous than all the others, their equal votes in the assembly of the people, he put all power into hands the least capable of properly using it; and, accordingly, these, by uniting, altered the constitution at their pleasure, and brought on the ruin of the nation. By these precautions, however, we see the anxiety of Solon to avail himself of every advantage of birth, property, and religion, which the people would respect, to balance the sovereign democracy. With the same view, he instituted a senate of one hundred persons out of each of the four tribes;1 and this great council, to which he committed many of the powers of the archons, he hoped would have a weight which all the archons together had not been able to preserve. It was afterwards increased to five hundred, when the tribes were increased to ten, fifty out of each, and was then called the council of five hundred. They were appointed annually by lot; but certain legal qualifications were required, as well as a blameless life. The members of each tribe, in turn, for thirty-five days, had superior dignity and additional powers, with the title of prytanes, from whence the hall was called Prytaneium. The prytanes were by turns presidents, had the custody of the seal, and the keys of the treasury and citadel, for one day. The whole assembly formed the council of state of the commonwealth, and had the constant charge of its political affairs; the most important of which was the preparation of business for the assembly of the people, in which nothing was to be proposed which had not first been approved here. This was Solon’s law; and, if it had been observed, would have formed a balance of such importance, that the commonwealth would have lasted longer and been more steady. But factious demagogues were often found to remind the people, that all authority was collected into one centre, and that the sovereign assembly was that centre; and a popular assembly being in all ages as much disposed, when unchecked by an absolute negative, to overleap the bounds of law and constitution as the nobles or a king, the laws of Solon were often spurned, and the people demanded and took all power, whenever they thought proper.

Sensible that the business of approving and rejecting magistrates, receiving accusations, catalogues of fines, enacting laws, giving audience to ambassadors, and discussions of religion, would very often be uninteresting to many even of the most judicious and virtuous citizens; that every man’s business is no man’s; Solon1 ordained it criminal in any one not to take a side in civil disturbances. Certain times were stated for the meeting of the general assembly; all gates were shut but that which led to it; fines were imposed for non-attendance; and a small pay allowed by the public to those who attended punctually at the hour. Nine proedri were appointed from the council; from whom the moderator, epistates, was appointed, too, by lot, with whom sat eleven nomophylaces, whose duty it was to explain the tendency of any motions contrary to the spirit of the constitution. The prytanes, too, had distinct and considerable powers in the assembly. When any change in the law was judged necessary by the people, another court, consisting of a thousand persons, called nomothetæ,1 were directed to consider of the best mode of alteration, and prepare a bill; after all, five syndics were appointed to defend the old law before the new one could be enacted. A law, passed without having been previously published, conceived in ambiguous terms, or contrary to any former law, subjected the proposer to penalties. It was usual to repeal the old law before a new one was proposed, and this delay was an additional security to the constitution.

The regular manner of enacting a law was this: a bill was prepared by the council; any citizen might, by petition or memorial, make a proposition to the prytanes, whose duty it was to present it to the council; if approved by them, it became a proboulema; and, being written on a tablet, was exposed for several days for public consideration, and at the next assembly read to the people; then proclamation was made by a crier: “Who of those above fifty years of age chooses to speak?” When these had made their orations, any other citizen, not disqualified by law, for having fled from his colors in battle, being deeply indebted to the public, or convicted of any crime, had an opportunity to speak. But the prytanes had a general power to enjoin silence on any man, subject, no doubt, to the judgment of the assembly. Without this, debates might be endless. When the debate was finished, the crier, at the command of the proedri, proclaimed that the question waited the determination of the people, which was given by holding up the hand. In some uncommon cases, particularly of impeachments, the votes were given privately, by casting pebbles into urns. The proedri ex-examined the votes and declared the majority. The prytanes dismissed the assembly. Every one of these precautions demonstrated Solon’s conviction of the necessity of balances to such an assembly, though they were found by experience to be all ineffectual.

From the same solicitude for balances against the turbulence of democracy, he restored the court of Areopagus, improved its constitution, and increased its power. He composed it of those who had held with reputation the office of archon and admitted them into this dignity and authority for life. The experience, the reputation, and permanency of these Areopagites must have been a very powerful check. From the Areopagus alone, no appeal lay to the people; yet if they chose to interfere, no balancing power existed to resist their despotic will. The constitution authorized the Areopagus to stop the judicial decrees of the assembly of the people; annul an acquittal, or grant a pardon; to direct all draughts on the public treasury; to punish impiety, immorality, and disorderly conduct; to superintend the education of youth; punish idleness; to inquire by what means men of no property or employment maintained themselves. The court sat in the night, without light,1 that the members might be less liable to prejudice. Pleaders were confined to simple narration of facts and application of laws, without ornaments of speech or address to the passions. Its reputation for wisdom and justice was so high, that Cicero said, the commonwealth of Athens could no more be governed without the court of Areopagus, than the world without the providence of God.

The urgent necessity for balances to a sovereign assembly, in which all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial, was collected into one centre, induced Solon, though in so small a state, to make his constitution extremely complicated. No less than ten courts of judicature, four for criminal causes, and six for civil, besides the Areopagus and general assembly, were established at Athens. In conformity to his own saying, celebrated among those of the seven wise men, that “the most perfect government is that where an injury to any one is the concern of all,” he directed that, in all the ten courts, causes should be decided by a body of men, like our juries, taken from among the people; the archons only presiding like our judges. As the archons were appointed by lot, they were often but indifferent lawyers, and chose two persons of experience to assist them. These, in time, became regular constitutional officers, by the name of Paredri, assessors. The jurors were paid for their service, and appointed by lot. This is the glory of Solon’s laws. It is that department which ought to belong to the people at large; they are most competent for this; and the property, liberty, equality, and security of the citizens, all require that they alone should possess it. Itinerant judges, called the Forty, were appointed to go through the counties, to determine assaults, and civil actions under a certain sum.

Every freeman was bound to military service. The multitude of slaves made this necessary, as well as practicable. Rank and property gave no other distinction than that of serving on horseback.

The fundamental principle of Solon’s government was the most like M. Turgot’s idea of any we have seen. Did this prevent him from establishing different orders and balances? Did it not render necessary a greater variety of orders, and more complicated checks, than any in America? Yet all were insufficient, for want of the three checks, absolute and independent. Unless three powers have an absolute veto, or negative, to every law, the constitution can never be long preserved; and this principle we find verified in the subsequent history of Athens, notwithstanding the oath he had the address and influence to persuade all the people to take, that they would change none of his institutions for ten years. Soon after his departure, the three parties of the highlands, lowlands, and coasts began to show themselves afresh. These were, in fact, the party of the rich, who wanted all power in their own hands, and to keep the people in absolute subjection, like the nobles in Poland, Venice, Genoa, Bern, Soleure, &c.; the democratical party, who wanted to abolish the council of five hundred, the Areopagus, the ten courts of judicature, and every other check, and who, with furious zeal for equality, were the readiest instruments of despotism; and the party of judicious and moderate men, who, though weaker than either of the others, were the only balance between them. This last party, at this time, was supported by the powerful family of the Alcmæonides, of whom Megacles, the chief, had greatly increased the wealth and splendor of his house, by marrying the daughter of the tyrant of Sicyon, and had acquired fame by victories in the Olympian, Pythian, and Isthmian games. The head of the oligarchic party was Lycurgus, not the Spartan lawgiver. The democratical party was led by Pisistratus, claiming descent from Codrus and Nestor, with great abilities, courage, address, and reputation for military conduct in several enterprises. Upon Solon’s return, after an absence of ten years, he found prejudices deeply rooted; attachment to their three leaders dividing the whole people. He was too old to direct the storm. The factions continued their manœuvres; and at length Pisistratus, by an artifice, became master of the commonwealth. Wounding himself and his horses, he drove his chariot violently into the Agora, where the assembly of the people was held, and, in a pathetic speech, declared “that he had been waylaid as he was going into the country; that it was for being the man of the people that he had thus suffered; that it was no longer safe for any man to be a friend of the poor; it was not safe for him to live in Attica, unless they would take him under their protection.” Ariston, one of his partisans, moved for a guard of fifty men, to defend the person of the friend of the people, the martyr for their cause. In spite of the utmost opposition of Solon, though Pisistratus was his friend, this point was carried. Pisistratus, with his guards, seized the citadel; and, his opponents forced into submission or exile, he became the first man, and from this time is called the Tyrant of Athens; a term which meant a citizen of a republic, who by any means obtained a sovereignty over his fellow-citizens. Many of them were men of virtue, and governed by law, after being raised to the dignity by the consent of the people; so that the term tyrant was arbitrarily used by the ancients, sometimes to signify a lawful ruler, and sometimes an usurper.

Pisistratus, of whom Solon said, “Take away his ambition, cure him of his lust of reigning, and there is not a man of more virtue, or a better citizen,” changed nothing in the constitution. The laws, assembly, council, courts of justice, and magistrates, all remained; he himself obeyed the summons of the Areopagus, upon the charge of murder. Solon trusted to his old age against the vengeance of the tyrant, and treated him in all companies with very imprudent freedoms of speech. But Pisistratus carried all his points with the people; and had too much sense to regard the venerable legislator, or to alter his system. He returned his reproaches with the highest respect; and gained upon him, according to some authors, to condescend to live with him in great familiarity, and assist him in his administration. Others say that Solon, after having long braved the tyrant’s resentment, and finding the people lost to all sense of their danger, left Athens and never returned.

Solon died at the age of eighty, two years after the usurpation. The usurper soon fell. The depressed rival chiefs, Megacles and Lycurgus, uniting their parties, expelled him; but the confederated rivals could not agree. Megacles proposed a coalition with Pisistratus, and offered him his daughter in marriage. The condition was accepted; but the people in assembly must be gained. To this end they dressed a fine girl with all the ornaments and armor of Minerva, and drove into the city, heralds proclaiming before them, “O Athenians, receive Pisistratus, whom Minerva honoring above all men, herself conducts into your citadel.” The people believed the maid to be a goddess, worshipped her, and received Pisistratus again into the tyranny.

Is this government, or the waves of the sea?

But Pisistratus was soon obliged to retire to Eretria, and leave the party of Megacles masters of Athens. He strengthened his connections; and in the eleventh year of this his second banishment, he returned to Attica with an army, and was joined by his friends. The party of Megacles met him with another army, ill disciplined and commanded, from the city, were attacked by surprise and defeated. Pisistratus proclaimed that none need fear who would return peaceably home. The known honor, humanity, and clemency of his character, procured him confidence; his enemies fled, and he entered the city without opposition. He made no fundamental change in the constitution, though, as head of a party, he had the principal influence. He depended upon a large fortune of his own and a good understanding with Thebes and Argos to support him in it. He died in peace, and left his son successor to his influence. Both his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, were excellent characters; and arts, agriculture, gardening, and literature, as well as wisdom and virtue, were singularly cultivated by the whole race of these tyrants. Harmodius and Aristogiton, however, conspired the death both of Hippias and Hipparchus; the latter was killed, and Hippias was led to severities. Many Athenians were put to death. Hippias, to strengthen his interest with foreign powers, married his only daughter to the son of the Tyrant of Lampsacus. Her epitaph shows that the title of tyrant was not then a term of reproach,— “This dust covers Archedice, daughter of Hippias, in his time the first of the Greeks. Daughter, sister, wife, and mother of tyrants, her mind was never elated to arrogance.”

The opposite party were watchful to recover Athens, and to increase their interest with the other Grecian states for that end. The temple of Delphi was burnt. The Alcmæonides, to ingratiate themselves with the oracle, the Amphictyons, and all Greece, rebuilt it with Parian marble, instead of Porine stone, as they had contracted to do, without asking any additional price. The consequence was, that whenever the Lacedæmonians consulted the oracle, the answer always concluded with an admonition to give liberty to Athens. At length the oracle was obeyed; and, after some variety of fortune, the Alcmæonides, aided by Cleomenes the Spartan, prevailed, and Hippias retired to Sigeium.

It was one maxim of the Spartans, constantly to favor aristocratical power; or rather, wherever they could, to establish an oligarchy. For in every Grecian city there were always an aristocratical, oligarchical, and democratical faction. Whenever the Grecian states had a war with one another, or a sedition within themselves, the Lacedæmonians were ready to interfere as mediators. They conducted the business generally with great caution, moderation, and sagacity; but never lost sight of their view to extend the influence of their state; nor of their favorite measure for that end, the encouragement of aristocratical power, or rather oligarchical; for a few principal families, indebted to Lacedæmon for their preëminence, and unable to retain it without her assistance, were the best instruments for holding the state in alliance. This policy they now proposed to follow at Athens. Cleisthenes, son of Megacles, head of the Alcmæonides, was the first person of the commonwealth. Having no great abilities,1 a party was formed against him under Isagoras, with whom most of the principal people joined. The party of Cleisthenes was among the lower sort, who being all powerful in the general assembly, he made by their means some alterations in the constitution favoring his own influence. Cleisthenes was now Tyrant of Athens, as much as Pisistratus had been. In the contests of Grecian factions, the alternative was generally victory, exile, or death; the inferior party, therefore, resorted sometimes to harsh expedients. Isagoras and his adherents applied to Lacedæmon. Cleomenes, violent in his temper, entered with zeal into the cause of Isagoras, and sent a herald to Athens, by whom he imperiously denounced banishment against Cleisthenes and his party, on the old pretence of criminality for the execution of the partisans of Cylon. Cleisthenes obeyed. Exalted by this proof of a dread of Spartan power, Cleomenes went to Athens with a small military force, and banished seven hundred families at once.

Such was Athenian liberty.

He was then proceeding to change the constitution to suit the views of Spartan ambition, by dissolving the council of five hundred, and committing the whole power to a new council of three hundred, all partisans of Isagoras. Athens was not so far humbled. The five hundred resisted, and excited the people, who flew to arms, and besieged Cleomenes and Isagoras in the citadel; who the third day surrendered, upon condition that the Lacedæmonians might depart in safety. Isagoras went with them. Many of his party were executed, and Cleisthenes and the exiled families returned; but conscious of their danger from their hostile fellow-citizens in concert with Lacedæmon, they sent to solicit an alliance with Artaphernes, the satrap of Persia. The answer was, If they would give earth and water to Darius they might be received, otherwise they must depart. The ambassadors, considering the imminent danger of their country and party, consented to these humiliating terms. Although Athens was distracted with domestic factions, and pressed with the fear of an attack from Cleomenes, the conduct of her ambassadors, in acknowledging subjection to the Persian king, in hopes of his protection, was highly reprobated upon their return; and it does not appear that Persian assistance was further desired. Yet the danger which hung over Athens was very great. Cleomenes, bent on revenge, formed a confederacy against them, of the Thebans, Corinthians, and Chalcidians. These could not agree, and the Athenians gained some advantages of two of them.

Cleomenes then pretended that Sparta had acted irreligiously in expelling Hippias, who ought to be restored; because, when he was besieged in the citadel at Athens, he had discovered a collusion between the Delphic priests and the Alcmæonides. Sparta was willing to restore Hippias; but Corinth, their ally, was not. Hippias, despairing of other means, now in his turn applied to Persia, and brought upon his country the Persian war; from which it was delivered by Miltiades, at the battle of Marathon. Miltiades became the envy of the Alcmæonid family. Xanthippus, one of the principal men of Athens, who had married a daughter of Megacles, the great opponent of Pisistratus, conducted a capital accusation against him. He was condemned in a fine of fifty talents, more than he was worth. His wound, which prevented him from attending the trial, mortified, and he died in prison. In order to brand the family of Pisistratus, the fame of Harmodius and Aristogiton was now cried up. They had assassinated Hipparchus from mere private revenge; but they were now called asserters of public liberty. The tyrannicide, as it was called, was celebrated by songs, statues, ceremonies, and religious festivals.

It must be acknowledged that every example of a government, which has a large mixture of democratical power, exhibits something to our view which is amiable, noble, and I had almost said, divine. In every state hitherto mentioned, this observation is verified. What is contended for, is, that the people in a body cannot manage the executive power, and, therefore, that a simple democracy is impracticable; and that their share of the legislative power must be always tempered with two others, in order to enable them to preserve it, as well as to correct its rapid tendency to abuse. Without this, they are but a transient glare of glory, which passes away like a flash of lightning, or like a momentary appearance of a goddess to an ancient hero, which, by revealing but a glimpse of celestial beauties, only excited regret that he had ever seen them.

The republic of Athens, the schoolmistress of the whole civilized world for more than three thousand years, in arts, eloquence, and philosophy, as well as in politeness and wit, was, for a short period of her duration, the most democratical commonwealth of Greece. Unfortunately her history, between the abolition of her kings and the time of Solon, has not been circumstantially preserved. During this period, the people seem to have endeavored to collect all authority into one centre, and to have avoided a composition of orders and balances as carefully as M. Turgot. But that centre was a group of nobles, not the nation. Their government consisted in a single assembly of nine archons chosen annually by the people. But even here was a check; for by law the archons must all be chosen out of the nobility. But this form of government had its usual effects, in introducing anarchy, and such a general profligacy of manners, that the people could at length be restrained from even the most ordinary crimes by nothing short of the last punishment. Draco accordingly proposed a law, by which death should be inflicted on every violation of the law. Humanity shuddered at so shocking a severity! and the people chose rather that all offences should go unpunished, than that a law thus written in blood, as they termed it both in horror and contempt, should be executed.

Confusions increased, and divided the nation into three factions; and their miseries became so extreme, that they offered Solon an absolute monarchy. He had too much sense, as well as virtue, to accept it; but employed his talents in new-modelling the government. Sensible, from experience, of the fatal effects of a government too popular, he wished to introduce an aristocracy, moderated like that of Sparta; but thought the habits and prejudices of the people too strong to bear it. The archons he continued; but, to balance their authority, he erected a senate of four hundred, to be chosen by ballot of the people.1 He also revived the court of Areopagus, which had jurisdiction in criminal cases, and the care of religion. He excluded from the executive or the magistracy all the citizens who were not possessed of a certain fortune; but vested the sovereignty in a legislative assembly of the people, in which all had a right to vote. In this manner Solon attempted a double balance. The Areopagus was to check the executive in the hands of the archons; and the senate of four hundred, the fickleness and fire of the people. Every one must see that these devices would have been no effectual control in either case; yet they were better than none. It was very right that the people should have all elections; but democratical prejudices were so inveterate, that he was obliged not only to make them, assembled in a body, an essential branch of the legislature, but to give them cognizance of appeals from all the superior courts. Solon himself, in his heart, must have agreed with Anacharsis, that this constitution was but a cobweb to bind the poor, while the rich would easily break through it. Pisistratus soon proved it, by bribing a party, procuring himself a guard, demolishing Solon’s whole system before his eyes, and establishing a single tyranny. The tyrant was expelled several times by the opposition, but as often brought back, and he finally transmitted his monarchy to his sons. One of these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton; and the other was driven into banishment by the opposition, aided by the neighboring state, Sparta. He fled to the Persians, excited Darius against his country, and was killed at Marathon.

These calamities inspired the people with such terrors of a single tyrant, that, instead of thinking to balance effectually their “orders,” they established the ostracism, to prevent any man from becoming too popular. A check indeed, but a very injudicious one; for it only banished their best men. History nowhere furnishes so frank a confession of the people themselves, of their own infirmities and unfitness for managing the executive branch of government, or an unbalanced share of the legislature, as this institution. The language of it is, “We know ourselves so well, that we dare not trust our own confidence and affections, our own admiration and gratitude for the greatest talents and sublimest virtues. We know our heads will be turned, if we suffer such characters to live among us, and we shall always make them kings.” What more melancholy spectacle can be conceived even in imagination, than that inconstancy which erects statues to a patriot or a hero one year, banishes him the next, and the third erects fresh statues to his memory?1

Such a constitution of government, and the education of youth which follows necessarily from it, always produce such characters as Cleon and Alcibiades; mixtures of good qualities enough to acquire the confidence of a party, and bad ones enough to lead them to destruction; whose lives show the miseries and final catastrophe of such imperfect polity.

From the example of Athens, it is clear that the government of a single assembly of archons, chosen by the people, was found intolerable; that, to remedy the evils of it, Solon established four several orders,—an assembly of the people, an assembly of four hundred, an assembly of archons, and the Areopagus; that he endeavored to balance one singly by another, instead of forming his balance out of three branches. Thus, these attempts at an equilibrium were ineffectual; produced a never-ending fluctuation in the national councils; continual factions, massacres, proscriptions, banishment, and death of the best citizens. And the history of the Peloponnesian war, by Thucydides, informs us how the raging flames at last burnt out.

The people in each of the United States, have, after all, more real authority than they had in Athens.1 Planted, as they are, over large dominions, they cannot meet in one assembly, and, therefore, are not exposed to those tumultuous commotions, like the raging waves of the sea, which always agitated the ecclesia at Athens. They have all elections of governor and senators, as well as representatives, so prudently guarded, that there is scarce a possibility of intrigue. The property required in a representative, senator, or even a governor, is so small, that multitudes have equal pretensions to be chosen. No election is confined to any order of nobility, or to any great wealth; yet the legislature is so divided into three branches, that no law can be passed in a passion, nor any inconsistent with the constitution. The executive is excluded from the two legislative assemblies; and the judiciary power is independent, as well as separate from all. This will be a fair trial, whether a government so popular can preserve itself. If it can, there is reason to hope for all the equality, all the liberty, and every other good fruit of an Athenian democracy, without any of its ingratitude, levity, convulsions, or factions.

THE POLICY OF ANTALCIDAS.

In the year 1774, a certain British officer, then at Boston, was often heard to say: “I wish I were parliament; I would not send a ship or troop to this country; but would forthwith pass a statute, declaring every town in North America a free, sovereign, and independent commonwealth. This is what they all desire, and I would indulge them. I should soon have the pleasure to see them all at war with one another, from one end of the continent to the other.” This was a gentleman of letters, and perhaps had learned his politics from Antalcidas, whose opinion concerning the government of a single assembly is very remarkable. But the Greek and the Briton would both have found their artifices in America ineffectual. The Americans are very far from being desirous of such multiplications and divisions of states, and know too well the mischiefs that would follow from them. Yet such a spirit among the people would, in a course of time, be the natural and inevitable effect of M. Turgot’s system of government.

It is not very certain whether Antalcidas was a Spartan or not. If he was, he had violated the law of Lycurgus by travel, had resided long in Persia, and maintained an intercourse and correspondence with several noble families. He was bold, subtle, insinuating, eloquent; but his vices and corruption were equal to his address. The stern Spartan senate thought him a proper instrument to execute an insidious commission at a profligate court. The institutions of his own country, Sparta, were the objects of his ridicule; but those of the democratical states of Greece, of his sovereign contempt. The ancient maxim of some of the Greeks, “That every thing is lawful to a man in the service of his country,” was now obsolete, and had given way to a purer morality; but Antalcidas was probably one of those philosophers who thought every thing lawful to a man which could serve his private interest. The Spartan senate never acted upon a principle much better; and therefore might, upon this occasion, have given their ambassador the instruction which he pretended, namely,—to offer “to resign all pretensions to the Greek cities in Asia, which they would acknowledge to be dependencies of the Persian empire; and to declare all the cities and islands, small and great, totally independent of each other.” These articles, in consequence of which there would not be any republic powerful enough to disturb the tranquillity of Persia, were more advantageous to them than the most insolent courtier would have ventured to propose. The ambassador was rewarded by a magnificent present; and the terms of peace transmitted to court, to be ratified by Artaxerxes. The negotiation, however, languished, and the war was carried on with violence for several years; and all the art, activity, and address of Antalcidas were put to the trial before he obtained the ratification. The treaty was at last completed: “That all the republics, small and great, should enjoy the independent government of their own hereditary laws; and whatever people rejected these conditions, so evidently calculated for preserving the public tranquillity, must expect the utmost indignation of the Great King, who, in conjunction with the republic of Sparta, would make war on their perverse and dangerous obstinacy, by sea and land, with ships and money.”

Antalcidas, and Tiribazus, the Persian satrap, with whom he had concerted the treaty, had foreseen that, as Thebes must resign her authority over the inferior cities of Bœotia; as Argos must withdraw her garrison from Corinth, aud leave that capital in the power of the aristocratic or Lacedæmonian faction; and as Athens must abandon the fruits of her recent victories, there might be an opposition made to the treaty by these three states. To guard against which, they had provided powerful armaments by sea and land, which, with Spartan and Persian threats, so intimidated all, that all at last submitted.

This peace of Antalcidas forms a disgraceful era in the history of Greece. Their ancient confederacies were dissolved; the smaller towns were loosened from all connection with the large cities; all were weakened by being disunited. What infamy to the magistrates of Sparta, and their intriguing, unprincipled ambassador! But Athens, Thebes, and Argos, by the friendship of the democratical cities and confederacies, had become powerful, and excited their haughty jealousy. The article which declared the smaller cities independent was peculiarly useful to the views of Sparta; it represented them as the patrons of liberty among the free. The stern policy of Sparta had crushed in all her secondary towns the hope of independence. The authority of Athens, Thebes, Argos, and all the democratical confederacies, was less imperious; the sovereign and subject were more nearly on a footing of equality; and the Spartans knew, that “men are disposed to reject the just rights of their equals, rather than revolt against the tyranny of their masters;” their own slaves and citizens had furnished them with constant proof of this.

But Sparta, by this masterpiece of roguery, meant, not only still to hold all her own subordinate cities in subjection, not merely to detach the inferior communities from her rivals, but to add them to her own confederacy. To this end, by her emissaries, she intrigued in all the subordinate cities. How? by promoting liberty, popular government, or proper mixtures of a well-ordered commonwealth? By no means; but by supporting the aristocratical factions in all of them; fomenting animosities among the people against each other, and especially against their capitals. Complaints occasioned by these cabals, were referred to the Spartan senate, which had acquired the reputation of the patron of the free, the weak, and the injured, and which always decided in its own favor. But the ambition of Spartans, cool and cunning as it was, had not patience to remain long satisfied with such legal usurpations; they determined to mix the terror of their arms with the seduction of policy.

Before we proceed to an account of their operations, we must develop a little more fully the policy of Antalcidas. Besides the free republics of Attica, Thebes, and Argos, which consisted of several cities, governed by their first magistrate, senate, and people, in which the subordinate cities always complained of the inordinate influence of the capital, there were several republics reputed still more popular, because they were governed by single assemblies, like Biscay, the Grisons, Appenzel, Underwald, Glarus, &c. These republics consisted of several towns, each governed by its own first magistrate, council, and people; but confederated together, under the superintendence of a single diplomatical assembly, in which certain common laws were agreed on, and certain common magistrates appointed, by deputies from each town. These confederacies are the only examples of governments by a single assembly which were known in Greece. Antalcidas knew that each of these towns was discontented with the administration of the common assembly, and that all, in their hearts, wished for independence. It was to this foible of the people that he addressed that policy, in his Persian treaty, by which he reduced to atoms, as if it had been a rope of sand, every democratical city and confederacy, and every one in which democracy and aristocracy were mixed, throughout all Greece.

The first victim of this ambitious policy was Arcadia, in the centre of Peloponnesus, whose principal town was Mantinea. Arcadia was a fertile and beautiful valley, surrounded by lofty mountains. The scattered villages of shepherds, inhabiting these hills and vales, had grown into cities, by the names of Tegea, Stymphalis, Heræa, Orchomenus, and Mantinea. The inhabitants were distinguished by their innocence, and the simplicity of their manners; but, whenever they had been obliged from necessity, to engage in war, they had displayed such vigor, energy, and intrepidity, as made their alliance very desirable. The dangerous neighborhood of Sparta had obliged them to fortify their towns and maintain garrisons; but jealousies arose between Tegea and Mantinea, and emulations to be the capital. The year after the treaty of Antalcidas, ambassadors were sent by the Spartan senate to the assembly at Mantinea, to command them to demolish the walls of their proud city, and return to their peaceful villages. The reasons assigned were, that the Mantineans had discovered their hatred to Sparta, envied her prosperity, rejoiced in her misfortunes, and, in the late war had furnished some corn to the Argives. The Mantineans received the proposal with indignation; the ambassadors retired in disgust. The Spartans proclaimed war, demanded the aid of their allies, and marched a powerful army under their king, Agesipolis, and invaded the territory. After the most destructive ravages of the country, and a long siege of Mantinea, they were not able to subdue the spirit of this people, until they turned the course of the river Ophis, and laid the walls of the city under water; these, being of raw bricks, dissolved and fell. The inhabitants, intimidated, offered to demolish the walls, and follow Sparta in peace and war, upon condition they might be allowed to continue and live in the city. Agesipolis replied, that, while they lived together in one city, their numbers exposed them to the delusions of seditious demagogues, whose address and eloquence seduced the multitude from their true interest, and destroyed the influence of their superiors in rank, wealth, and wisdom, on whose attachment alone the Lacedæmonians could depend; and, therefore, that they must destroy their houses in the city, separate into four communities, and return to those villages which their ancestors had inhabited. The terror of an immediate assault made it necessary to comply; and the Spartans made a mighty merit of suffering sixty of the most zealous partisans of democracy to fly, unmurdered, from their country.

The little republic of Phlius, too, like every other where a balance is not known and preserved, was distracted by parties. The popular party prevailed, and banished their opponents, the friends of aristocracy. The Spartans threatened, and the ruling party permitted the exiles to return; but not meeting with respectful treatment enough, they complained; and the Spartans, under Agesilaus, appointed commissioners to try and condemn to death the obnoxious leaders of the people in Phlius. This odious office was executed with such unexampled severity, as terrified those who survived into an invariable attachment to Sparta.

The confederacy of Olynthus was next attempted. A number of towns, of which Olynthus was the principal, between two rivers, had been incorporated or associated together, and had grown into some power and greater hopes. This was enough to arouse the jealousy of Sparta. They sent four or five successive armies, under their ablest kings, to take the part of the aristocratical faction, and conquer this league. Such was the spirit and resources of this little spot, that they defended themselves for four or five campaigns, and then were forced to submit.

In consequence of the peace of Antalcidas, Thebes had been torn with aristocratic and democratic factions, and Sparta joined the latter, which ultimately produced long and obstinate wars, and the exalted characters of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, who, with all their virtues, were not able finally to establish the independency of their country, though both perished in the attempt; Epaminondas, to the last, refusing to the several communities of Bœotia their hereditary laws and government, although he was one of the democratical party.

Sparta, in the next place, sent a detachment to support the partisans of aristocracy in Argolis, Achaia, and Arcadia, but was compelled by Pelopidas and Epaminondas to evacuate those countries; but Epaminondas supported aristocratic government. As soon as he retired, the Arcadians complained against him, that a people, who knew by their own experience the nature of aristocracy, should have confirmed that severe form of government in an allied or dependent province. The multitude in Thebes condemned the proceedings of Epaminondas, and sent commissioners and a body of mercenaries into Achaia, who assisted the populace to dissolve the aristocracy, to banish or put to death the nobles, and institute a democracy. The foreign troops were scarcely departed, when the exiles, who were very numerous and powerful, returned, and, after a desperate and bloody struggle, recovered their ancient influence. The leaders of the populace were now, in their turn, put to death or expelled; the aristocracy reëstablished; and the magistrates craved the protection of Sparta, which was readily granted.

It would be endless to pursue the consequences of the peace of Antalcidas. Uninterrupted contests and wars in every democratical state in Greece; aristocratical and democratical factions eternally disputing for superiority, mutually banishing and butchering each other; proscriptions, assassinations (of which even Pelopidas was not innocent), treacheries, cruelties without number and without end. But no man, no party, ever thought of introducing an effectual balance, by creating a king with an equal power, to balance the other two. The Romans began to think of this expedient, but it was reserved for England to be the first to reduce it to practice.

Would M. Turgot have said, that if Thebes, Athens, Argos, and the Achæan, Arcadian, and Olynthian leagues, had been each of them governed by a legislature composed of a king, senate, and assembly, with equal authority, and each a decisive negative, that the cause of liberty, in all Greece, would have been thus crumbled to dust by such a paltry trick of Antalcidas? Would the childish humor of separating into as many states as towns have ever been indulged or permitted? Most certainly not. And if the power of negotiation and treaties and the whole executive had been in one man, could the perfidious ambassadors of Sparta and the other states have intrigued and embroiled every thing as they did?

ACHAIA.

The Achæans, whose republic became so famous in later times, inhabited a long but narrow strip of land upon the Corinthian Gulf, which was destitute of harbors, and, as its shores were rocky, of navigation and commerce; but the impartial and generous spirit of their laws, if we are to credit Polybius and their other panegyrists, was some compensation for the natural disadvantages of their situation and territory. They admitted strangers into their community on equal terms with the ancient citizens; and, as they were the first, and, for a long time, the only republic of Greece which had such liberality, it is not strange that they should have enjoyed the praises of all foreigners. In all other states of Greece, in which the people had any share in government, there were constant complaints that one powerful capital domineered over the inferior towns and villages, like Thebes in Bœotia, Athens in Attica. In Laconia, Lycurgus avoided this inconvenience by two popular assemblies, one for Sparta, and one for the country; but in Achaia there was no commercial town, and all were nearly equal, having common laws and institutions, and common weights and measures. Helice, which is distinguished by Homer as the most considerable town of Achaia, was the place of assembly of the congress, until it was swallowed up in an earthquake; then Ægæ became the seat of congress, which annually appointed presidents in rotation, and generals, who were responsible to the congress, as the members of congress were to the cities they represented. This is said to have been an excellent system of government, because it checked the ambition of Achaia, while it maintained its independence. And Polybius is full of the praises of this people for their “virtue and probity in all their negotiations, which had acquired them the good opinion of the whole world, and procured them to be chosen arbitrators between the Lacedæmonians and Thebans; for their wise councils and good dispositions; for their equality and liberty, which is in the utmost perfection among them; for their laws and institutions; for their moderation and freedom from ambition,” &c. Yet whoever reads his own history, will see evident proofs, that much of this is the fond partiality of a patriot for his country; and that they had neither the moderation he ascribes to them, nor the excellent government. Better indeed than the other republics of Greece it might be; and its congress, as a diplomatic assembly, might have governed its foreign affairs very well, if the cities represented in it had been well constituted of a mixture of three independent powers; but it is plain they were not; and were in a continual struggle between their first magistrates, nobles, and people, for superiority, which occasioned their short duration and final ruin.

As this example deserves to be fully examined by every American, let us explain it a little more particularly.

Atreus, King of Argos and Mycenæ, was the son of Pelops, and father of Agamemnon, who was the father of Orestes, who was the father of Tisamenus. Pelops, after whom Peloponnesus was named, was the son of Tantalus, a king of Phrygia; and Tantalus was the son of Jupiter by the nymph Plota.

Tisamenus, flying from Sparta, upon the return of the Heraclidæ, governed in Achaia, and was the first king of that people. The dominion by him there founded was continued, in a rightful succession, down to Gyges. Notwithstanding his descent from Jupiter, his government was probably like that of Alcinous in Phæacia,—twelve archons presided over the twelve cities, who, each in his district, was the first magistrate; and all able to make out, some way or other, their connection with some of the ancient families, who were all alike honorably descended, at least, from an inferior god or goddess. Tisamenus made the thirteenth, and was first among equals at least. The sons of Gyges not governing by law, but despotically, the monarchy was abolished and reduced to a popular state; probably it was only an aristocracy of the twelve archons. These hints at the genealogy of these kings are to show how intimately theology was intermixed with politics in every Grecian state and city; and, at the same time, to show that the whole force of superstition, although powerful enough to procure crowns to these persons, yet, for want of the balance we contend for, was not sufficient to restrain the passions of the nobles, and prevent revolutions almost as rapid as the motion of a wheel. Nothing has ever been found to supply the place of the balance of three powers. The abolition of this limited monarchy was not effected by the people for the purpose of introducing democracy or a mixed government; but by the nobles, for the sake of establishing an aristocracy. The new government, consequently, was a confederation of twelve archons, each ruling as first magistrate in a separate city, with his council and people, as an independent state. The twelve archons met in a general assembly, sometimes in person, and sometimes by proxy, to consult of general affairs and guard against general dangers. This whole state could not be larger than another Biscay, and each city must have been less than a merindade, and its general assembly like the junta-general. Yet such is the passion for independence, that this little commonwealth or confederacy of commonwealths could not hold together. The general assembly was neglected; the cities became independent. Some were conquered by foreigners, and some lost their liberties by domestic tyrants; that is, by their first magistrates assuming arbitrary power. Polybius discovers as much affection for this little republic as Rousseau did for Geneva, and is very loth to confess its faults. He colors over the revolutions they underwent for a course of ages, by saying, that “though their affairs were governed according to the diversity of times and occurrences, all possible endeavors were used to preserve the form of a popular state. The commonwealth was composed of twelve cities, which are in being at this day, Olenus and Helice only excepted, which were swallowed up by the sea in an earthquake that happened not long before the battle of Leuctra; which cities are Patra, Dyma, Phara, Trytæa, Leontium, Ægira, Pellene, Ægium, Bura, Ceraunia, Olenus, and Helice. After the death of Alexander, and since the Olympiad we have mentioned, these cities fell into dangerous dissensions, chiefly by the artifices of the Macedonian princes, when every city apart meditated on nothing but its own private profit and ends, to the prejudice and destruction of its neighbors; and this gave occasion to Demetrius and Cassander, and afterwards to Antigonus Gonatus, to put garrisons in some of their cities; and others were invaded and governed by tyrants, who, in those days, were very numerous in Greece. But about the one hundred and twenty-fourth Olympiad, when Pyrrhus invaded Italy, these people began to see the error of their dissensions, and labored to return to their former union. Those who gave the first example were Dyma, Patra, and Phara. Five years afterwards, Ægium, having cast out the garrison that was placed over it, was received into the confederacy. Bura followed the example, having first killed the tyrant; and soon after Ceraunia did the like; for Iseas, their tyrant, considering how that those of Ægium had expelled their garrison, and that he who governed in Bura was already slain by the practices of Marcus and the Achaians, and that it would be his lot to have them all quickly for enemies, resigned the dominion, after having first stipulated with the Achaians for indemnity for what was passed, and so the city was incorporated into the union of the Achaians. . . . .

“The cities, then, we have mentioned continued for the space of five-and-twenty years to preserve their form of government unchanged, choosing in their general assembly two prætors (or presidents) and a secretary. Afterwards, they concluded to have but one prætor only, who should be charged with the management of their affairs; and the first who enjoyed that dignity was Marcus the Carian, who, after four years of his administration, gave place to Aratus the Sicyonian, who, at the age of twenty years, after he had by his virtue and resolution rescued his country from tyranny, joined it to the commonwealth of the Achaians; so great a veneration had he from his youth for the manners and institutions of that people. Eight years after, he was a second time chosen prætor, and won Acro-Corinth, which Antigonus had fortified with a garrison, whereby Aratus freed all Greece from no small apprehension. When he had restored liberty to Corinth, he united it to the Achaians, together with the city of Megara, which he got by intelligence during his prætorship. . . . In a word, Aratus, who, in a short space, brought many and great things to pass, made it manifest, by his councils and actions, that his greatest aim was the expulsion of the Macedonians out of Peloponnesus, to suppress tyranny, and assert the liberty of his country. So that, during the whole reign of Antigonus Gonatus, Aratus constantly opposed all his designs and enterprises, as he did the ambition of the Ætolians, to raise themselves on the ruins of their neighbor states. And, as in all the transactions of his administration he gave singular evidence of a steady mind and firm resolution, all his attempts succeeded accordingly, notwithstanding many states confederated to hinder the union, and to destroy the commonwealth of the Achaians.

“After the death of Antigonus, the Achaians entered into a league with the Ætolians, and generously assisted them in their war against Demetrius; so that the ancient hatred between these two people seemed for the present extinguished, and the desire of concord began by degrees to grow in the minds of the Ætolians. Demetrius died, when many great and noble occasions were given to the Achaians, of finishing the project they had conceived; for the tyrants who reigned in Peloponnesus, having lost the support of Demetrius, who greatly favored them, began now to despair; and, on the other hand, being awed by Aratus, who admonished them to quit their governments, on promise of great honors and rewards to such as voluntarily resigned, and threatening others with hostility who refused; whereupon, they resolved to despoil themselves of their dignities, restore their people to liberty, and incorporate them with the Achaians. As to Lysidas, the Megalopolitan, he, wisely foreseeing what was likely to come to pass, frankly renounced his dominion during the life of Demetrius, and was received into the general confederacy of rights and privileges with the whole nation. Aristomachus, tyrant of the Argives, Xeno, of the Hermionians, and Cleonymus, of the Phliasians, resigning their authority at the time we mentioned, were likewise received into the alliance of the Achaians.

“In the mean time, the Ætolians began to conceive jealousies at the growing greatness and extraordinary success of the Achaians, and basely entered into a league with Antigonus, who at that time governed Macedon, and with Cleomenes, King of the Lacedæmonians.”

These three powers, Macedonia, Lacedæmon, and Ætolia, were to invade Achaia on all sides; but the great political abilities of Aratus defeated the enterprise. “He considered that Antigonus was a man of experience, and willing enough to make alliances; and that princes have naturally neither friends nor enemies, but measure amities and enmities by the rules of interest. He therefore endeavored after a good understanding with that prince, and determined to propose the joining the forces of the Achaians to his.” He proposed to cede him some towns; and the alliance was formed, and the Cleomenic war commenced. In the prosecution of it, Cleomenes and his Spartans displayed the utmost ferocity and cruelty, particularly at Ægium, where “he put in practice so many outrages and cruelties of war, that he left not so much as any appearance that it had been ever a peopled place.”1 There is great reason to suspect that the Achaians were not less guilty of cruelty; for Polybius professes to follow the account given by Aratus himself, in a history which that prætor wrote of Achaia, who may be well suspected of partiality; and Polybius himself was the son of Lycortas of Megalopolis, who perfected and confirmed the confederacy of the Achaians, and he discovers throughout his history a strong attachment to this people. If the history of Clearchus was extant, we might possibly see that the Achaians, the Spartans, and Macedonians were equally liable to the accusation of inhumanity. Mantinea was subjected to unspeakable calamities as well as Ægium; but Polybius endeavors to cover this over with a veil by abusing Clearchus, accusing him of departing from the dignity of history, and writing tragedies, by representing women with dishevelled hair and naked breasts, embracing each other with melting lamentations and tears, and complaints of men, women, and children, dragged away promiscuously. He attempts to justify the punishment of this city, by charging it with treacherously betraying itself into the hands of the Spartans, and massacring the Achaian garrison. But this was no more than the usual effect of the continual revolutions in the Greek cities, from democracy to aristocracy, from that to monarchy, and back again through the whole circle.

In every one of these cities there were three parties,—a monarchical party, who desired to be governed by a king, or tyrant, as he was then called; an aristocratical party, who wished to elect an oligarchy; and a democratical party, who were zealous for bringing all to a level. Each faction was for collecting all authority into one centre in its own way; but, unfortunately, there was no party who thought of a mixture of all these three orders, and giving each a negative by which it might balance the other two. Accordingly, the regal party applied to Macedonian kings for aids and garrisons; the aristocratical citizens applied to Sparta for the like assistance; and the democratical factions applied to Aratus and the Achaian league. The consequence was, as each party prevailed, it brought in a new garrison, and massacred the old one, together with the leaders of the faction subdued. But is such a system to be recommended to the United States of America? If the Americans had no more discretion than the Greeks, no more humanity, no more consideration for the benign and peaceful religion they profess, they would still have to consider, that the Greeks had in many places forty, and in all ten, slaves, to one free citizen; that the slaves did all the labor, and the free citizens had nothing to do but cut one another’s throats. Wars did not cost money in Greece; happily for the world, at present they are very expensive. An American soldier will not serve one year, without more money for pay than many of these Greek cities had for their whole circulating medium.

There is but one possible means of realizing M. Turgot’s idea. Let us examine it well before we adopt it. Let every town in the Thirteen States be a free, sovereign, and independent democracy; here you may nearly collect all authority into one centre, and that centre the nation. These towns will immediately go to war with each other, and form combinations, alliances, and political intrigues, as ably as the Grecian villages did. But these wars and negotiations cannot be carried on but by men at leisure. The first step to be taken, then, is to determine who shall be freemen, and who slaves. Let this be determined by lot. In every fifty men, forty are to be slaves, and stay at home unarmed, to labor in agriculture and mechanic arts, under certain overseers provided with good whips and scourges. All commerce and navigation, fisheries, &c. are to cease, of course. The other ten are to be free citizens, live like gentlemen, eat black broth, and go out to war; some in favor of tyrants, some for the well-born, and some for the multitude. For, even in the supposition here made, every town will have three parties in it; some will be for making the moderator a king, others for giving the whole government to the selectmen, and a third sort for making and executing all laws, and judging all causes, criminal and civil, in town meeting. Americans will well consider the consequences of such systems of policy, and such multiplications and divisions of states, and will universally see and feel the necessity of adopting the sentiments of Aratus, as reported by Plutarch: “That small cities could be preserved by nothing else but a continual and combined force, united by the bond of common interest; and as the members of the body live and breathe by their mutual communication and connection, and when once separated pine away and putrefy, in the same manner are cities ruined by being dismembered from one another, as well as preserved when, linked together in one great body, they enjoy the benefit of that providence and council that governs the whole.”1 These were the sentiments which, according to the same Plutarch, acquired him so much of the confidence of the Achaians, “that, since he could not by law be chosen their general every year, yet every other year he was, and by his councils and actions was in effect always so; for they perceived that neither riches nor repute, nor the friendship of kings, nor the private interest of his own country, nor any other thing else was so dear to him as the increase of the Achaian power and greatness.”2

CRETE.

This celebrated island, with the fantastical honor of giving birth to some of the gods of Greece, had the real merit and glory of communicating to that country many useful improvements. Their insular situation defended the people from invasions by land, and their proximity to Egypt afforded them an easy intercourse of commerce by sea with the capital of that kingdom. Here Rhadamanthus, in his travels, had collected those inventions and institutions of a civilized people, which he had the address to apply to the confirmation of his own authority. Minos is still more distinguished. In his travels in the East, he saw certain families possessed of unrivalled honors and unlimited authority, as vicegerents of the Deity. Although the Greeks would never admit, in the fullest latitude of oriental superstition and despotism, this odious profanation, yet Minos, taking advantage of his own unbounded reputation, and that enthusiasm for his person which his skill and fortune in war, his genius for science, and talents for government, had excited among wandering credulous savages, spread a report that he was admitted to familiar conversations with Jupiter, and received from that deity his system of laws, with orders to engrave it on tables of brass. The great principle of it was, that all freemen should be equal, and, therefore, that none should have any property in lands or goods; but that citizens should be served by slaves, who should cultivate the lands upon public account. The citizens should dine at public tables, and their families subsist on the public stock. The monarch’s authority was extremely limited, except in war. The magistracies were the recompense of merit and age; and superiority was allowed to nothing else. The youth were restrained to a rigid temperance, modesty, and morality, enforced by law. Their education, which was public, was directed to make them soldiers. Such regulations could not fail to secure order, and what they called freedom, to the citizens; but nine tenths of mankind were doomed to slavery to support them in total idleness, excepting those exercises proper for warriors, become more necessary to keep the slaves in subjection, than to defend the state against the pirates and robbers with whom the age abounded. Idomeneus, grandson of Minos, and commander of the Cretan forces in the Trojan war, was among the most powerful of the Grecian chiefs, and one of the few who returned in safety from that expedition. Here was a government of all authority in one centre, and that centre the most aged and meritorious persons of the nation, with little authority in the king, and none in the rest of the people; yet it was not of sufficient strength to hold together. The venerable old men could not endure the authority, or rather the preëminence of the king. Monarchy must be abolished; and every principal city became early a separate, independent commonwealth; each, no doubt, under its patriarch, baron, noble, or archon, for they all signify the same thing; and continual wars ensued between the several republics within the island; and Cretan valor and martial skill were employed and exhausted in butchering one another, until they turned all the virtues they had left against mankind in general, and exerted them in piracies and robberies, to their universal infamy throughout all Greece. Nor was Crete ever of any weight in Grecian politics after the Trojan war.

CORINTH.

Monarchy remained in this emporium of Greece longer than in any other of the principal cities; but the noble families here could no better endure the superiority of a monarch, than others in all countries; and with numerous branches of the royal family, (named Bacchidæ, from Bacchis, fifth monarch in succession from Aletes,) at their head, they accordingly put to death Telestes, the reigning monarch; and, usurping the government, under an association among themselves, they instituted an oligarchy. An annual first magistrate, with the title of Prytanis, but with very limited prerogatives, like a doge of Venice, was chosen from among themselves. Several generations passed away under the administration of this odious oligarchy; but the people at length finding it intolerably oppressive, expelled the whole junto, and set up Cypselus as a monarch or tyrant. He had long been the head of the popular party, and was deservedly a popular character, possessed of the confidence and affection of his fellow citizens to a great degree, or he never could have refused the guard which was offered him for the protection of his person against the attempts of the defeated oligarchy. His moderation and clemency are allowed by all; yet he is universally called by the Grecian writers Tyrant of Corinth, and his government a Tyranny.* Aristotle† informs us that his tyranny continued thirty years, because he was a popular man and governed without guards. Periander, one of the seven wise men, his son and successor, reigned forty-four years, because he was an able general. Psammetichus, the son of Gordius, succeeded, but his reign was short; yet this space of seventy-seven years is thought by Aristotle one of the longest examples of a tyranny or an oligarchy. At the end of this period the nobles again prevailed; but not without courting the people. The tyranny was demolished, and a new commonwealth established, in which there was a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, to prevent the first from running into excess of oppression, and the other into turbulence and license.

Here we find the usual circle. Monarchy first limited by nobles only; then the nobles, becoming envious and impatient of the monarch’s preëminence, demolish him, and set up oligarchy. This grows insolent and oppressive to the people, who set up a favorite to pull it down. The new idol’s posterity grow insolent; and the people finally think of introducing a mixture of three regular branches of power, in the one, the few, and the many, to control one another, to be guardians in turn to the laws, and secure equal liberty to all.

Aristotle, in this chapter, censures some parts of the eighth book of Plato, and says, “That in general, when governments alter, they alter into the contrary species to what they before were, and not into one like the former. And this reasoning holds true of other changes. For he says, that from the Lacedæmonian form it changes into an oligarchy, and from thence into a democracy, and from a democracy into a tyranny; and sometimes a contrary change takes place, as from a democracy into an oligarchy, rather than into a monarchy. With respect to a tyranny, he neither says whether there will be any change in it; or, if not, to what cause it will be owing; or, if there is, into what other state it will alter. But the reason of this is, that a tyranny is an indeterminate government, and, according to him, every state ought to alter into the first and most perfect. Thus, the continuity and circle would be preserved. But one tyranny often changed into another; as at Sicyon, from Myron to Clisthenes; or into an oligarchy, as was Antileon’s at Chalcis; or into a democracy, as was Gelo’s at Syracuse; or into an aristocracy, as was Charilaus’s at Lacedæmon and at Carthage. An oligarchy is also changed into a tyranny. Such was the rise of most of the ancient tyrannies in Sicily; at Leontium, into the tyranny of Panætius; at Gela, into that of Cleander; at Rhegium, into that of Anaxilaus; and the like in many other cities. It is absurd also to suppose, that a state is changed into an oligarchy, because those who are in power are avaricious and greedy of money; and not because those, who are by far richer than their fellow citizens, think it unfair that those who have nothing should have an equal share in the rule of the state with themselves, who possess so much. For in many oligarchies it is not allowable to be employed in money-getting, and there are many laws to prevent it. But in Carthage, which is a democracy, money-getting is creditable; and yet their form of government remains unaltered.”

Whether these observations of Aristotle upon Plato be all just or not, they only serve to strengthen our argument, by showing the mutability of simple governments in a fuller light. Not denying any of the changes stated by Plato, he only enumerates a multitude of other changes to which such governments are liable; and, therefore, shows the greater necessity of mixtures of different orders and decisive balances to preserve mankind from those horrible calamities which revolutions always bring with them.

ARGOS.

In order to form an adequate idea of the miseries which were brought upon the Greeks by continual and innumerable revolutions of government, it should be considered that the whole Peloponnesus was scarcely two hundred miles in length and one hundred and forty in breadth, not much more extensive than the smallest of the thirteen states of America. Such an inherent force of repulsion, such a disposition to fly to pieces, as possessed the minds of the Greeks, would divide America into thousands of petty, despicable states, and lay a certain foundation for irreconcilable wars.

Although Thucydides and Aristotle, as well as Homer, inform us that kingdoms were hereditary, and of limited authority, yet the limitations appear to be very confused; they were the limitations of nobles rather than of people; and the first struggles for power were between kings and archons. The kings had no standing armies; and all the forces under their authority, even when they took the field, could be commanded only by the nobles, who had their peculiar districts of land and people to govern. These were illustrious and independent citizens; like the barons who demanded the great charter, communicated to each other their grievances, and took measures to remove them. But, being generally as averse to popular as to regal power, their constant aim was an aristocracy; they accordingly extinguished monarchy, but did not secure the rights of the people. The immediate effect of this revolution only multiplied evils. Oppressed by kings, Greece was much more oppressed by archons; and, anciently too much divided, was still more subdivided under the new forms of government. Many inferior cities disdained the jurisdiction, and even the superior influence of their respective capitals; affected independent sovereignty; and each town maintained war with its neighbors. Each independent state had a right to send two members to the Amphictyonic council. The abolition of royalty rendering the independent states more numerous, increased the number of Amphictyons to one hundred members and more; and an oath was required that the member should never subvert any Amphictyonic city. Yet every excess of animosity prevailed among the Grecian republics, notwithstanding the interposition of the Amphictyons.

Argos was founded by Danaus, the Egyptian, about the time that Athens was settled by Cecrops. At the Trojan war it was the first of the states, and ever continued the rival of Sparta. Though the royal dignity seemed more firmly settled under Agamemnon than under any other chief, yet Argos was one of the first of the states upon the continent to abolish monarchy, and that as early as on the death of Celsus, son of Temenus, the descendant of Hercules. No account of its new constitution is preserved. But, from analogy we may be convinced that a restless body of nobles overturned the monarchy; and, as it was subject to frequent and violent disorders, that the archons could not agree upon the form of their oligarchy; and set up for independency in their different districts, states, or cities, a little sooner than in other republics. The higher and lower ranks were continually at variance; the democratical faction was commonly superior; sometimes tyrants were set up over all; and once, according to Herodotus,* the slaves got possession of the city, took upon them the administration of affairs, and exercised the magistracies.

The government must have been ill constituted, as no Rhadamanthus or Minos, no Lycurgus or Solon, no Zaleucus or Charondas, nor any other legislator of superior wisdom and probity, ever acquired the power; and no fortunate coincidence of circumstances ever occurred, to unite liberty and administration, law and government, upon a stable basis. One famous tyrant, Pheidon, lineal successor of Hercules, a prince of great abilities, but no moderation, raised himself, rather than his country, to a superiority which ceased with him. For want of distinct orders and steady balances, by which the will and the forces of the people might have been subjected to the laws, Argos lost that preeminence among the Grecian states, which it had obtained under a monarchy. Every little town in Argolis was seized with the caprice of independence, and opposed the general government, at the same time that the metropolis betrayed an ambition to domineer over the inferior towns. Civil wars ensued. Mycenæ, Trœzene, Epidaurus, and other villages of less consequence, were often conquered and garrisoned, but never subdued. Necessity taught them to unite. They reproached Argos with tyranny, and Argos them with rebellion. Union enabled them to set at defiance their capital, by means of intrigues and alliances with Lacedæmon, the never-failing resource of one party or the other in every democratical state. The pretence was, the Persian war, which Argos declined. This was called a base dereliction, and excited, by the help of Spartan emissaries, hatred and contempt in Sicyon, Naupila, Heliæa, and other towns, besides those before-mentioned. Argos alone, of all the cities in the Peloponnesus, openly espoused the cause of Athens. This single circumstance, if it was not accidental, is enough to show that this city had more sense and profound wisdom than all the rest; for Sparta was certainly then leading all Greece to destruction. In other respects the Argives discovered the same temper and the same understanding with all the others; for they led their whole forces against Mycenæ, took it by storm, decimated the inhabitants, and demolished the town. Is it not sublime wisdom, to rush headlong into all the distractions and divisions, all the assassinations and massacres, all the seditions, rebellions, and eternal revolutions, which are the certain consequence of the want of orders and balances, merely for the sake of the popular caprice of having every fifty families governed by all authority in one centre? Even this would not satisfy; the fifty families would soon dissolve their union, and nothing would ever content them short of the complete individual independence of the Mohawks; for it may be depended on, that individual independence is what every unthinking human heart aims at, nearly or remotely.

ELIS.

Eleia had been the scene of athletic games, celebrated with great pomp by assemblies of chiefs from various parts of Greece. Iphitus, a grandson of Oxylus, succeeded to the throne of Elis. Active and enterprising, but not by inclination a soldier, he was anxious for a remedy for the disorderly situation of his country. Among all the violence, feuds, and wars, superstition maintained its empire, and the oracle of Delphi was held in veneration.

Iphitus sent an embassy to supplicate information from the deity, “How the anger of the gods, which threatened total destruction to Peloponnesus, through the endless hostilities among its people, might be averted?” He received an answer, which he had probably dictated, “That the Olympian festival must be restored. For that the neglect of that solemnity had brought on the Greeks the indignation of Jupiter and Hercules; to the first of whom it was dedicated, and by the last of whom it had been instituted.” Iphitus proceeded to model his institution; and ordained that a festival should be held at the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, near Pisa in Eleia, for all the Greeks to partake in, and that it should be repeated every fourth year; that there should be sacrifices to Jupiter and Hercules, and games in honor of them; that an armistice should take place throughout Greece for some time before the commencement of the festival, and continue some time after its conclusion. A tradition was reported, that the Heraclides had appointed Oxylus to the throne of Elis and the guardianship of the temple of Olympian Jupiter, and consecrated all Eleia to the god. A reputation of sanctity became attached to the whole people of Eleia, as the hereditary priesthood of Jupiter; and secluded them from all necessity of engaging in politics or war. But it was not possible, by any institutions of religion, to destroy that elasticity given by nature to the mind of man, which excites continually to action, often palpably against men’s interests, which was strong in the general temper of the Greeks, and which can never be subdued or restrained in any nation but by orders and balances. Restless spirits arose, not to be satisfied. The Eleians often engaged as auxiliaries in the wars of other states, on pretence of asserting the cause of religion; but even in that cause itself they could not agree among themselves. While monarchy subsisted in the posterity of Iphitus, as it did for some generations, Eleia continued under one government; but at length the spirit of democracy prevailed there, as elsewhere in Greece, and with the same effects. Every town claimed independency; Pisa and Elis became separate commonwealths. Olympia was situated within the territory of Pisa, on the northern bank of the river Alpheius, which alone separated it from that city. Elis was thirty miles distant; but the Eleians retained the guardianship of the temple and superintendency of the festival. The Pisæans now disputed their right; wars arose between the two cities; each endeavored to gain allies. At one time Pheidon, Tyrant of Argos, claiming to be by birth the proper representative of Hercules, took to himself the guardianship of the temple, and presided at the games; at another time the Pisæans prevailed, and presided at some Olympiads. At length the Eleians destroyed Pisa so entirely, that not a ruin was left; and ever after, excepting in the one hundred and fourth Olympiad, when the Arcadians violently interfered, they held the presidency undisturbed.

If a democracy could ever, in any case, hold together, it would be natural to expect it in this institution of Iphitus, which, founded wholly on religion, had procured so much prosperity and veneration to his people. But it is as rational to expect that a glass bubble, with a drop of water inclosed in it, will resist the heat of the fire. The vapor within will blast it into dust and atoms.

THEBES.

Fable, and history too, relate that this city was governed anciently by kings; sixteen of whom, from Cadmus the Phœnician, who founded it, to Xanthus, are enumerated. After the death of the last, the Thebans changed their government to a democratical republic. Their orders and balances are not known; but their factions and divisions, as well as their dulness, are remembered. From the analogy of all the other Grecian states, it is probable that archons presided over the several cities of Bœotia, as their separate districts, and had a king at their head, like Ulysses in Ithaca, and Alcinous in Phæacia; that the king, whose domain was Thebes, had sometimes an inclination to favor his capital more than the subordinate towns; and that the archons grew impatient of his monarchy, and aspired at independency. The jealousy and rivalry of cities favored the factious views of the archons, and were probably fomented for that purpose.

Is it an instance of their want of penetration, or was it from necessity, that they chose the two heads of opposite factions for their highest annual magistrates? Ismenias was one; an honest man, a friend to liberty, and consequently an advocate for an equilibrium of powers in the constitution. Leontidas, the other, was ambitious of the whole power to himself, and of governing by a council of his friends; but finding his rival more popular than himself, he sold the citadel to a Spartan general, upon condition that he and his party should rule. When this was effected he seized his colleague, and had him tried, condemned, and executed, for caballing against the government. The friends of Ismenias fled in a panic, and were banished by a public edict; for it seems that a revolution without banishments and confiscations, at least, is a degree of moderation and self-government of which nations are wholly incapable. The exiled citizens, who, in this case, were the honest men and friends of liberty, and among whom was Pelopidas, returned from Athens in disguise, destroyed the tyrant and his crew, and with the help of Epaminondas and his friends, regained the citadel. These two sages and heroes had now enough to do; first, to inspire a little understanding and unanimity into their fellow-citizens; then to discipline them for war, and conquer their enemies; and, at last, to frame a good constitution of government. To their immortal glory, they accomplished all but the last; but Pelopidas was killed in battle, before the war was finished; and Epaminondas grew unpopular, and was rejected by faction even from the command of the army; a sufficient proof that the aristocratical and democratical factions were nearly equal. He was reinstated, indeed, after the blunders and defeats of his successor had brought the citizens to repentance; but was slain in battle at the moment of victory. So that the Theban republic never had the benefit of his advice in the formation of a new code of laws. She had never made any figure, excepting a momentary one, under these two great men, and was at length totally destroyed by Alexander.

The ruin of Bœotia was occasioned by the finesse of Antalcidas, in his Persian treaty. The Thebans, as well as Argives, had withheld their assistance in the Persian war. Antalcidas knew that the subordinate cities of Thespiæ, Platea, Aulis, Anthemon, Larymna, Aschrœa, Coronea, Labadea, Delium, Alalkomene, Leuctra, Chæronea, all wished for independence; they accordingly rejected the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Thebes. The Thebans solicited Sparta to take a part in their domestic quarrels; and, against her own favorite treaty, made by her artful ambassador, she accepted the proposal. The virtuous and amiable Spartan senate perceived that it was equally their interest that Argos should lose her jurisdiction over her revolted towns, and that Thebes, the rival neighbor of Athens, should recover her authority in Bœotia; but, notwithstanding partial successes, she could not regain her authority over all the cities, until Epaminondas arose, after eighty years of civil wars.

Had there been a governor in Bœotia, and a senate, and a house of representatives, composed of an equitable proportion of deputies from Thebes and all the lesser cities,—and each of these branches possessed of an independent negative in the legislature, while the whole executive was in the governor,—would these civil wars have happened? these endless contentions between the nobles and people, the capital and subordinate cities? these intrigues of one party with Athens, and another with Sparta? The very disinclination, both in Thebes and Argos, to engage in the Persian war, arose wholly from their domestic dissensions; and these from the want of judicious orders and balances.

After the abolition of monarchy in Bœotia, there was an effort to collect all authority into one centre; but the nation found, that, although laws might be thus made, they could not be so executed. There must, therefore, be an executive magistrate; but not being able to agree, in order to please both sides, the leader of each faction must be chosen. As might have been foreseen, they could not agree, and split the nation at once into two hostile armies; one of which sought the alliance of Sparta, and the other that of Athens. Thus it ever was, and ever will be, in similar cases. It is much to be regretted that Epaminondas did not live to display his talents as a legislator; the world might possibly have been blessed with something like an English constitution, two or three thousand years sooner than it was.

SYBARIS.

The city of Sybaris was a Grecian colony in Italy, planted by Achaians; and, according to Diodorus Siculus,* its beautiful situation between two rivers, the Crathis and the Sybaris, the extent and fertility of its territory, and the freedom of its laws, had, in a short space of time, drawn together a prodigious number of inhabitants, and greatly enriched them.

But the common fate of all nations and cities attended them. They had three parties; a chief, a better sort, and a people. The most powerful citizens were caballing, as usual, against the chief, whose name was Telys, and, whatever his character for virtue was, he appears to have had more cunning than Grecian chiefs commonly had; at least he discerned better where the balance lay; for he courted the people by flattering their follies. He excited a popular cry against the aristocratical party, drove them from the city, confiscated their fortunes and distributed them among the rest of the citizens. The exiles fled to Crotona. Telys sent ambassadors to demand them, on pain of war. Pythagoras thought the cause of his aristocratical friends just, and persuaded his fellow-citizens to refuse to deliver them up. The Sybarites marched an army; but were met by another from Crotona, with Milo, the strong man, at their head, whose reputation prevailed; the Sybarites were all massacred, and their city pillaged and left a desert. First happy effect of a government without acknowledged orders and legal balances!

Fifty-eight years afterwards, some Thessalians established themselves at Sybaris. They had not been there five years, when the Crotonians came and drove them out. Under Callimachus, archon of Athens, it was repeopled the third time, and had the name of Thurium. A populous colony was sent there, under Lampon and Xenocritus, who built a beautiful city for a capital, and twenty-five subordinate cities. But the inhabitants could not long live in good intelligence among themselves; they fell into dissensions, grew extravagant, luxurious, and effeminate to a proverb. The quarrel began in this manner:—The old inhabitants of Sybaris erected themselves into a kind of nobility, and arrogated to themselves all the public employments of any distinction, vouchsafing to the new-comers only those of least importance. They insisted, moreover, that their wives should sacrifice the first to the gods, and that the other ladies should not commence their devotions till the first had concluded. Not content with distinctions so assuming, they went farther, and took to themselves, in the distribution of the lands, all those which were nearest the city, and left only the more distant to those whom they called foreigners. The latter being more numerous and more brave, carried their resentment so far as to put all the old families to death, and remained sole possessors of all the territory within the walls. Not having people enough left, they invited others from various parts of Greece, divided houses and lands among them, entered into alliance with Crotona, and became opulent. They divided the people into ten tribes, and established among them a democratical government, and chose for their legislator Charondas, who, having examined to the foundation the laws of all countries, chose out of them, for his country, the wisest and most convenient. Some others he added, drawn from his own meditations. His laws are lost, and, therefore, his orders and balances are not known. It is nevertheless certain, from certain regulations preserved by Diodorus, that orders and balances existed in his institution.

1. He excluded from his public councils all men who, having children, should marry a second time; and thus mortify their children with the authority of a step-mother.

2. As another check to his democracy, he ordained that all who should be convicted of calumny, should be conducted through the streets crowned with tamarin; a punishment so infamous, that several put an end to their own lives rather than submit to it.

3. He prohibited all society with wicked men; for, says he, the disposition to evil is very strong, and many of those who at first love virtue, are often drawn in, by the charms of secret seductions, to the greatest vices.

4. He ordained that all the sons of every family should learn to write and read, under masters in the pay of the public. This law alone has merit enough to consecrate to immortality the memory of this legislator, and deserves to be imitated, at least by every free people.

5. That the property of orphans should be administered by the relations of the father; but their persons and education intrusted to those of the mother.

6. All those who should refuse to take arms for their country, or quit their ranks in the army, instead of being punished by death, should be exposed three days in a public square of the city, in women’s clothes.

7. To preserve his democratical arrangement, he thought it necessary to prohibit all proposals of change in his laws. His principle was, it is as advantageous to submit to the laws, as it is dangerous to subject the laws to individuals; and, therefore, in trials, he reprehended and silenced all criminals who substituted turns of eloquence and arbitrary interpretations in place of the letter of the laws, and he charged them with violating their authority and majesty. The question is, said Charondas, “Whether you shall save the law or the criminal.”

8. Struck with the disorders and seditions which he had seen in many democratical cities, he ordained that no citizen should present himself in the public assembly, to propose any reformation or alteration in the law, without a halter about his neck, which he should wear till the people had deliberated and determined. If the people decreed the proposed alteration hurtful or unnecessary, the reformer should be strangled on the spot. This regulation silenced all new legislators so entirely, that only three examples occurred of any change.

All his precautions were insufficient. Returning from the country with his sword, which he had taken to defend himself against highwaymen, he found the assembly in division and confusion. He hastened to compose the tumult. One of his enemies reproached him with violating his own law, by coming armed into the assembly. Charondas, who had forgotten the sword, cried, I mean to observe and enforce the law, and plunged it into his own heart, wearied, most probably, into a contempt of life by the disorders incident to unbalanced parties.

When every legislator who has attempted a democratical establishment, has confessed its inherent tendency to immediate dissolution, by resorting to the strongest rigors against proposals of innovation, and numberless other provisions to control it, which have all been found ineffectual, is it worth while still to cherish the fond idea, when three branches are found, by experience, so effectually to check each other; when in two independent assemblies improvements and reformations may be so easily and safely proposed and adopted, and such as are not beneficial rejected?

LOCRIS.

Zaleucus was of Locris in Italy, not far distant from Sybaris. He was a disciple of Pythagoras, of noble birth, and admirable morals. Having acquired the esteem and confidence of his fellow-citizens, they chose him for their legislator. Unfortunately, little remains of his laws but their preamble. But this is in a style so superior to that of all the other legislators, as to excite regret for the loss of his code. In this preamble he declares, that all those who shall inhabit the city ought, above all things, to be persuaded that there is a God; and, if they elevate their eyes and thoughts towards the heavens, they will be convinced that the disposition of the heavenly bodies, and the order which reigns in all nature are not the work of men nor of chance; that, therefore, they ought to adore the gods, as the authors of all which life presents us of good and beautiful; that they should hold their souls pure from every vice, because the gods accept neither the prayers, offerings, or sacrifices of the wicked, and are pleased only with the just and beneficent actions of virtuous men. Having thus, in the beginning of his laws, fixed the attention of his fellow-citizens upon piety and wisdom, he ordains, above all things, that there should never be among them any irreconcilable enmity; but, on the contrary, that those animosities which might arise among them, should be only a passage to a sure and sincere reconciliation; and that he who would not submit himself to these sentiments, should be regarded as a savage in a civilized community. The chiefs of his republic ought not to govern with arrogance nor pride; nor should the magistrates be guided in their judgments by hatred nor by friendship.

This preamble, instead of addressing itself to the ignorance, prejudices, and superstitious fears of savages, for the purpose of binding them to an absurd system of hunger and glory for a family, like the laws of Lycurgus, places religion, morals, and government upon a basis of philosophy which is rational, intelligible, and eternal, for the real happiness of man in society, and throughout his duration.

The principle adopted by this legislator, as the motive to action next to the sense of duty and social obligation, was the sense of honor, like that of Lycurgus. As Zaleucus was a disciple of Pythagoras, whose favorite plan of government was a well-tempered aristocracy, we may conjecture that such was the form recommended to the Locrians. But all are lost; and certainly no argument can be drawn from them in favor of one popular assembly. If, in visiting the Sybarites and Locrians, we have found nothing in favor of M. Turgot’s system, nor any thing very material against it, we have found a greater advance towards civilization than in all the laws of Lycurgus and Solon, excepting only the trial by jury, instituted by the latter; I mean the preamble of Zaleucus; and the general education to letters in schools, at the public expense, by Charondas.

ROME.

Plebeians scrambling after Patricians; or Democracy hunting down Aristocracy; or Tribunes in chase of a Senate.

We elsewhere see, in the history of Rome, with what eagerness the aristocracy pursued and demolished the monarchy. The kings are commonly reproached with tyranny, and the nobles are applauded for resistance to them; but it is clear that the nobles were as tyrannical as they; and that their eternal plots and conspiracies against the kings, their power, their crown, and their lives, were the cause and the provocation to that tyranny. It is impossible to say which were worst, the nobles or the kings; both were bad enough in general, and both frequently violated the laws, as will ever happen when there are but two branches. The people, as yet, had no adequate power to aid or control either. By the institution of Romulus, indeed, the Roman people, even the lowest class of the citizens, instead of being prohibited to engage in all kinds of labor, after the example of the Spartans, were directed to apply themselves to pasturage, agriculture, and mechanic arts. This had its natural effect; and immediately after the revolution, by which the monarchy was abolished and aristocracy set up, though we find the patricians at their usual game of encroaching on the people, yet there was a people, a numerous, hardy, courageous people, who were not disposed to submit. They soon began a resistance, and to demand more power to resist; and having obtained one concession, they required another, until they obtained an equality with the patricians.

So far they were in the right; and if the two powers could have remained equal, justice, liberty, and happiness, the effect of equal laws, might have been enjoyed. But human nature can never rest; once in motion, it rolls, like the stone of Sisyphus, every instant when the resisting force is suspended. Diodorus Siculus is very right, lib. xix., when he says: “It is of the nature of man to aspire continually at something greater than his present condition, and to wish that his power might increase, instead of decreasing or resting as it is.” Dr. Ferguson, who follows very accurately Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, and Polybius, will furnish us with a good account of the steps by which the Roman people proceeded to augment their own power, and diminish that of the senate, until they obtained the whole. I shall give an abridgment of the story, very nearly in Ferguson’s words.1 In their career, however, the people lost their morals and their wisdom, as they ever will in such a course, and they were ready to confer the sovereignty on the line of Cæsars, even before they had completely obtained it. Those irregularities, and that final catastrophe, were all occasioned by the imperfections in their balance. If the consuls had been possessed of a negative in the legislature, and of all the executive authority, and the senate and people had been made equal and independent in the first establishment of the commonwealth, it is impossible for any man to prove that the republic would not have remained in vigor and in glory at this hour.2

“The government of Rome,” (in the two hundred and forty-fourth year from the building of the city, after the expulsion of Tarquin,) “was become wholly aristocratical. The nobles, exclusively, had the legislative, executive, and judicial power, without any third party to hold the balance between them and the people; for the consuls, although they were executive magistrates, united in their persons the dignities of the state, those of judges, magistrates, and military leaders, were understood to come in the place of kings, and performed all the functions of royalty; yet they were only parts and ministers of the senate.

“While the exiled king was endeavoring, by continual invasions, to recover his power, disputes arose between the parties who had joined to expel him. Creditors, supported by the aristocracy, of which the nobles were now in full possession, became severe in the exaction of debts, or the patrons laid claim to more than the clients were willing to pay. The state was distracted at once by its enemies from abroad, and by the dissension of parties at home. The authority of the new government not being sufficient to contend with these difficulties, the senate resolved to place themselves and the commonwealth, for a limited time, under the power of a single person, under the title of dictator.

“The inferior class of the people, almost excluded from any share in the new government, soon found that, under its influence, they had more oppression to fear from their patrons, than they had ever experienced from the prince they had banished. So long as the king and the senate shared in the powers of the state, the one took part with the people, when the other attempted to oppress them; and it was the ordinary interest and policy of the prince to weaken the nobles, by supporting the plebeians against them. This effect of the monarchy still, in some measure, remained so long as the exiled king was alive, maintained his pretensions, and made the united services of the people necessary to the senate; but, upon the death of the king, the nobles availed themselves of their power, and enforced their claims on the people with extreme severity. In the capacity of creditors, they imprisoned, whipped, and enslaved, those who were indebted to them, and held the liberties and lives of their fellow-citizens at their mercy. The whole body of plebeians was alarmed; they saw more formidable enemies in the persons of their own nobility, than in the armies of any nation whatever. Many, who had already suffered under the rod of their creditors, when called upon to enlist, showed their limbs galled with fetters, or torn with stripes, which they had received by command of their merciless patrons.

“These distractions obliged the senate to have recourse to another dictator; and Valerius, who was appointed for his popularity, repelled the enemy. The senate, upon his return, not fulfilling his promises to the people, they retired to the Sacred Mountain. The senate was obliged to negotiate, to mitigate the severities against insolvent debtors, and consent to the appointment of tribunes. This was in the year 260, sixteen years after the revolution.”

Had the plebeians “discontinued their collective assemblies for every purpose but elections, and increased their tribunes” to four or five hundred representatives, even this would not have been a radical cure, without separating the consuls from the senate, and giving them, or one of them, the executive power, and a negative both upon the senate and popular assembly in the legislature; but there was too much prejudice, and too little knowledge, for so great an improvement. The people contented themselves with the appointment of a leader, under the name of Tribune, who, without power effectually to protect them, had enough to head every popular tumult, and blow up every spark to a flame. An assembly of representatives would have had an equal right with the senate to propose laws, to deliberate, debate, alter, amend, improve. But the tribunes were authorized only to forbid any measure they thought injurious; but not to propose any law, or move any resolution. Not permitted to mix with the senators, they had places at the door of the senate house, as their office was felt to be a dangerous one. Their persons were made sacred; and every one was devoted to the infernal gods who should even strike them. An oath was to be taken to observe this law; and the idea of the sanctity of a tribune took such deep root, that the emperors afterwards were protected from assassins by this sacred title of Tribune.

“The college of tribunes, at first, was not limited to any number; but, in process of time, they increased from three to ten.”

Patricians could not by law be elected; yet the people, to show that they never will be steady to any law, even to those most directly contrived for their benefit, sometimes departed from this.

“The tribunes were at first elected in the curiæ, where the vote of the poorest citizen was equal to that of the most wealthy. But, even here, the patricians, besides their great influence, had even a negative on all proceedings, by holding the auspices. For this reason, it was thought necessary to alter the form of the assembly in which the tribunes were elected, to that of the tribes; and by this means to enable the people to make their election without any control from the nobles, either in virtue of the authority of the senate, or the interposition of the augurs.”

These would have been real improvements of the constitution, if they had proportionally augmented the authority of the consuls at the same time; but probably there would have been as many prejudices against such a proposal among the people as in the senate. All the popular jealousies and alarms at regal authority would have been excited by demagogues in the senate as well as in the comitia; for there are in all nations aristocratical demagogues as well as democratical.

“These expedients were adopted by the senate to quiet the animosities of parties; but tended, in fact, only to render the contest between them more equal, and to multiply the subjects of dispute. The tribunes, being vested with power to assemble the people, could not long be confined to the mere negative with which they were first intrusted. The party of the plebeians, with these magistrates at their head, were then in a posture not only to preserve their right, but likewise to gain to their order continual accessions of power. Happily for the state, there was yet much ground to be gained, without transgressing the bounds of order, or the authority of equitable government. The bar of hereditary distinction was the strongest obstacle which the popular leaders in this career had to break through.”

The nobles among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, generally traced back their lineage, in some manner or other, to gods and goddesses; and the divine original of nobility, and the essential distinction between the two orders of nobles and commons, the one being believed a superior order of beings to the other, was founded in their institutions of religion, and in the popular belief; and, although some pretensions are still set up, in many parts of Europe, to the divine right of nobility, yet they are generally held in so little estimation, that a modern can hardly form an idea of the difficulty the tribunes must have found to overcome this inveterate prejudice of superstition. No personal merit, no actual service, no measure of ability or virtue, could remove, as it was pretended, the disqualification of plebeian birth.

“One of the first steps towards abolishing this distinction, was to preclude every other power in the state from a negative on their proceedings. For this purpose, it was enacted by the tribes, that no one, under pain of death, or of a fine at discretion, should interrupt a tribune while he was speaking to the people.”

Nothing can be more curious than these popular efforts to get the better of their own superstitious prejudices. They could not depend upon their own firmness to support their own peculiar magistrate, till they made themselves believe that his person was sacred, as well as the other magistrates.

“Being thus provided against interruption, as they were by a former law against violence to their persons, they not only took up the complaints of their constituents, but suggested new claims to be made by them; and at every succession to office, endeavored to signalize their term by some additional establishment for the benefit of the people. They interrupted the state in its councils and wars, and hung upon the wheels of government until the grievances they complained of were redressed, or the demands they made were complied with. In order to increase the number of plebeian officers, whose aid the tribunes alleged was necessary to themselves, they, soon after their own institution, procured that of the ædiles, who were to inspect the market, and have charge of the public buildings and public shows.

“The qualifications of candidates for the office of consul, furnished, during some ages, the subject of continual debates. Civil and military transactions were constantly blended together. The senate frequently involved the state in war, in order to suspend its intestine divisions; and the people as often took occasion, from the difficulties in which the community was involved by its enemies, to extort a compliance with their own demands.

“The first subject of contention was the distribution of the corn which the senate had purchased as a provision against the famine, which the late interruption of industry and agriculture, by the secession of the people, had occasioned. Coriolanus was for compelling the people, by hunger, to part with their tribunes, and the other concessions which had been extorted from the senate. The younger nobility applauded his sentiments; but the majority were afraid of another storm, and agreed to deliver corn from the public granaries at a moderate price. The people, however, were not appeased; they were greatly incensed against Coriolanus; and the tribunes cited him to appear before the tribunal of the people, to answer for the insult he had offered them. The senate and patricians were disposed to protect him; but expected to be able to acquit him in the comitia of the centuries, the only tribunal before which any capital accusation of a citizen had ever been tried. The tribunes, however, determined to introduce an innovation, and insisted that the people should assemble in their tribes. Coriolanus, seeing himself already condemned by this method of proceeding, withdrew, and joined the enemies of his country.”

This novelty made a total change in the constitution; for “the assembly of the centuries formed an aristocracy, that of the tribes a democracy. As it was not with any precision determined by law what business should be done in one assembly, and what in the other, the patricians and plebeians, instead of balancing each other by regular checks, were in danger of rendering the administration of the state a continual scene of contradictions,” which served to the last hour of the republic as an object of popular zeal, and furnished a specious pretence to ambitious and designing men. This very uncertainty, producing continual altercations and wars, produced great statesmen and warriors, no doubt.* But a regular, well-ordered constitution, will never fail to bring forth men capable of conducting the national councils and arms; and it is of infinitely more importance to the national happiness, to abound in good merchants, farmers, and manufacturers, good lawyers, priests, and physicians, and great philosophers, than it is to multiply what are called great statesmen and great generals. It is a miserable servitude, whether you call it a republic or a despotism, where the law is uncertain and unknown; and it is only under the security of certain and known laws, that arts, sciences, agriculture, commerce, and trades, can ever be made to flourish.

Another subject of dispute was soon introduced, “which served to the last hour of the republic as an object of popular zeal, and furnished a specious pretence to ambitious and designing men to captivate the ears of the populace—an equal division of land, known by the name of an agrarian law.”

By this was by no means meant a community of goods and lands, or an equal division of all the lands and goods; the Roman people had too much sense and honesty ever to think of introducing into practice such an absurd figment of the brain. But the Romans, during the late aristocratical times, and the wars against Tarquin, had “suffered the conquered lands to pass by connivance, occupancy, or purchase, into the hands of powerful citizens,” instead of dividing them equally among the people. Spurius Cassius, the consul, who was in favor with the people, and affected still farther popularity by flattering the passions of the inferior classes, foreseeing that the tribunes would soon think of this object, determined to make a merit to himself by anticipating them. “Possessing himself some of these lands, he ostentatiously made a division of them among the more indigent citizens; and obtained an appointment of three commissioners to inquire into the evil and consider of a remedy.”

“The patricians were alarmed; but Cassius had numbers on his side, and was so confident of success, that he betrayed too soon his ambitious design, by offering the freedom of the city to aliens, who, at his invitation, crowded from all parts to vote in the assemblies of the Roman people. This convinced all parties that his views were, by the means of aliens and indigent citizens, to usurp the government.1 All parties combined against him, and he was condemned for treason. The tribunes had no sooner destroyed Cassius, than they adopted his project, and insisted on the law for the nomination of three commissioners.”

From this time commences a struggle between the tribunes and senate, patricians and plebeians, the various operations of which would take up too much space to relate. “The tribunes were honored in proportion to the part they took in support of the popular cause, and their animosity against the senate. Every new tribune endeavored to signalize his year, by suggesting some new point to be gained by the people. One law was obtained to substitute the assembly of the tribes for that of the curiæ, in the election of tribunes; another to exclude the patricians entirely from the assembly of the tribes. The agrarian law they frequently moved in the interval of other pretensions, or together with other claims, in order to alarm the senate, and force them to a compromise.”

The powers and artifices of both parties were soon exerted in another contest, in which the people were in the right, and pursued the most rational and necessary object imaginable,—a new code of laws which should regulate the forms of judicial proceedings; yet even this was not pursued so much from the love of justice, or the spirit of liberty,1 as to gain a point from the patricians, whose power was greatly supported by the discretionary judicial powers they had in their hands. This great object, which the English nation have pursued for so long a course of time, under the names of Folcright or Common Law, they alone have had the wisdom to accompany with prerogatives to the crown and privileges to the nobility, which have secured those two branches of the constitution; at the same time that, by establishing a body of laws and regular formal proceedings in the courts of justice, they have secured their own rights and liberties. The Roman people were not so wise; by neglecting to give any adequate prerogatives to the consuls, and by undermining the power of the senate in proportion as they introduced regular law to protect their own rights, they undermined every other power in the constitution, and devolved the whole upon themselves. In the career they lost all their integrity and morals. “They opposed an ardor not to be cooled or discouraged, or restrained by scruples in the choice of means, to the great authority and address of the nobles. A popular party are apt to think that the rules of veracity and candor may be dispensed with, and that deceit and violence may, without any scruple, be employed in their own favor. With less honor and dignity to maintain than their adversaries, they are less afraid of imputations that detract from either; and their leaders, supported by the voice of the more numerous party, are less apprehensive of evil fame. In this contest, accordingly, fictitious plots and conspiracies were fabricated by the popular side, and fictitious designs against the liberties of the people were imputed to the patricians, in order to render them odious, and to deter them from appearing in support of their real pretensions.”1

“The senate at last agreed to the nomination of three commissioners, to be sent to Greece, and make a collection of laws. The report they made was accepted, and the decemvirs appointed by the senate and people to compile a body of laws. These ten were intended only as a committee to prepare a draught for the consideration of the senate and people. Yet they had so much credit with the people as to be vested with a temporary sovereignty; and superseded the authority of the senate as well as the consuls; and had unlimited power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow-citizens. They presented a number of laws, engraven on ten tables or plates, containing a summary of the privileges of the people, the crimes to be punished, and the forms of judicial proceedings. They said their plan was unfinished; and, desiring a renewal of their powers, obtained it for another year. Two more tables were added, which, with the former ten, made the Law of the Twelve Tables.

“In these laws the distinction of patrician and plebeian was so great, that persons of these different orders were not permitted to intermarry. Bankruptcy was made a crime; and, without any distinction between fraud and misfortune, it exposed the insolvent debtor to the mercy of his creditors, who might put him to death, dissect, or quarter him, and distribute his members among them.”

This law was brought from Greece, and shows the atrocious ideas and manners of the age. Although we have no account of the law being executed in its utmost extent, we know that, in consequence of it, debtors were, by the courts of law, delivered bound into the hands of creditors, and frequently scourged and whipped in a most cruel and unmerciful manner. Giving to fathers the power of magistrates, or the power of life and death, over their children, may have some reasons assigned for it; but nothing can ever account for the people’s accepting such a law of debtor and creditor among the Greeks or Romans, but the supposition that property was entirely in the hands of patricians; and that the people had the blindest superstitious opinion, that the patricians, as descendants of gods, were a superior order of beings. It is no wonder that the people, after this, often clamored for an abolition or diminution of debts. Why they never demanded an abolition of the law, is another question.

One other of these laws deserves particular notice. “In private, every family were free to worship the gods in their own way; and in public, though certain forms were required, yet there was not any penalty annexed to the omission of them, as the punishment of offences in this matter was left to the offended god.” This, probably, was the source of that wise and humane toleration which does so much honor to the Romans, and reflects disgrace on almost every Christian nation.

The ardor of the people to obtain this code had nearly cost them their liberties. “The power of a magistrate was supposed to determine only by his own resignation. The decemvirs, taking advantage of this defect in the constitution, continued the exercise of their power; and the people,” to show that they never can be jealous of men who are in possession of their confidence, “acquiesced in their usurpation; until the father of Virginia, by exercising his lawful authority in defence of his daughter’s honor, exhibited a spectacle of horror which gave a turn to the imaginations, and aroused all the passions of the people to the expulsion of the decemvirs, as such another event had before given occasion to the abolition of monarchy.

“Patricians and plebeians now united, and a tide of mutual confidence began to flow. Two very popular persons were chosen consuls. The consecration of the tribunes was renewed, and extended to the ædiles and other inferior officers, who acted under the tribunes in preserving the rights of the people. The patricians consented to have the acts of the senate formally recorded, placed in the temple of Ceres, and committed to the care of the ædiles. As the consuls had been hitherto the keepers and interpreters of their decrees, and had often suppressed or carried into execution their acts at their pleasure, this was a considerable diminution of the power of the consuls.

“The comitia were of three sorts,—the curiæ, the centuries, and the tribes. The centuries, alone, in which the patricians had an undoubted majority, as well as in the senate, had as yet the authority of making laws for the commonwealth. This still preserved the aristocratical character of the republic. Now the plebeians denied the legislative authority of the senate; and the senate denied the right of the tribes to make laws. Equity required that the plebeians should have a voice in the legislature; but, instead of becoming a branch of it, instead of aiming at a deliberative or negative voice in it, by which they might concur with the senate and comitia of the centuries; or, which would have been infinitely better, with the senate and consuls as two independent branches, they obtained a separate and independent power of legislation. Hence the intricacy of this constitution; hence three distinct sources of laws,—decrees of the senate, acts of the centuries, and resolutions of the tribes,—senatus consulta, leges, plebiscita;” a source of division, distraction, and tumult, which never ceased to issue streams till the authority of the senate was wholly destroyed, and a dominatio plebis began.

“The plebeians, having removed these inequalities, grew so much the more impatient of those which remained. They were still excluded from the office of consul, from that of the priesthood, and were forbidden intermarriage with the nobles. In the year of the city, 308, Canuleius, a plebeian and a tribune, moved to repeal the law of the twelve tables, which prohibited the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians; and the nine other tribunes claimed that the office of consul should be held by plebeians as well as patricians.

“The senate, and the whole order of nobles, by studied delays, and by the usual artifice of involving the state in foreign wars, suspended the determination of these questions; but at length were obliged to gratify the people respecting the intermarriage of different ranks, in order to pacify them on the refusal of their claim to the consulate. To elude this demand, it was said that the sacrifices and other duties of the priesthood, many of which were to be performed by the consul, could not, by the sacred laws of religion, be performed without profanation by persons of plebeian extraction, or by any but those of noble birth. This argument silenced the people for some time;” but neither superstition, nor the true religion, any more than education, oaths, morals, or any other tic, will long restrain an unbalanced party, urged by its interest, and stimulated by a growing passion for power. An evasion, a mere change of a word, will answer the purpose of eluding superstitious fears, and even the dictates of conscience.

“The title of Consul was changed for that of Military Tribune; and no sacerdotal function being included in the duties of this office, plebeians, though not qualified to be consuls, were elected military tribunes, with consular power. The military and sacerdotal functions had before been united; they were now separated, and, as the people thought, without profanation. But another office remained to tempt the people and their tribunes, that of Censor. The census had been a principal object of the executive power; the kings had always held it, and after them the consuls. At every period of five years, they could dispose of every man’s rank, assign him his class, place him in the rolls of the senate or the knights, or strike him off of either, degrade or disfranchise him, as they thought proper. A power so important, although it had not been hitherto flagrantly abused, might easily be so; and the senate would naturally dread the admission of plebeians to it. While they admitted them, therefore to be elected tribunes, with consular power, they stipulated that the census should be separated from it, and that this charge should remain with persons of patrician birth.”

The invasion of the Gauls had burnt the city, and it was thought, extinguished the republic forever. Manlius saved the capitol, and Camillus restored the commonwealth. “During a period of one hundred and seventeen years which followed, the Romans were involved in perpetual wars against the Equi, the Volsci, the Hernici, the Etruscans, and some of their own Latin confederates; yet these did not wholly suspend their internal convulsions, which gave birth to new political institutions. The plebeians, far from being satisfied with their past acquisitions, made continual efforts to extend their privileges. The tribunes, by traducing the senate, and by displaying in their harangues the severities of the patrician creditor, and the sufferings of the plebeian debtor, still inflamed the animosity of the popular party. The republic itself was so feebly established, that ambitious citizens were encouraged, by means of factions raised among persons of the lower class, to entertain thoughts of subverting the government. In this manner, Manlius, the champion of the capitol, presuming on his merit, thought himself above the laws, and incurred the imputation of aspiring to be king. Four hundred citizens, whom he had redeemed from their creditors, and released from chains; the spoils of thirty enemies, slain by himself in battle; forty badges of honor, conferred on him by generals under whom he had served; many citizens whom he had rescued from the enemy, among whom was Servilius, the second in command to the dictator; could not save him from being thrown from the rock on which he had so lately signalized his valor.”

Such was the influence of the senate; such “the treasons for which the friends of the people were to be sacrificed to the senate,” as he said; and such the popular prejudice against the name of a king. Yet it is certain that the best thing the Roman people could have done at that time, would have been to have made him a king, with a negative; preserving, at the same time, their own negative, and that of the senate.”1

The plebeians had been now above forty years in possession of a title to hold the office of consular tribune, but had not been able to prevail over the influence of the patricians at any election. By the increase of their numbers in the first and second classes, by their intermarriages with patrician families, and by the assiduity and influence of individuals who aspired to the office, they at last obtained the dignity of consular tribune for one of their own order, and from thenceforward began to divide the votes of the centuries with the patrician candidates. They soon aspired to the title of consuls. Stolo and Sextius were placed in the college of tribunes, to urge this point. They proposed three laws:—1st. For relief of insolvent debtors, by cheating their creditors of part of their debts. 2dly. To limit estates in land to five hundred jugera, about three hundred acres. 3rdly. To restore the election of consuls, in place of consular tribunes, with an express provision that at least one of the consuls should be of plebeian descent. The patricians prevailed upon some of the tribunes to dissent from their colleagues, and suspend, by their negatives, all proceedings upon these laws. Licinius and Sextius, in their turn, suspended the usual election of magistrates, and put a stop to all the ordinary affairs of state. An anarchy of five years ensued. The patricians still insisted on the sacrilege and profanation that would be incurred, by suffering the rites usually performed by the consuls to pass into plebeian hands. The tribunes, to elude this mysterious objection, which laid fast hold on the superstitious minds of the people, contrived a shift. They moved, that the ordinary attendants on the sacred rites should be augmented from two to ten; and that of these one half should be named of plebeian extraction. The patricians struggled as long as they could, but were at last obliged to give way,—1st. To the acts in favor of insolvent debtors. 2dly. To the agrarian law, or limitation of property in land. 3dly. To the new establishment relating to the priesthood, and to the communication of the consulate itself to persons of plebeian rank. The plebeian party prevailed in all their points, and raised Sextius the tribune to the office of consul; and, from one step to another, they obtained all the offices, whether of prætor or ædile, of dictator or censor, to be, in process of time, filled with persons of either rank.

“The only effect it now had was favorable to the plebeians, as it limited the choice of tribunes to their own order; while, in common with the patricians, they had access to every other dignity in the state.

“In this account of the Roman constitution, we are now come nearly to that state of its maturity, at which Polybius began to admire the felicity of its institutions, and the order of its administration.” The mass, however, was far from being so well compacted, or the unity of power so well established, as it is in the English constitution; the senate and the popular assemblies, in their legislative capacities, counteracted one another. However, from this time forward, through a long period of wars, with Greeks, Gauls, Italians, and Carthaginians, the domestic policy of the state appears to be wise and orderly. The distinction between patrician and plebeian was become altogether nominal; the descendants of those who had held the higher offices of state were, in consequence of the preferments of their ancestors, considered as noble; and, as the plebeians now found no difficulty in obtaining the offices of state, they were continually opening the way of their posterity to the rank of nobles. The plebeians were entitled by law to claim one of the consul’s seats, and frequently occupied both. The authority of the senate, the dignity of the equestrian order, and the manners of the people in general, were guarded, and in a great measure preserved, by the integrity and strict exercise of the censorial power. The wisest and most respected of the citizens, from every condition, were raised into office; and the assemblies, whether of the senate or the people, without envy and without jealousy, suffered themselves to be governed by the counsels of a few able and virtuous men. The spirit of the people was, however, in a high degree democratical; and though they suffered themselves to be governed by the silent influence of personal authority in a few of their citizens, yet they could not endure any species of uncommon preëminence, even that which arose from the lustre and well-founded pretensions of distinguished merit.

The conduct of the Romans towards the Greeks should not be forgotten; since it appears to have been copied from the policy of Antalcidas in his Persian treaty. “The states of the Achæan league, already on the decline, hastened, by the temerity and distractions of their own councils, the career of their fortunes to its termination. The Romans, even while they suffered this famous republic to retain the show of its independence, had treated its members, in many particulars, as subjects. At the close of the war with Perseus, they had cited to appear at Rome, or had taken into custody as prisoners of state, many citizens of Achaia. Of these they had detained about a thousand in different prisons of Italy. After a period of seventeen years, three hundred who remained alive were set at liberty. Polybius was one of them. He attached himself to Scipio, the son of Emilius, and no doubt contributed much to his education and great character.

“The Romans, while they detained so many Greek prisoners, assumed the administration of affairs in Greece, and disposed of every distinction, whether of fortune or power, to their own tools. They received appeals from the judgments of the Achæan council, and encouraged its members, contrary to the express conditions of their league, to send separate embassies to Rome. The Spartans, having been forced into the Achæan confederacy, continued refractory in most of its councils. By some of their complaints at Rome, they obtained a deputation from the senate, to hear parties on the spot, and to adjust their differences. The Achæan council, incensed at this insult which was offered to their authority, proceeded to enforce their own decrees against the republic of Sparta, marched an army, and defeated the inhabitants of that city who ventured to oppose them. The Roman commissioners arriving after these hostilities, summoned the parties to assemble at Corinth, and, in the name of the senate, gave sentence,—That Lacedæmon, Corinth, Argos, Heraclea, and Orchomenos, not having been original members of the Achæan confederacy, should now be disjoined from it; and that all the cities which had been rescued from the dominion of Philip should be left in full possession of their freedom and independency.” A war ensued, in which Metellus and Mummius defeated the Greeks, and the Achæan league was dissolved.

“The enmity and the friendship of the Romans was equally fatal. As the Achæan league was dissolved, on having incurred their resentment, so the remnant of the Spartan republic perished, in having accepted their protection.” And nothing could be more just than that the Spartans should perish under an insidious policy, which they themselves had first invented, practised, and suggested to the Romans; who, under the command of Flaminius, about fifty years before this date, in order to detach the Grecian cities from Philip, proclaimed with so much ostentation, at the Isthmus of Corinth, general independence, and the free exercise of their own laws, to all the republics of Greece. “The Achæan league was dissolved, and all its conventions annulled. The states which had composed it were deprived of their sovereignty, subjected to pay a tribute, and placed under the government of a person annually sent from Rome with the title of Prætor of Achaia.

But the success of the Roman arms abroad, became the source of a ruinous corruption at home. In the state itself, the governing and the governed felt separate interests, and were at variance from motives of avarice, as well as ambition. Two hundred and thirty years had elapsed since the animosities of patrician and plebeian were extinguished by the equal participation of public honors. This distinction itself was, in a great measure, obliterated, and gave way to a new one, which, under the denomination of nobles and commons, or illustrious and obscure, without involving any legal disparity of privileges, gave rise to an aristocracy, which was partly hereditary, founded on the repeated succession to honors in the same family; and partly personal, founded on the habits of high station and on the advantages of education, such as never fail to distinguish the conditions of men in every great and prosperous state. These circumstances conferred a power on the nobles, which, though less invidious, was not less real than that which had been possessed by the ancient patricians. The exercise of this power was lodged with the senate, a body which, though by the emulation of its members too much disposed to war, and ambitious of conquest, was never surpassed in magnanimity, ability, or in steadiness, by any council of state whatever.

“The people had submitted to the senate, as possessed of an authority which was founded in the prevailing opinion of their superior worth; and even the most aspiring of the commons allowed themselves to be governed by an order of men, amongst whom they themselves, by proper efforts and suitable merit, might hope to ascend. The knights, or the equestrian order, being persons possessed of estates or effects of a certain valuation, and secluded from the pursuit of political emolument or honor, formed, between the senate and the people, an intermediate rank, who, in consequence of their having a capital, and being less engaged than the senators in affairs of state, became traders, contractors, farmers of the revenue, and constituted a species of moneyed interest.

“Circumstances which appear to be fixed in the political state of nations, are often no more than a passage in the shifting of scenes, or a transition from that which a people have been, to what they are about to become. The nobles began to avail themselves of the high authority and advantages of their station, and to accumulate property as well as honors. Citizens contended for offices in the state, as the road to lucrative appointments abroad; and when they had obtained this end, and had reigned for a while in some province, they brought back from their government a profusion of wealth ill acquired, and the habit of arbitrary and uncontrolled command. When disappointed in the pursuits of fortune abroad, they became the leaders of dangerous factions at home; or, when suddenly possessed of great wealth, they became the agents of corruption, to disseminate idleness and the love of ruinous amusements in the minds of the people. The city was gradually crowded with a populace, who, tempted with the cheap or gratuitous distribution of corn, by the frequency of public shows, by the consequence they enjoyed as members of the popular assemblies, flocked to Rome. There they were corrupted by idleness and indigence; and the order itself was continually debased by the frequent accession of emancipated slaves. A turbulent populace tyrannized, in their turn, over the masters of the world, and wreaked on the conquerors of so many nations the evils which they themselves had so freely inflicted on mankind.

“Citizens of this extraction could not for ages arrive at any places of trust, in which they could, by their personal defects, injure the commonwealth; but they increased, by their numbers and their vices, the weight of that dreg, which, in great and prosperous cities, ever sinks, by the tendency of vice and misconduct, to the lowest condition. They became a part of that faction, who are ever actuated by envy to their superiors, by mercenary views, or by abject fear; who are ever ready to espouse the cause of any leader against the restraints of public order; disposed to vilify the more respectable ranks of men, and, by their indifference on the subjects of justice or honor, to frustrate every principle that may be employed for the government of mankind, besides fear and compulsion. Although citizens of this description were yet far from being the majority at Rome, yet it is probable that they were in numbers sufficient to contaminate the whole body of the people; and if enrolled promiscuously in all the tribes, might have had a great weight in turning the scale of political councils. This effect, however, was happily prevented, by the wise precaution which the censors had taken, to confine all citizens of mean or slavish extraction to four of the tribes. These were called the tribes of the city, and formed but a small proportion of the whole.

“Notwithstanding this precaution, we must suppose them to have been very improper parties in the participation of sovereignty, and likely enough to disturb the place of assembly with disorders and tumults. While the inferior people sunk in their characters, or were debased by the circumstances mentioned, the superior ranks, by their application to affairs of state, by their education, by the ideas of high birth and family distinction, by the superiority of fortune, began to rise in their estimation, in their pretensions, and in their power; and they entertained some degree of contempt for persons, whom the laws still required them to admit as their fellow-citizens and equals.

“In this disposition of parties, so dangerous in a commonwealth, and amidst materials so likely to catch the flame, some sparks were thrown, that soon kindled up anew all the popular animosities, which seemed to have been so long extinguished. Tiberius Gracchus, born of a plebeian family, but ennobled by the honors of his father, by his descent, on the side of his mother, from the first Scipio Africanus, and by his alliance with the second Scipio, who had married his sister, being now tribune of the people, and possessed of all the accomplishments required in a popular leader, great ardor, resolution, and eloquence, formed a project in itself extremely alarming, and in its consequences dangerous to the peace of the republic.

“Being called to account for his conduct as quæstor in Spain, the severity he experienced from the senate, and the protection he obtained from the people, filled his breast with animosity to the one, and a prepossession in favor of the other. Actuated by these dispositions, or by an idea not uncommon to enthusiastic minds, that the unequal distribution of property, so favorable to the rich, is an injury to the poor, he proposed a revival of the law of Licinius, by which Roman citizens had been restrained from accumulating estates in land above the value of five hundred jugera, little more than half as many acres. This was become impracticable, and even dangerous, in the present state of the republic. The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary, in states of considerable extent, as labor and good government. Thepoor are destined to labor; and the rich, by the advantages of education, independence, and leisure, are qualified for superior stations. The empire was now greatly extended, and owed its safety and the order of its government to a respectable aristocracy, founded on the possession of fortune, as well as personal qualities and public honors. The rich were not, without some violent convulsion, to be stript of estates which they themselves had bought, or which they had inherited from their ancestors. The poor were not qualified at once to be raised to a state of equality with persons inured to a better condition. The project seemed to be as ruinous to government as it was to the security of property, and tended to place the members of the commonwealth, by one rash and precipitate step, in situations in which they were not at all qualified to act.

“For these reasons, as well as from motives of private interest affecting the majority of the nobles, the project of Tiberius was strenuously opposed by the senate; and, from motives of envy, interest, or mistaken zeal for justice, as warmly supported by the opposite party.” Acting in concert with Appius Claudius, whose daughter he had married, a senator of the family of Crassus, who was then at the head of the priesthood, and Mucius Scævola the consul, he exhausted all his art, and displayed all his eloquence in declamation. “But when he came to propose that the law should be read, he found that his opponents had procured M. Octavius, one of his colleagues, to interpose his negative, and forbid any further proceeding in the business. Here, according to the law and the constitution, this matter should have dropped.” But inflamed and unbalanced parties are not to be restrained by laws and constitutions. “The tribunes were instituted to defend their own party, not to attack their opponents; and to prevent, not to promote innovations. Every single tribune had a negative on the whole.”

The rest of the story I must leave. The constitution thus violated, Gracchus next violated the sacred character of his colleague, the tribune. The senate were transported with indignation; violence ensued, and the two Gracchi fell. Afterwards, Marius carried the popular pretensions still higher; and Sylla might, if he would, have been emperor. Cæsar followed, and completed the catastrophe.

This commonwealth, by the splendor of its actions, the extent of its empire, the wisdom of its councils, the talents, integrity, and courage of a multitude of characters, exhibits the fairest prospect of our species, and is the most signal example, excepting England, of the wisdom and utility of a mixture of the three powers in a commonwealth. On the other hand, the various vicissitudes of its fortune, its perpetual domestic contests and internal revolutions, are the clearest proofs of the evils arising from the want of complete independence in each branch, and from an ineffectual balance.1

CHAPTER VIII.

ANCIENT ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

ROME.

Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in the speech which he puts into the mouth of Valerius, has not only given us his own judgment, that the most perfect form of government is that which consists of an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, but he has repeated the same sentiment, in his own name, in other parts of his work. In the seventh section of his second book of the Roman Antiquities, he says of Romulus, that he was extremely capable of instituting the most perfect form of government. And, again; “I shall first speak of the form of government he instituted, which I look upon, of all others, to be the most self-sufficient to answer all the ends both of peace and war.” This is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, extolled by Polybius; and is nearly the same with that of Lycurgus, instituted at Sparta about a hundred years before. As the constitutions of Rome and Sparta lasted so many centuries longer than others of Greece and Italy, and produced effects so amazing upon the human character, we may rationally ascribe that duration and those effects to this composition, although the balance was very imperfect in both. The legal power, both of the kings and people, in both, was unequal to that of the senate, and, therefore, the predominant character in both was aristocracy. In Sparta, the influence of the monarchy and democracy was derived chiefly from the oath taken by the kings and ephori to support each other. An authority founded thus, in opinion, in religion, or rather in superstition, and not in legal power, would keep the senate in some awe, but not in any certain restraint.

Romulus divided all the people into three parts, and appointed a person of the first rank to be the chief of each of them. Then he subdivided each of these into ten others, and appointed as many of the bravest men to be the leaders of these. The greater divisions he called tribes, and the lesser curiæ. The commanders of the tribes were called tribuni; and those of the curiæ, curiones. He then divided the land into thirty portions, and gave one of them to each curia. He distinguished those who were eminent for their birth, virtues, and riches; and to these he gave the name of fathers. The obscure, the mean, and the poor, he called plebeians, in imitation of the government at Athens, where, at that time, those who were distinguished by their birth and fortune, were called “well-born,” to whom the administration of government was committed; and the rest of the people, who had no share in it, “husbandmen.” Romulus appointed the patricians to be priests, magistrates, and judges. The institution by which every plebeian was allowed to choose any patrician for his patron,1 introduced an intercourse of good offices between these orders, made the patricians emulate each other in acts of civility and humanity to their clients, and contributed to preserve the peace and harmony of Rome in so remarkable a manner, that, in all the contests which happened for six hundred and twenty years, they never proceeded to bloodshed.

The king, according to the institution of Romulus, had several important functions, namely,—1. Supremacy in religion, ceremonies, sacrifices, and worship. 2. The guardianship of the laws, and administration of justice, in all cases, whether founded on the law of nature, or the civil law; he was to take cognizance of the greatest crimes in person, leaving the lesser to the senate; and to observe that no errors were committed in their judgments; he was to assemble both the senate and the people; to deliver his opinion first, and pursue the resolutions of the majority. Romulus, however, wisely avoided that remarkable Spartan absurdity of two kings.

The senate were to deliberate and determine, by a majority of votes, all questions which the king should propose to them. This institution, also, Romulus took from the constitution of the Lacedæmonians. The kings, in both constitutions, were so far from being absolute, that they had not the whole executive power, nor any negative upon the legislature; in short, the whole power of the government was vested in the senate.

The people had three privileges,—to choose magistrates (yet all the great employments must be confined to patricians); to enact laws; and to determine concerning war, when proposed by the king. But the concurrence of the senate being necessary to give a sanction to their decisions, their power was not without control.

To separate the executive from the legislative power, and the judicial from both, and to give the king, the senate, and people, each a negative in the legislature, is so simple, and to us appears so obvious an improvement of this plan, that it is surprising it did not occur to Romulus as well as to Lycurgus; but, in those early times, perhaps neither kings nor nobles, nor people were willing to have their prerogatives and privileges so exactly ascertained. The nobles in both nations had almost all the influence, and were no doubt as jealous of royal as they were of popular power. It is certain that, although the government was called monarchical, it was in reality aristocratical in a high degree. There is a remarkable example of aristocratical art in the manner of obtaining the determination of the people. They were not permitted to vote in one common assembly; they were called in their curiæ; the majority of votes in a curia decided its voice; and a majority of curiæ was the resolve of the whole people.

Had Romulus died in peace, and left a son, his monarchy would probably have descended in his family. But a contest arose immediately here (as it has done in all other nations where the people had not a negative, and where the executive power has been partly in the hands of a king, and partly in a senate,) between the king and the nobles; and Romulus was put to death by the patricians for aiming, as they pretended, at more power than his share. This enabled the patricians to carry their first point; for it was always the first point of the aristocracy to make the first magistrate elective; in this they are always at first joined by the people; but, after seeing the use which the nobles make of these elections a few times, the people themselves have always made it hereditary.

Numa was chosen; a man of peace, piety, and humanity, who had address enough to make the nobles and people believe that he was married to the goddess Egeria, and received from his celestial consort all his laws and measures.

Tullus Hostilius, a man of great merit, was chosen in his stead; but after a glorious, at least a victorious, reign of thirty-two years, was murdered by the patricians, headed by Ancus Marcius, grandson of Numa by his only daughter, who thought his family right prior to that of Tullius.

Ancus was elected king, and died a natural death.

Lucius Tarquinius, after a reign of thirty-eight years, in which he had enlarged the territory, beautified the city, and shown himself worthy of the crown, was assassinated in his palace by the two sons of Ancus Marcius, who had learned the family policy. But their project was unfortunate; the people loved Lucius, execrated the instruments of the murder, banished the two sons of Ancus, and confiscated their estates.

Servius Tullius, who had married the daughter of Lucius, was now elevated to the throne by the people, much against the will of the senate and patricians, because Lucius was not one of them, but of Greek extraction. Tullius was chiefly supported by the people, always disagreeable to the patricians, who held his advancement to the throne to be illegal. The administration of Tullius is an artful system of duplicity, to preserve his character of the man of the people, and, at the same time, appease the fury of the patricians, by really undermining the authority of the people, and throwing the whole power into their hands.1 In pursuance of his principle, to please both sides, he made excellent equitable regulations for registering the people, establishing a militia, and proportioning the burdens of war according to the property and abilities of all ranks; but he subdivided the six classes into one hundred and ninety-three centuries. The first class was composed wholly of the rich, and contained ninety-eight of the centuries. If the centuries of the first class were unanimous, as they generally were, they carried every point by a majority of three; if they disagreed, the centuries of the second class were called; if they disagreed, the third came forward; and so on, till ninety-seven centuries agreed. If the numbers continued equal, ninety-six to ninety-six, the sixth class was called, which was composed wholly of the poorest people, and contained but one century; but even the votes of the fourth class were rarely called for, and the votes of the fifth and sixth were generally useless. When the people voted by curiæ, the vote of every citizen was given, and, as the poor were most numerous, they were always sure of a large majority; but, when thus taken by centuries, that numerous body of the poor, which composed the sixth century, were wholly insignificant, and those of the fifth and fourth very nearly so. By changing the votes from curiæ to centuries, Tullius wholly changed the fundamental constitution, and threw the elections of magistrates, civil and military, the power of enacting and repealing laws, declaring war, and making peace, all into the power of the rich patricians. The people had not sense enough to see this; nor to see another thing of more importance, namely,—that the king had been driven to the necessity of this artful flattery of the patricians, by his not being independent of them, and by their sharing with him in the executive power. Tullius had two daughters, married to the grandsons of his predecessor, Aruns and Tarquinius. The patricians were still caballing against Tullius, and set up Tarquin, one of his sons-in-law, against him; but as a majority were not for his deposition, Tarquin and his impious and incestuous wife joined the cabal in the murder of her first husband and her father. Tarquin, in time, murdered on all hands, patricians and plebeians. He was expelled by Brutus.

This whole history, from Romulus to Tarquin, is one continued struggle of the noble families for the first place; and another unanswerable proof of the necessity of having three orders, and each order independent, in order to form an effectual equilibrium. The people were very little regarded by the senate or patricians; the kings only now and then courted the people for support against their rivals among the patrician families. The tyranny of Tarquin made the name of king odious and unpopular. The patricians, who were the principal conductors of the revolution, took advantage of this—for what? To restore and improve Romulus’s plan of a mixed government? No; but to establish their favorite aristocracy upon the ruins of monarchy. Two consuls, in imitation of the two Spartan kings, were to be elected annually, by the votes of the people, which carried the name of a democratical power; but the votes were taken by centuries, not by tribes, which made the patricians masters of the elections, and constituted an aristocracy in reality. From this moment a haughty faction of selfish patricians appears, who affected to despise the people, to reduce them to servitude, and establish a despotic oligarchy. The people had suffered their prejudices to blind them so far as to be tricked out of their king, who was at least a better friend to them than the patricians were; and now, the contests were wholly between patricians and plebeians. The former had got the consuls, and consequently the executive power, as much in their hands as ever the nobles in Venice had their doge, or as the nobles in Poland have their king.

The plebeians were now in a most wretched situation. They were obliged to serve in the wars, to keep out the Tarquins and their allies, at their own expense, which frequently obliged them to borrow money at exorbitant interest of the patricians, who had engrossed the greater part of the wealth; and, as the country was often ravaged by the enemy, many lost all their effects. Unable to pay the principal, with loads of interest accumulated upon interest, they were frequently confined in chains by their creditors, and scourged with whips; for the law, to which they had foolishly consented, had made the debtor a slave to the creditor. The people began to demand an abolition of debts; the senate appointed a dictator. A confusion of foreign wars and domestic dissensions ensues, till we come to the story so beautifully told by Livy and Dionysius, of the man who had been in twenty-eight battles, who appeared before the people, and showed on his back the bleeding scars inflicted by a merciless creditor. At this time, the patricians had plunged into their usual difficulty, a violent contest among themselves, between a furious headlong party, which always appears for an oligarchy, and the moderate men, who desire to continue the aristocracy; the young patricians generally follow the haughty Claudius, and the mild Valerius courts the people. The oligarchy prevails, and the decemvirate is established; their tyranny drives the people to the sacred mountain; and, at last, the tribunate was established.

Here is the first symptom of any system pursued by the people. This was a balance; but what kind of a balance? Nobody thought of another council, a house of representatives, who should have a negative; and, if they had, it would not have availed without a king; for such a new assembly would soon have been either wholly subjected to the senate, or would have voted it useless. In truth, the monarchical power being suppressed, and the executive authority, as well as legislative, being now only in the senate and people, a struggle commenced between these two.

The people were on the scramble for more power; and first obtained a law, that all laws passed in their assemblies by tribes, should have equal force with those made in the assembly by centuries; then, that all posts and dignities should be enjoyed by the plebeians equally with the patricians; and that the decrees of the people should have the same force, and affect the patricians in the same manner, as those passed by the senate. All this was very just, and only brought the democracy to an equality with the aristocracy; but whenever these two are equal in legal power, numbers will soon turn the balance in favor of the democracy, unless there is a third power to intervene. Accordingly it so happened here, and the people went on from step to step, increasing their own importance, and diminishing that of the senate, until it was found shut up in Utica; but, before this, the people were divided into parties, and Cæsar, at the head of one, passed the Rubicon, that is, set the most sacred law of his country at open defiance. From this time the government became a government of men, and the worst of men.

From this example, as from all others, it appears that there can be no government of laws without a balance, and that there can be no balance without three orders; and that even three orders can never balance each other, unless each in its department is independent and absolute. For want of this the struggle was first between the king and senate; in which case the king must always give way, unless supported by the people. Before the creation of tribunes, the people were in no sense independent, and, therefore, could not support the kings. After the abolition of kings, the senate had no balance either way, and accordingly became at once a tyrannical oligarchy. When the people demanded their right, and obtained a check, they were not satisfied; and grasped at more and more power, until they obtained all, there being no monarchical power to aid the senate. But the moment the power became collected into this one centre, it was found in reality split into three; and as Cæsar had the largest of the three shares, he instantly usurped the whole.

LACEDÆMON.

From the days of Homer to those of Lycurgus, the governments in Greece were monarchical in name and pretension, but aristocratical in reality. The archons were impatient of regal government, constantly struggling against their kings; and they had prevailed in every other city, except Sparta, to abolish the royal authority and substitute an aristocracy of archons in its place. In Lacedæmon, too, where there were eight-and-twenty archons contending against two kings, they had brought the whole country into the utmost confusion. The circumstance of two kings, which perhaps prolonged the regal power longer in Sparta than in any other city, originated in the fondness of a mother. Aristodemus, one of the descendants of Hercules, to whose share Laconia fell, upon the division of the Peloponnesus, after the return of that family from banishment, died leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles; their mother refusing to determine which had the right of primogeniture, it was agreed that both should succeed to the crown with equal authority, and that the posterity of each should inherit. The nobles took advantage of all the jealousies which arose between the two families, obliged each to court them, and from time to time to make them concessions, until the royal authority was lost; and as the archons could not agree, each party now began to court the people, and universal anarchy prevailed.

Lycurgus, of the family of Procles, and only in the tenth descent from Hercules, succeeded his brother Polydectes; but being told his brother’s widow was with child, he declared himself protector only, and resigned the crown. Such a disinterested indifference to a crown in any one of royal or noble blood, was so unexampled in that age, that no wonder it was much admired and very popular. The ambitious princess, his sister, offered to marry him and remove out of his way the only competitor, by procuring an abortion. He deceived her by counterfeited tenderness; and diverted her from the thoughts of an abortion, by promising to take the disposition of the child upon himself when it should be born. The infant was sent to him, when at supper with the principal magistrates. He took it in his arms, and cried, “A king, Spartans, is born to you,” and placed it in his own seat. The company were touched at the tenderness of the scene, and fell into a transport of enthusiasm, both of piety to the blood of Hercules, and admiration of the disinterested integrity of Lycurgus, who, like an able statesman, perpetuates the memory of the event, and the joy at it, by the name with which, upon the spot, he christens the boy Charilaus, the people’s joy. But all this exalted merit, added to his acknowledged divine descent, and the undoubted possession of royal power, were not sufficient to overawe the jealousy of the nobles, a strong party of whom joined the irritated queen and her brother, and raised continual factions against him. Weary of cabals, and stimulated with a thirst for knowledge, he determined to travel; visited Crete and Egypt, the two sources of the theology and policy of Greece; and brought home with him, on his return to his own country, Thales, the poet, and the writings of Homer, with the resolution to adopt the martial discipline and political liberty which he read in the poet, and had seen exemplified in Crete. Nothing could be better calculated than his two poets, to inspire the nation with that enthusiasm which he wanted, and confirm the belief, that kings were from Jupiter, and beloved by him, excepting the response of the oracle, which he took care to procure. “Welcome, Lycurgus, to this happy place, thou favorite of heaven! I stand in doubt whether I shall pronounce thee god or man; inclining still to think thou art a god!”*

The disorders in Sparta were now become insupportable; the kings had as little authority as the laws. All parties, except the two kings, in despair of their private schemes, applied to the great legislator, pointed out to all, by his divine original, the inspiration of Homer and Thales, his own integrity, wisdom, knowledge, and commanding authority over the minds of men, as well as his special divine mission pronounced by the oracle, to be the only man capable of new-modelling the constitution.

In Crete he had acquired a deep insight into human nature, at least he had informed himself fully of the length and breadth, the height and depth, of the passion of ambition in the human heart. That complication of affections, which is called by so many names, the love of esteem, of praise, of fame, of glory; that sense of honor in which Montesquieu tells us monarchies are founded; which Tacitus tells us made the ancient Teutons submit quietly to be sold by their inferiors, when they had gambled away their liberty; which at this day enforces so punctual a payment of debts of honor contracted at play; which supports against all laws throughout Europe the custom of duelling, and produces more suicides than any other cause; which is commonly known by the denomination of the point of honor, and may with as much propriety be called ambition, Lycurgus appears to have understood better than any other legislator, and to have made the foundation of his institution. For this reason, Plato with great propriety calls it “The ambitious republic.”

Lycurgus in secret consulted the nobles, but not the kings; formed a powerful party, and called an assembly of the people, before whom his friends appeared in arms. Charilaus and Archelaus were not in the secret, but found themselves obliged to submit. What is all this but a body of nobles completing, by the aid of Lycurgus, that abolition of monarchy which they had been pursuing for ages, unrestrained by any legal check in the people, and unresisted by any adequate power in the crown? But what was his new institution?

In compliance with old prejudices, and from attachment to his family, he confirmed the two families on the throne, established the hereditary descent of the crown, but limited its authority. The kings were to continue high priests, to be commanders-in-chief of the armies, and presidents of the senate. Charilaus and Archelaus, terrified by the fate of all the other kings of Greece, agreed to accept of a certain, though limited authority, in lieu of pretensions more absolute and more precarious.

The ancient dignities of the nobles were confirmed and enlarged. A senate of eight-and-twenty of their chiefs was formed, at the head of whom the two kings were placed. To the people he committed the election of future senators. But as the present twenty-eight were for life, and the influence of kings and senators would be commonly used with great unanimity, in favor of the eldest son, to fill up a vacancy made by the death of his father; and as the people were not permitted to debate, their choice was perhaps* little more than a consent by acclamation to a nomination made by the king, and amounted to the same thing with a hereditary house of peers. To this senate the whole executive power was committed, and the most important part of the legislative; for as all laws were to originate there only, they had a negative before debate. Here is indeed all authority nearly collected into one centre, and that centre the nobility; for the king was but the first among equals, having no negative upon the senate.

If the legislator had rested here, his institution would have been in effect a simple hereditary oligarchy, possessed of the whole legislative, executive, and judicial power, and probably as restless as ever, to reduce the kings to elections for life or years, then to take from them the power of religion, the command of armies, and lastly to change the title from king to archon, or from the family of Hercules to other houses. With a view to counterbalance this dangerous authority, he instituted assemblies of the people, but intrusted them only with the power of confirming or rejecting what the senate proposed, and expressly forbade them all debate. The citizens were to give their simple ayes or noes, without being allowed to speak, even so far as to give a reason for their vote. He instituted, moreover, as a farther check upon the senate, five magistrates to inspect the administration and maintain the constitution; to convoke, prorogue, and dissolve both the greater assembly of the people, composed of nine thousand inhabitants of the city, and the lesser, consisting of thirty thousand inhabitants of the country or inferior villages. These magistrates were called the ephori, and were to be annually appointed. But the lawgiver saw that the king and people were both too weak, and the senate would still have power to scramble after both; he therefore contrived a kind of solemn alliance to be perpetually renewed between the monarchical and democratical branches, by which the senate might be awed into moderation. He ordered an oath to be taken every month, by the kings and the ephori. The former swore to observe the laws, and the latter swore, for themselves and the people whom they represented, to maintain the hereditary honors of the race of Hercules, to revere them as ministers of religion, to obey them as judges, and follow them as leaders. This was indeed a balance founded in opinion and in religion, though not a legal and independent check; as it was not a negative in either.

In this constitution, then, were three orders, and a balance, not indeed equal to that of England, for want of a negative in each branch; but the nearest resembling it of any we have yet seen. The kings, the nobles, the senate, and the people, in two assemblies, are surely more orders than a governor, senate, and house. The balance here attempted was as strong as religion operating on human nature could make it, though not equivalent to a negative in each of three branches. Another balance was attempted, in the rigorous separation of the city from the country, in two assemblies. It avoided the danger of jealousies between town and country in the deliberations of the people, and doubled the chances both of the monarchy and democracy, for preserving their importance in case of encroachments by the senate. If the senate and nobles should prevail in one assembly of the people, so far as to carry any unconstitutional point, the kings and ephori would find a resource in the other to lead them back. The Lacedæmonian republic may then, with propriety, be called monarchical, and had the three essential parts of the best possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. It failed, however, in that essential particular, the balance. The aristocracy had a legal power so eminent above that of king or people, that it would soon have annihilated both, if other precautions had not been taken, which destroyed all the real merit of this celebrated institution.

That the glory of the descendants of Hercules and of their republic might be the pride of every citizen, and that a superstitious attachment to both might be perpetuated, it was necessary to extinguish every other appetite, passion, and affection in human nature. The equal division of property; the banishment of gold and silver; the prohibition of travel and intercourse with strangers; the prohibition of arts, trades, and agriculture; the discouragement of literature; the public meals; the incessant warlike exercises; the doctrine that every citizen was the property of the state, and that parents should not educate their own children; although they served to keep up the constant belief of the divine mission of Lycurgus, and an enthusiastic passion for the glory of the republic, and the race of Hercules; and although they are celebrated by the aristocratical philosophers, historians, and statesmen of antiquity; must be considered as calculated to gratify his own family pride rather than promote the happiness of his people. Four hundred thousand slaves must be devoted to forty thousand citizens; weak and deformed children must be exposed; morality and humanity, as well as all the comforts, elegancies, and pleasures of life must be sacrificed to this glaring phantom of vanity, superstition, and ambition. Separated from the rest of mankind, they lived together, destitute of all business, pleasure, and amusement, but war and politics, pride and ambition; and these occupations and passions they transmitted from generation to generation, for seven hundred years; as if fighting and intriguing, and not life and happiness, were the end of man and society; as if the love of one’s country and of glory were amiable passions, when not limited by justice and general benevolence; and as if nations were to be chained together forever, merely that one family might reign among them. Whether Lycurgus believed the descent of his ancestor from Jupiter, the divine inspiration of Homer and Thales, or the divinity of the Oracle, any more than Mahomet believed his divine mission, may well be doubted. Whether he did or not, he shackled the Spartans to the ambitious views of his family for fourteen successions of Herculean kings, at the expense of the continual disturbance of all Greece, and the constant misery of his own people. Amidst the contradictions of ancient and modern writers, that account has been followed concerning the institution of the ephori, which appears most favorable to Lycurgus.1 The Roman tribunes, and perhaps the Venetian inquisitors, were borrowed from this institution.

Human nature perished under this frigid system of national and family pride. Population, the surest indication of national happiness, decreased so fast, that not more than one thousand old Spartan families remained, while nine thousand strangers had intruded, in spite of all their prohibitory laws. The conquest of Athens gave them a taste of wealth, and even the fear of the penalty of death could not restrain them from travelling. Intercourse with strangers brought in foreign manners. The ephori were sometimes bribed. Divisions arose between the two kings, Agis and Leonidas; one joined with the people, the other with the nobles, and the sedition proceeded to blood. Kings became so fond of subsidies from foreign powers, that Agesilaus received them from a King of Egypt, and his enemy at the same time. Agis was murdered by the order of the ephori, who, instead of honoring the blood of Hercules, according to their oath, took the sovereign power into their own hands. Here the balance broke; Cleomenes, who endeavored, like Agis, to restore the old laws and maxims, fell a sacrifice; and nothing appears afterwards in the history of Sparta but profligacy, tyranny, and cruelty, like that in Rome under the worst of the Cæsars.

The institution of Lycurgus was well calculated to preserve the independence of his country, but had no regard to its happiness, and very little to its liberty. As the people’s consent was necessary to every law, it had so far the appearance of political liberty; but the civil liberty of it was little better than that of a man chained in a dungeon—a liberty to rest as he is. The influence of this boasted legislation on the human character was to produce warriors and politicians, and nothing else. To say that this people were happy, is to contradict every quality in human nature except ambition. They had no other gratification. Science and letters were sacrificed, as well as commerce, to the ruling passion; and Milton had no reason to “wonder how museless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war;” since it was not so much because Lycurgus was “addicted to elegant learning, or to mollify the Spartan surliness with smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civility,” that he brought the scattered works of Homer from Ionia, and Thales from Crete; but merely to propagate his own and his family imposture. The plan was profound, and means were with great ability fitted to the end; but, as a system of legislation, which should never have any other end than the greatest happiness of the greatest number, saving to all their rights, it was not only the least respectable, but the most detestable in all Greece. To do it justice, however, it is much to be desired, that exercises like those established by Lycurgus, running, wrestling, riding, swimming, skating, fencing, dancing, should be introduced into public and private education in America, which would fortify the bodies and invigorate the minds of youth; instead of those sedentary amusements which debilitate, and are taking entire possession of society all over the world. The ladies, too, might honor some of these entertainments, though not all, with their presence and participation, to the great advantage of their own health, and that of posterity, without injury to their charms or their reputations. But, above all, the existence of an all-perfect Intelligence, the parent of nature, the wise and moral ruler of it; the responsibility of every subordinate intellectual and moral agent; a future state of rewards and punishments; and the sacred obligation of oaths, as well as of the relative duties of social life, cannot be too clearly fixed by rational arguments in the minds of all the citizens. In this respect Lycurgus merits praise.

But, as a civil and political constitution, taken all together, it is infinitely inferior to another, which Americans have taken for their model. The English constitution is the result of the most mature deliberation on universal history and philosophy. If Harrington’s council of legislators had read over the history, and studied the constitution of every nation, ancient and modern, remarked the inconveniences and defects of each, and bent the whole force of their invention to discover a remedy for it, they would have produced no other regulations than those of the English constitution, in its theory, unless they had found a people so circumstanced as to be able to bear annual elections of the king and senate. This improvement, the Americans, in the present stage of society among them, have ventured on; sensible, however, of the danger, and knowing perfectly well a remedy, in case their elections should become turbulent. Of this, at present, there is no appearance.

CROTONA.

Pythagoras, as well as Socrates, Plato, and Xenophon, was persuaded that the happiness of nations depended chiefly on the form of their government. They were fully sensible of the real misery, as well as dangerous tendency, both of democratical licentiousness and monarchical tyranny; they preferred a well-tempered aristocracy to all other governments. Pythagoras and Socrates, having no idea of three independent branches in the legislature, both thought, that the laws could neither prevent the arbitrary oppressions of magistrates, nor turbulent insolence of the people, until mankind were habituated, by education and discipline, to regard the great duties of life, and to consider a reverence of themselves, and the esteem of their fellow-citizens, as the principal source of their enjoyment. In small communities, especially where the slaves were many, and the citizens few, this might be plausible; but the education of a great nation can never accomplish so great an end. Millions must be brought up, whom no principles, no sentiments derived from education, can restrain from trampling on the laws. Orders of men, watching and balancing each other, are the only security; power must be opposed to power, and interest to interest. Pythagoras found this by experience at Crotona, where the inferior ranks, elated with the destruction of Sybaris, and instigated by an artful, ambitious leader, Cylon, clamored for an equal partition of the conquered territory. This was denied them, as inconsistent with an aristocratical government; a conspiracy ensued against the magistrates, who were surprised in the senate-house, many put to death, and the rest driven from their country. Pythagoras was one of the banished, and died soon afterwards, in extreme old age, at Metapontum. The Crotonians had soon cause to repent their insurrection; for they were defeated, with all their forces, by the Locrians and Rhegians, with smaller numbers.

The other Greek cities of Italy, which had imitated the example of Crotona, in deposing their magistrates, were harassed with wars against each other, and against their neighbors. In consequence of these distresses, the disciples of Pythagoras again recovered their reputation and influence; and about sixty years afterwards, Zaleucus and Charondas, the one in Locris, and the other in Thurium, revived the Pythagorean institutions. In forty years more, a new revolution drove the Pythagoreans entirely from Italy, and completed the misery of that beautiful country. Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people. Nothing has ever effected it but three different orders of men, bound by their interests to watch over each other, and stand the guardians of the laws. Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power.

It is no wonder that M. Turgot should have entertained very crude conceptions of republican legislation; it is a science the least understood of any in the whole circle. All other orders of men of letters in Europe, as well as physicians, for a long time, have thought it “litteræ nihil sanantes.” It is a kind of erudition which neither procures places, pensions, embassies, chairs in academies, nor fame nor practice in the pulpit, at the bar, nor in medicine. A minister of state, of great abilities and merit, as well as reputation, advanced to the head of the affairs of a respectable monarchy, by one of the greatest princes that have ever lived, I mean the Baron de Hertzberg, has, within a few years, set an example, in a royal academy of sciences, of inquiry into this subject. In a learned and ingenious discourse,1 delivered by himself, he has attempted to show the advantages of simple monarchy over all kinds of republican governments, even that best species of them, limited monarchies. But did this worthy minister expect that any of his brother academicians would contest with him the merits of such governments? Men of letters are not fond of martyrdom in this age, nor of ruining their reputations. It is not, however, my design to discuss any questions at present concerning absolute monarchies, though the principles I contend for might be traced through the history of every monarchy and empire in Europe. Even in these there are orders, checks, and balances contrived, at least against abuses in administration, and for the preservation of the laws.

The science of government has received very little improvement since the Greeks and Romans. The necessity of a strong and independent executive in a single person, and of three branches in the legislature instead of two, and of an equality among the three, are improvements made by the English, which were unknown, at least never reduced to practice, by the ancients. Machiavel was the first who revived the ancient politics. The best part of his writings he translated almost literally from Plato and Aristotle, without acknowledging the obligation; and the worst of the sentiments, even in his Prince, he translated from Aristotle, without throwing upon him the reproach. Montesquieu borrowed the best part of his book from Machiavel, without acknowledging the quotation. Milton, Harrington, Sidney, were intimately acquainted with the ancients and with Machiavel. They were followed by Locke, Hoadley, &c. The reputation which is to be acquired by this kind of learning may be judged of by the language of Mr. Hume:—“Compositions the most despicable, both for style and matter, such as Rapin Thoyras, Locke, Sidney, Hoadley, &c., have been extolled and propagated and read, as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity.”* Such is the style in which this great writer speaks of writings which he most probably never read. But although the time is long since passed when such writings were extolled, propagated, or read, the contempt of them is as fashionable, as likely to procure places and pensions, and to make a book sell now, as it was when Mr. Hume wrote.†

M. Turgot was as little conversant in this kind of erudition as Mr. Hume. The former, however, was a lover of liberty; but it was of that kind of liberty which he meditated to introduce into France, and could reconcile with a simple monarchy. He was too good a subject to think of introducing a free constitution of government into his own country. For the liberty of commerce, the liberty of religious sentiments, and the personal liberty of the subject, such as are established by the laws, in a monarchy, he was an enthusiast; and enthusiasm for liberty, the common cause of all mankind, is an amiable fervor, which is pardonable even when it is not according to knowledge. But he was neither an enthusiast for a free constitution of government, nor did he know in what it consisted.

CHAPTER IX.

ANCIENT MONARCHICAL REPUBLICS.

ANCIENT GERMANS.

The ancient German nations, mentioned by Tacitus, had among them at least two sort of government. One was monarchy; and the king was absolute, as appears by these words:—“Exceptis iis gentibus quæ regnantur; ibi enim et super ingenuos, et super nobiles, ascendunt libertini; apud ceteros, impares libertini libertatis argumentum sunt.”* The other species of government was aristocracy; for though there was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, yet the power of the king and people was so feeble, and that of the nobles, as comprehended under the titles of princes, dukes, and counts, was so predominant, that the government must be denominated aristocratical. “De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes; ita tamen, ut ea quoque, quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur.” If those things which were most clearly in the power of the people, were first discussed among the nobles, the reference to the people afterwards seems to have been rather a communication to them of the result of the senate, than a submission of it to the popular judgment.1

The nature and extent of the royal dignity and authority appears from these words:—“Reges ex nobilitate sumunt; nec regibus infinita aut libera potestas.” Kings were taken1 from the nobility, or kings were chosen for their noble descent; so that ordinarily the office descended to the next of kin. But it is here expressly ascertained that their power was neither unlimited nor independent. They had no negative, and might in all things be overruled, at least by the nobles and people conjointly.

The nature and extent of the aristocratical dignities and authorities may be collected from what follows:—“Duces ex virtute sumunt; et duces exemplo potius quam imperio; si prompti, si conspicui, si ante aciem agant, admiratione præsunt.” The feudal hierarchy,2 even in these early times, was fully established, although it was afterwards enlarged. The titles of dukes and counts, the rank and power they conferred, descended in families, although there was the bare formality of an election in the grand council. “Arma sumere, non antè cuiquam moris, quàm civitas suffecturum probaverit; tum, in ipso consilio, vel principum aliquis, vel pater, vel propinquus, scuto frameâque juvenem ornant. Insignis nobilitas, aut magna patrum merita, principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant.” “When the young men were first admitted into public society, it was in the great council; when some one of the dukes, or the father, or other relation, adorned the youth with arms. And if he is of very noble birth, or his father has great merit, the dignity of a duke is assigned to him, young as he is.” From this it is pretty clear that the crown, as well as the titles of dukes and counts, descended in the family line;1 although the formality of an admission into council was kept up. The nobles, among whom the king was little more than the first among equals, at least he was not more superior to the dukes than the dukes were to the counts, had the game in their own hands, and managed a rude people as they pleased. This will appear probable from other passages:—“Cæteri robustioribus, ac jampridem probatis, aggregantur; nec rubor inter comites aspici. Gradus quinetiam et ipse comitatus habet, judicio ejus, quem sectantur. Magnaque et comitum æmulatio, quibus primus apud principem suum locus; et principum, cui plurimi et acerrimi comites. Hæc dignitas, hæ vires, magno semper electorum juvenum globo circumdari, in pace decus, in bello præsidium; nec solùm in suâ gente cuique, sed apud finitimas quoque civitates, id nomen, ea gloria est, si numero ac virtute comitatus emineat; expetuntur enim legationibus, et muneribus ornantur, et ipsâ plerumque famâ bella profligant.

“Cum ventum in aciem, turpe principi virtute vinci; turpe comitatui, virtutem principis non adæquare. Jam verò infame in omnem vitam, ac probrosum, superstitem principi suo ex acie recessisse. Illum defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriæ ejus assignare, præcipuum sacramentum est. Principes pro victoriâ pugnant; comites pro principe. Si civitas, in quâ orti sunt, longâ pace et otio torpeat, plerique nobilium adolescentium petunt ultro eas nationes quæ tum bellum aliquod gerunt; quia et ingrata genti quies, et faciliùs inter ancipitia clarescunt, magnumque comitatum non nisi vi belloque tueare; exigunt enim principis sui liberalitate illum bellatorem equum, illam cruentam victricemque frameam. Nam epulæ, et quamquam incompti, largi tamen apparatus pro stipendio cedunt. Materia munificentiæ per bella et raptus. Nec arare terram, aut expectare annum, tam facilè persuaseris, quàm vocare hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare.”

When the foregoing ties, by which the people or the common soldiers were attached to the nobles, and the young and inferior nobles to the superior, are considered, a better judgment may be formed of the authority which the people really had in the grand council or national assembly.

The powers and privileges of the people, in assembly, appear from the following passages:—“Coeunt, nisi quid fortuitum et subitum inciderit, certis diebus, cùm aut inchoatur luna, aut impletur; nam agendis rebus hoc auspicatissimum initium credunt. Illud ex libertate vitium, quòd non simul nec ut jussi conveniunt, sed et alter et tertius dies cunctatione coeuntium absumitur.” By this it should seem that the people were so far from esteeming the privilege of meeting, that the king and nobles could scarcely get them together.1 They had such an aversion to these civil and political deliberations, that the chiefs could hardly collect them to receive their orders: “Ut turbæ placuit, considunt armati. Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus tum et coercendi jus est, imperatur. Mox rex, vel princeps, prout ætas cuique, prout nobilitas, prout decus bellorum, prout facundia est, audiuntur, auctoritate suadendi magis quàm jubendi potestate. Si displicuit sententia, fremitu aspernantur; sin placuit, frameas concutiunt.” Here is some appearance of popular liberty. But when it is considered that the nobles were probably all the speakers; that the numbers were not counted, nor voices distinctly taken; assent expressed by a clash of arms, and dissent by a murmur or a groan; and especially the dependence of the people on their leaders, and attachment to them by oath; we may consider these assemblies rather as called to receive the proclamation of the laws or minds of the nobles, than as any effectual democratical check. There was one thing, however, of great importance done in these assemblies,—judges, the posse comitatus, and juries were here appointed to administer justice. “Eliguntur in iisdem conciliis et principes, qui jura per pagos vicosque reddunt. Centeni singulis ex plebe comites,2 consilium simul et auctoritas, adsunt.” An hundred commoners attended the judge, and out of these were juries appointed to give their opinion, “consilium;” and others, or perhaps the same, to afford their assistance, “auctoritas,” in putting the sentences and judgment into execution.

From other particulars related by Tacitus, it is very probable there had been communications between Germany and Greece; from the worship of Hercules, Mars, Minerva, &c.; if not from the altar of Ulysses, and the name of Laertes, and the other monuments, and inscriptions in Greek letters, of which he speaks more doubtfully. However this may have been, there is a remarkable analogy between these political institutions of the Germans, and those described by Homer in the times of the Trojan war. It was, in both, the prerogative of the king to lead in war and to rule in peace; but it is probable he was not fond of deliberating, any more than of fighting, without company; and though he may have done both sometimes, yet numbers of his followers were ready to attend him in either. The nation acknowledged him for their leader; but they were accustomed, on great occasions, to assemble, and, without any studied form of democracy, took the sovereignty upon themselves, as often as their passions were strongly enough affected to unite them in a body. The superior classes, among themselves, came as naturally to hold their meetings apart; and assembled frequently, when the occasion was not sufficient to engage the attention of the whole. There is one remarkable difference between the Germans and the Greeks. Among the former, the priests were a distinct body, and seem to have had more decisive authority than the kings, nobles, or people in the general assemblies,—“Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus tum et coercendi jus est, imperatur;” whereas, among the latter, the kings were themselves at the head of the priesthood.

In this second kind of German governments, we see the three orders, of king, nobles, and commons, distinctly marked; but no balance fixed; no delineation of the powers of each; which left room for each to claim the sovereignty, as we know they afterwards did; at least the king and the nobles claimed and contended for it for many ages; the people sometimes claimed it, but at last gave it up to the king, as the least evil of the two, in every country except England.

Before we proceed to the Greeks, we may even mention the savages. Every nation in North America has a king, a senate, and a people. The royal office is elective, but it is for life; his sachems are his ordinary council, where all the national affairs are deliberated and resolved in the first instance; but in the greatest of all, which is declaring war, the king and sachems call a national assembly round a great council fire, communicate to the people their resolution, and sacrifice an animal. Those of the people who approve the war, partake of the sacrifice; throw the hatchet into a tree, after the example of the king; and join in the subsequent war songs and dances. Those who disapprove, take no part of the sacrifice, but retire.

PHÆACIA.

In the kingdom, or rather aristocracy, of Phæacia, as represented in the Odyssey, we have a picture at full length of those forms of government which at that time prevailed in Greece.

There is a king Alcinous; there is a council of twelve other kings, princes, archons, or peers, for they are called by all these names; and there is a multitude; but the last do not appear to have any regular, legal, or customary part in the government. They might be summoned together by the heralds, or called by the sound of trumpet, or a horn, to receive information of the results of their chiefs; to assist at a sacrifice or procession; to see a stranger, or a show, or to partake of a feast; or they might assemble of themselves in a rage against an oppressor, from enthusiasm for the royal sceptre, or other causes. And the kings had often much dependence on their attachment to their hereditary right, their descent from the gods, and the sacred authority of the poets, who were generally royalists. The archons, too, were often afraid of the superstition of their people for the king, and his regal popularity. But the legal power of the people was very far from being a constitutional check; and the struggle lay between the kings and nobles. The last finally prevailed, as they ever will, against a king who is not supported by an adequate popular power. The authority in Phæacia was collected into one centre, and that centre was thirteen kings, confederated together under a president only. Each archon was a king in his own island, state, or district, in which his dignity and power were hereditary; and, in case of a foreign war, he commanded his own division in the general camp.

Ulysses is represented, at his first entrance into the Phæacian dominions, as observing and admiring the palaces of the archons, after having surveyed the gardens, palace, and particular territory of Alcinous:—
- “He next their princes’ lofty domes admires,
- In sep’rate islands, crown’d with rising spires.”*
Alcinous is afterwards represented as describing the form of government to Ulysses:—
- “Twelve princes in our realm dominion share,
- O’er whom supreme imperial power I bear.”*
Mr. Pope, indeed, in this translation, has given him the air of a sovereign; but there is nothing like it in the original. There, Alcinous, with all possible simplicity and modesty, only says,—“Twelve illustrious kings, or archons, rule over the people, and I myself am the thirteenth.” Alcinous and his twelve archons were all present at this interview:—
- - “Night now approaching, in the palace stand,
  - With goblets crown’d, the rulers of the land,” &c.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - “The nobles gaze, with awful fear opprest;
  - Silent they gaze, and eye the godlike guest,” &c.†
- - “Pleas’d with his people’s fame, the monarch hears,
  - And thus, benevolent, accosts the peers,” &c.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - “Th’ assenting peers, obedient to the king,
  - In haste their heralds send, the gifts to bring.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - The precious gifts th’ illustrious heralds bear,
  - And to the court th’ embodied peers repair.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - Then to the radiant thrones they move in state,
  - Aloft the king in pomp imperial sate.”‡
We must not forget the poet, who, with his inspiration from the Muses, was a principal support of every Grecian king. It was the bard who sung the praises of the king, and propagated the opinion that he was sprung from Jupiter, and instructed as well as dearly beloved by him.
- “The bard a herald guides; the gazing throng
- Pay low obeisance as he moves along.
- Beneath a sculptured arch he sits enthron’d,
- The peers, encircling, form an awful round.
- Lives there a man beneath the spacious skies,
- Who sacred honors to the bard denies?
- The Muse the bard inspires, exalts his mind;
- The Muse indulgent loves th’ harmonious kind.
- O more than man! thy soul the Muse inspires,
- Or Phœbus animates with all his fires.”*
Every peer, in his own district or state, had another subordinate council and a people; so that the three powers, of the one, the few, and the many, appeared in every archonship; and every archon, in his own district, claimed his office to be hereditary in his family; and all the archons agreed together to support each other in this claim, even by arms. This, therefore, was rather a confederacy of thirteen little kingdoms, than one great one. The first archon of the confederation was called king of all the people, and claimed his office as hereditary, and often as absolute. The other archons were always disposed to dispute the hereditary descent, and to make it elective. The subordinate councils of the archons, in their several districts, were probably often disposed to deny their offices to be hereditary, and to insist upon elections. Ulysses, who was himself one of the greatest and ablest of the Grecian kings, discovers his perfect knowledge of the hearts of Alcinous, his queen, and nobles, in the compliment he makes them. Addressing himself to the queen, the daughter of great Rhexenor:—
- “To thee, thy consort, and this royal train,
- To all that share the blessings of your reign,
- . . . . . . . .
- So may the gods your better days increase,
- And all your joys descend on all your race;
- So reign forever on your country’s breast,
- Your people blessing, by your people blest.”†
This supplication was addressed to the king and queen, the princes, archons, dukes, counts, barons, peers, call them by what name you please, and it concludes with a compliment very flattering to all. Ulysses knew the ruling passion of Grecian kings and nobles to be, that their dignities, even such as had been conferred by the election of the people, should become hereditary. Mr. Pope has disguised this sentiment, and made it conformable to the notions of Englishmen and Americans; but has departed from the sense of Homer and from the fact.

“May you transmit to your children your possessions in your houses, and whatever gifts, rewards, or honors the people hath given you.”

It is plain the kings claimed a hereditary right; yet the succession was sometimes set aside in favor of some other noble, or branch of the royal blood; and perhaps it was always set aside, when any one of the nobles had more power than the heir apparent. The nobles, too, claimed their honors to be hereditary, and they generally were so; but the people were sometimes bold enough to set up competitors, and give them trouble. But perhaps there were never any very formal elections.1 Presenting a successor, in presence of the king and the other nobles, to the people for their acclamations, was probably the most that was done; for, as there were no records, nor written constitution, or laws, the right of kings, archons, and people, must have been very loose and undefined.

ITHACA.

The court of Ithaca, in the absence of Ulysses, is an admirable example of the intrigues of the archons, and their insatiable ambition. The throne of Ithaca, and the sceptre of Laertes and former kings, were the objects which had so many charms in the eyes of the suitors; and Penelope’s hand was chiefly courted, because that would reconcile the archon who should possess her to the superstition of the people, and enable him to wield the sceptre. The suitors deny the sceptre to be hereditary; and Telemachus himself is doubtful. He threatens, indeed, to call a council or assembly of the people; but is afraid to trust them, for fear they should set up some other Grecian prince, whose blood might be nearer that of their ancient kings.
- - To tempt the spouseless queen with am’rous wiles,
  - Resort the nobles from the neighb’ring isles;
  - From Samos, circled with th’ Ionian main,
  - Dulichium, and Zacynthus’ sylvan reign.
  - Ev’n with presumptuous hope her bed t’ ascend,
  - The lords of Ithaca their right pretend.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - My sentence hear; with stern distaste avow’d,
  - To their own districts drive the suitor crowd.
  - . . . . . . . .
  - I, to the peers assembled, shall propose
  - The firm resolve, I here in few disclose.
  - No longer live the cankers of my court;
  - All to your several states with speed resort;
  - Waste in wild riot what your land allows,
  - There ply the early feast and late carouse.
- - Elect by Jove, his delegate of sway,
  - With joyous pride the summons I’d obey.
  - . . . . . . .
  - Should factious power dispute my lineal right,
  - Some other Greeks a fairer claim may plead,
  - To your pretence their title would precede.
  - At least, the sceptre lost, I still should reign
  - Sole o’er my vassals, and domestic train.”*
  - . . . . . . .
  - “If ruin to our royal race ye doom,
  - Be you the spoilers, and our wealth consume.
  - Then might we hope redress from juster laws,
  - And raise all Ithaca to aid our cause;
  - But while your sons commit th’ unpunished wrong,
  - You make the arm of violence too strong.”†
- - “To heaven, alone,
  - Refer the choice to fill the vacant throne.
  - Your patrimonial stores in peace possess,
  - Undoubted, all your filial claim confess.
  - Your private right should impious pow’r invade,
  - The peers of Ithaca would arm in aid.”‡
It is thus agreed, on all hands, that, as one of the archons, his hereditary title to his estates, vassals, and government, was indisputable. This was the common cause of all the archons, and they would arm in support of the claim of any one. But the throne and sceptre of Ithaca were to be disposed of by augury, by the will of Jove, signified by some omen. To this Telemachus pays some respect; but still insists on his right of blood, and says, that if the omen should be unfavorable to him, it would not promote the hopes of any of the archons of Ithaca; but some other Greeks, nearer of kin to the royal blood, would set up their claims. The archons, not likely to succeed in their scheme of getting the sceptre by the marriage of Penelope, nor by persuading Telemachus to submit the question to Jupiter and his omens, and afraid to appeal to the people, or to call them out in arms to dispute the succession, knowing the family of Laertes and Ulysses to be more popular than themselves, take the resolution to assassinate the young prince:—
- “But die he shall, and thus condemn’d to bleed,
- Be now the scene of instant death decreed.
- . . . . . . .
- Wait ye, till he to arms in council draws
- The Greeks, averse too justly to our cause?
- Strike, ere, the states conven’d, the foe betray,
- Our murd’rous ambush on the wat’ry way.
- Or choose ye vagrant from their rage to fly,
- Outcasts of earth, to breathe an unknown sky?
- . . . . . . .
- But if, submissive, you resign the sway,
- Slaves to a boy; go, flatter and obey;
- Retire we instant to our native reign,
- Nor be the wealth of kings consum’d in vain.”*
Telemachus had before declared, that, if any archon of Ithaca, or any other Greek, obtained the sceptre, he would no longer remain in the confederation, but would reign separately over his paternal domain. Now, Antinous declares, that, if the rest of the archons submit to the boy, he will not, but will retire to his native archonship.
- “Amphinomus ascends,
- Who o’er Dulichium stretch’d his spacious reign,
- A land of plenty, bless’d with every grain.
- . . . . . . . .
- O friends, forbear, and be the thought withstood!
- ’Tis horrible to shed imperial blood;
- Consult we, first, th’ all-seeing powers above,
- And the sure oracles of righteous Jove.”†
Neither in Poland nor in Venice was the aristocratical rage to render weak, unsteady, and uncertain the royal authority, more conspicuous than it was here. They were afraid of the people and the auguries; but neither was a legal check; and we shall see, hereafter, that these struggles of the archons very soon abolished every monarchy in Greece, even that of Sparta, until it was renewed, upon another plan, by Lycurgus. And the same progress of passions, through seditions, rebellions, and massacres, must forever take place in a body of nobles against the crown, where they are not effectually restrained by an independent people, known and established in the legislature, collectively or by representation.

That the Grecian kings, claiming from Jupiter, and supported by their auguries and bards, thought themselves absolute, and often punished the crimes of the archons very tyrannically, is true. Ulysses is an example of it. Instead of bringing the suitors to trial before the nation, or their peers, he shoots them all, without judge or jury, with his own bow. A more remarkable assertion of a claim to absolute monarchy cannot be imagined.

Antinous would retire to his native district, and spend his revenues among his own people, not consume his royal wealth by attendance at a court of a confederation which would be no longer to his taste. This was a popular sentiment in his own dominions; his people wished to have their king reside among them, and were very willing to have the confederacy broken. This principle it was that afterwards crumbled all the Greek confederations to dust.

The similitude between the ancient Greek monarchies, as they are generally called, though the predominance of aristocracy in all of them is very manifest, and the feudal aristocracies described by Tacitus, is very obvious. The democratical power is nevertheless much more regular, though not independent, in the latter; for, in addition to what is before quoted, it appears that the judicial authority was commonly exercised in national assemblies:—“Licet apud concilium accusare quoque, et discrimen capitis intendere. Distinctio pœnarum ex delicto; proditores et transfugas arboribus suspendunt; ignavos, et imbelles, et corpore infames, cœno ac palude, injectá insuper crate, mergunt. Diversitas supplicii illuc respicit, tanquam scelera ostendi opporteat dum puniuntur, flagitia abscondi. Sed et levioribus delictis, pro modo, pœna; equorum pecorumque numero convicti multantur; pars multæ regi, vel civitati, pars ipsi qui vindicatur, vel propinquis ejus exsolvitur.”*

Although the mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, is visible in the republic of Phæacia, yet the king appears little more among the archons than the first among equals, and the authority of the people is still more faint and feeble. In Ithaca, there appears a strong claim of sovereignty in the king, and as strong a pretension to it in the archons; and, although the people are dreaded by both, and their claim to interfere in the disposition of the crown is implicitly acknowledged, yet it seems to be as judges of certain religious ceremonies, by which the will of Jupiter was to be collected, rather than as any regular civil authority.

Homer was a royalist, at least as much as Plato and Aristotle.
- “Jove loves our chief, from Jove his honor springs.
- Beware! for dreadful is the wrath of kings.
- . . . . . . . .
- Be silent, wretch! and think not here allowed
- That worst of tyrants, a usurping crowd.
- To one sole monarch Jove commits the sway;
- His are the laws, and him let all obey.”*
The name of a republic is not found in any of his writings. Yet, in every Grecian government described by him, we find a mixture, not only of an aristocracy, consisting in a council of princes; but of a democracy, in an assembly of the people.

Agamemnon, in the second Iliad, calls together the whole body.
- “The king despatched his heralds with commands
- To range the camp, and summon all the bands.
- The gathering hosts the monarch’s word obey,
- While to the fleet Atrides bends his way.
- In his black ship the Pylian prince he found,
- There calls a senate of the peers around.
- Th’ assembly plac’d, the king of men exprest
- The counsels lab’ring in his artful breast.
- Friends and confed’rates! with attentive ear
- Receive my words, and credit what you hear;
- . . . . . . .
- Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides,
- Directs in council, and in war presides,
- To whom its safety a whole people owes;
- To waste long nights in indolent repose.
- . . . . . . .
- Now, valiant chiefs! since heaven itself alarms,
- Unite, and rouse the sons of Greece to arms.
- But first, with caution, try what yet they dare,
- Worn with nine years of unsuccessful war.
- To move the troops to measure back the main
- Be mine; and yours the province to detain.
- —The kings without delay
- Dissolve the council, and their chief obey.
- The sceptr’d rulers lead; the following host.
- Pour’d forth by thousands, darkens all the coast.
- . . . . . . . .
- Nine sacred heralds now, proclaiming loud
- The monarch’s will, suspend the list’ning crowd.
- . . . . . . . .
- The king of kings his awful figure raised,
- High in his hand the golden sceptre blazed—
- . . . . . . . .
- Ye sons of Mars! partake your leader’s care,
- Heroes of Greece, and brothers of the war!
- . . . . . . . .
- Fly, Grecians, fly! your sails and oars employ,
- And dream no more of heaven-defended Troy.
- His deep design unknown, the hosts approve
- Atrides’ speech;—the mighty numbers move.”*
It appears from the whole narration, that the great body of the people were discontented and desirous of raising the siege. The king alarmed, was obliged to call them together, with an artful design to obtain their consent to persevere. He feigns an intention to return home; the people were rejoiced at it. Then Ulysses, in concert with Agamemnon, receives the sceptre of command, and endeavors to persuade the people to make another effort. To this end Ulysses harangues them.
- “He runs, he flies through all the Grecian train,
- Each prince of name, or chief in arms approved,
- He fired with praise, or with persuasion moved.
- . . . . . . . .
- But if a clam’rous, vile plebeian rose,
- Him with reproof he checked, or tamed with blows.
- Be still, thou slave, and to thy betters yield,
- Unknown alike in council or in field!
- Ye gods! what dastards would our host command!
- Swept to the war, the lumber of a land.
- Be silent, wretch! and think not here allow’d
- That worst of tyrants, an usurping crowd.
- . . . . . . .
- With words like these the troops Ulysses rul’d,
- The loudest silenc’d, and the fiercest cool’d.
- Back to th’ assembly roll the thronging train,
- Desert the ships, and pour upon the plain.
- . . . . . . .
- Thersites only clamor’d in the throng,
- Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue.
- Aw’d by no shame, by no respect control’d,
- In scandal busy, in reproaches bold,
- With witty malice studious to defame,
- Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
- But chief he gloried, with licentious style
- To lash the great, and monarchs to revile.
- . . . . . . .
- Spleen to mankind his envious heart possest,
- And much he hated all, but most the best;
- Ulysses or Achilles still his theme;
- But royal scandal his delight supreme.
- Long had he liv’d, the scorn of ev’ry Greek,
- Vext when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak.”*
If from this only, and the subsequent harangue of Thersites, we were to form a judgment, we should conclude that popular assemblies were very frequent, and that the freedom of speech in them was far advanced and well established; but the furious answer of Ulysses, and the unmerciful flogging he gives him for his boldness, in the face of the whole assembly, which is applauded universally, shows that the demagogues had yet but very little influence, very little courage, and that popular assemblies had as yet very little constitutional power.

The principles of government were very little understood, and all the political institutions extremely confused, in the time of the Trojan war, and from thence to Homer’s time. Nothing was precisely defined; no laws were written. The most distinct rules, which are now to be traced, were a supremacy of kings, in religion and war. Sometimes they exercised judicial power. Monarchies were generally hereditary; yet a right of the nation to interfere and alter the succession is admitted. The right of the sons of the archons, to succeed to their estates and districts, was an agreed point among them; but these very archons chose to keep open to competition the succession to the throne, so that there might always be room for the pretensions of the most powerful, who would easily make themselves thought the most worthy. The most celebrated kings, when advanced in years and unable to sustain the fatigues of war and cares of government, were obliged to resign their power. The anxiety of Achilles, expressed to Ulysses in the Shades, is a proof of this.
- “Say if my sire, the reverend Peleus, reigns
- Great in his Pthia, and his throne maintains;
- Or, weak and old, my youthful arm demands
- To fix the sceptre steadfast in his hands?
- O might the lamp of life rekindled burn,
- And death release me from the silent urn!
- This arm, that thunder’d o’er the Phrygian plain
- And swell’d the ground with mountains of the slain,
- Should vindicate my injur’d father’s fame,
- Crush the proud rebel, and assert his claim.*
Kings and their families, claiming their descent and power from Jupiter, contended very naturally and consistently that the one was hereditary and the other absolute; and, accordingly, when the prince who swayed the sceptre was active, brave, and able, he kept the archons in awe, and governed as he pleased. But when he was feeble, the archons grew ambitious, disputed the succession, and limited the royal power. To this end, both they and the kings, or heirs of kings, sometimes looked to the people, and seemed to admit in them a right to be present at the religious ceremonies, by which the will of Jupiter was to be declared; for all parties agree, that the will of Jupiter confers the sceptre, not the mere election of the people.

The right of primogeniture was favored by popular opinion, as well as hereditary descent, because the family was the family of Jupiter, related to him, and descended from him by blood; and it was natural to suppose that Jupiter’s inclinations for descent and primogeniture resembled those of other fathers of families.

The chiefs, who are all called kings, as well as the head of them, or archons, were like the Teutonic counts or feudal barons, who exercised royal rights within their own districts, states, or separate territories. This principle preserved the real and legal power chiefly in their hands, and constituted the whole government more properly an aristocracy than a royalty. This gave an uncontrollable pride to these nobles, which could not willingly submit to the pretensions of the kings, (as representatives of Jupiter,) to omnipotence, at least to unlimited power. Hence the continual struggle between the kings and archons, from Homer’s time to that great and memorable revolution throughout Greece, from monarchy to aristocracy; that is, from kings to archons. The people not yet possessing nor claiming an authority sufficiently regular and independent to be a check to monarchy or aristocracy, the latter at last prevailed over the former, as it ever did and ever will, where the contest is merely between these two.

The people, only in extraordinary cases, in the most essential matters, and when the chiefs were greatly divided, were at all consulted; yet, in the course of the struggle between the kings and archons, the multitude were so often called upon, and so much courted, that they came by degrees to claim the whole power, and prepared the way in many of the Grecian states for another subsequent revolution from aristocracy to democracy.

Through the whole of Tacitus and Homer, the three orders are visible both in Germany and Greece; and the continual fluctuations of law, the uncertainty of life, liberty, and property, and the contradictory claims and continual revolutions, arose entirely from the want of having the prerogatives and privileges of those orders defined, from the want of independence in each of them, and a balance between them.

CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION.

By the authorities and examples already recited, you will be convinced that three branches of power have an unalterable foundation in nature; that they exist in every society natural and artificial; and that if all of them are not acknowledged in any constitution of government, it will be found to be imperfect, unstable, and soon enslaved; that the legislative and executive authorities are naturally distinct; and that liberty and the laws depend entirely on a separation of them in the frame of government; that the legislative power is naturally and necessarily sovereign and supreme over the executive; and, therefore, that the latter must be made an essential branch of the former, even with a negative, or it will not be able to defend itself, but will be soon invaded, undermined, attacked, or in some way or other totally ruined and annihilated by the former. This is applicable to every state in America, in its individual capacity; but is it equally applicable to the United States in their federal capacity?

The people of America and their delegates in congress were of opinion, that a single assembly was every way adequate to the management of all their federal concerns; and with very good reason, because congress is not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, but only a diplomatic assembly.1 A single council has been found to answer the purposes of confederacies very well. But in all such cases the deputies are responsible to the states; their authority is clearly ascertained; and the states, in their separate capacities, are the checks. These are able to form an effectual balance, and at all times to control their delegates. The security against the dangers of this kind of government will depend upon the accuracy and decision with which the governments of the separate states have their own orders arranged and balanced.

The necessity we are under of submitting to a federal government, is an additional and a very powerful argument for three branches, and a balance by an equal negative, in all the separate governments. Congress will always be composed of members from the natural and artificial aristocratical body in every state, even in the northern, as well as in the middle and southern states. Their natural dispositions, then, in general will be, (whether they shall be sensible of it or not, and whatever integrity or abilities they may be possessed of,) to diminish the prerogatives of the governors and the privileges of the people, and to augment the influence of the aristocratical parties. There have been causes enough to prevent the appearance of this inclination hitherto; but a calm course of prosperity would very soon bring it forth, if effectual provision against it be not made in season. It will be found absolutely necessary, therefore, to give negatives to the governors, to defend the executive against the influence of this body, as well as the senate and representatives in their several states. The necessity of a negative in the house of representatives will be called in question by nobody.

Dr. Price and the Abbé de Mably are zealous for additional powers to congress. Full power in all foreign affairs and over foreign commerce, and, perhaps, some authority over the commerce of the states with one another, may be necessary; and it is hard to say that more authority in other things is not wanted. Yet the subject is of such extreme delicacy and difficulty, that the people are much to be applauded for their caution. To collect together the ancient and modern leagues,—the Amphictyonic, the Olynthian, the Argive, the Arcadian, and the Achæan confederacies, among the Greeks; the general diet of the Swiss cantons, and the states-general of the United Netherlands; the union of the Hanse-towns, &c., which have been found to answer the purposes both of government and liberty; to compare them all with the circumstances, the situation, the geography, the commerce, the population, and the forms of government, as well as the climate, the soil, and manners of the people, and consider what further federal powers are wanted, and may be safely given, would be a useful work.

According to M. Turgot’s idea of a perfect commonwealth, a single assembly is to be possessed of all authority, legislative, executive, and judicial. It will be a proper conclusion of all our speculations upon this, the most interesting subject which can employ the thoughts of men, to consider in what manner such an assembly will conduct its deliberations and exert its power. The executive power is properly the government; the laws are a dead letter until an administration begins to carry them into execution. Let us begin, then, with this. If there is an army to raise, this single assembly is to appoint all its officers. The man of the most ample fortune, the most honorable descent, the greatest abilities, especially if there is any one among them who has had experience, rendered important services, and acquired fame in war, will be chosen general. This event is a great point gained by the aristocracy; and a great advance towards the selection of one, in case of convulsions and confusions, for monarchy. The general has vast influence, of course, with the whole nation, and especially with the officers of his army; whose articles of war, and whose habits, both of obedience and command, establish a system of subordination of which he is the centre, and produce an attachment that never wears out. The general, even without being sensible of it, will naturally fall in with the views of the aristocratical body, in promoting men of family, property, and abilities; and indeed, in general, it will be his duty to do this, as such are, undoubtedly, in general, the fittest for the service. His whole corps of officers will grow habitually to respect such only, or at least chiefly, and, it must be added, because experience proves it, and the truth requires it to be mentioned, to entertain some degree of contempt for the rest of the people, as “rank and file.” The general’s recommendation will have great weight in the assembly, and will in time be given chiefly, if not wholly, to men who are either of the aristocratical body themselves, or at least recommended by such as are so. All the other officers of the army are to be appointed by this assembly; and we must suppose that all the general officers and field officers will be of patrician families, because each candidate will be unknown to nine tenths of the assembly. He comes from a part of the state which a vast majority of the members of the assembly do not particularly represent and are unacquainted with; they must, therefore, take his character upon trust from his patron in the house, some member who is his neighbor, and who, perhaps, owes his election to him or his particular friends. Here is an endless source of debate and delay. When there are two or more candidates for a commission, and there will generally be several, how shall an assembly of five hundred or one hundred men, collected from all the most distant parts of a large state, become informed of the merits and pretensions of each candidate? It can only be done in public or in private. If in public, it exposes the characters of the candidates to a public discussion, which few men can bear; it consumes time without end; and it will frequently happen that the time of the whole assembly shall be wasted, and all the public affairs delayed, for days and weeks, in deliberating and debating, affirming and denying, contradicting and proving, in the appointment of a single officer; and, after all, he who has friends of the most influence in the house, who will be generally of the aristocratical complexion, will be preferred. It is moderate to say, that the loss of time and delay of business will be a greater burthen to the state than the whole support of a governor and council.

If there is a navy, the same process must be gone through respecting admirals, captains, and all other officers. All the officers of revenue, police, justice, must be appointed in the same way. Ambassadors, consuls, agents to foreign countries, must be appointed, too, by vote of assembly. This branch of business alone would fill up the whole year, and be more than could be done. An assembly must be informed before it can act. The understanding and conscience of every member should be clearly satisfied before he can vote. Information is to be had only by debate and examination of evidence. Any man may see that this must be attended with difficulty; but no man who has not seen the inside of such an assembly, can conceive the confusion, uncertainty, and procrastination of such proceedings. The American provincial congresses had experience enough of this; and gentlemen were more convinced, by what they there saw, heard, and felt, of the necessity of three branches, than they would have been by reasoning or reading; it was generally agreed that the appointment of officers by lot would have been a more rational method.

But this is not all. The army, the navy, revenue, excise, customs, police, justice, and all foreign ministers, must be gentlemen, that is to say, friends and connections of the rich, well-born and well-educated members of the house; or, if they are not, the community will be filled with slander, suspicion, and ridicule against them, as ill-bred, ignorant, and in all respects unqualified for their trusts; and the plebeians themselves will be as ready as any to join in the cry, and run down their characters. In the second place, there never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will,—a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion.

The next inquiry is, concerning the administration of justice. Shall every criminal be brought before this assembly and tried? shall he be there accused before five hundred men? witnesses introduced, counsel heard? This again would take up more than the whole year; and no man, after all, would consider his life, liberty, or property, safe in such a tribunal. These all depend upon the disquisitions of the counsel, the knowledge of the law in the judges, the confrontation of parties and witnesses, the forms of proceedings, by which the facts and the law are fairly stated before the jury for their decision, the rules of evidence, by which the attention of the jury is confined to proper points, and the artifices of parties and counsel avoided. An assembly of five hundred men are totally incapable of this order, as well as knowledge; for, as the vote of the majority must determine, every member must be capable, or all is uncertain. Besides, it is the unanimity of the jury that preserves the rights of mankind. Must the whole five hundred be unanimous?

Will it be said that the assembly shall appoint committees to try causes? But who are to make these appointments? Will not a few haughty palatines in the assembly have influence enough to determine the election in favor of their friends? and will not this make the judges the tools of a party? If the leaders are divided into parties, will not one prevail at one year, and another the next? and will not this introduce the most wretched of servitudes, an uncertain jurisprudence?

Will it be said that the assembly shall appoint committees for the nomination of officers? The same intrigues and greater struggles would be introduced for the place of a committee-man; and there would be frequent appeals from those committees to the body that appointed them.

Shall the assembly appoint a governor or president, and give him all the executive power? Why should not the people at large appoint him? Giving this power to the assembly will open a wider door to intrigue for the place; and the aristocratical families will be sure, nine times in ten, to carry their choice in this way; and, what is much worse, the first magistrate will be considered as dependent on every obscure member of the house, but in reality he will be dependent only on a dozen or a score, perhaps on two or three, of the whole. He will be liable to daily motions, debates, and votes of censure. Instead of thinking of his duty to the people at large, he will confine his attention chiefly to the assembly, and believe, that if he can satisfy them, or a majority of them, he has done his duty.

After all, any of these devices are only changing words; they are, in reality, erecting different orders of men, and aiming at balances, as much as the system which so much displeases M. Turgot; they are introducing, in effect, all the inequalities and disputes that he so greatly apprehends, without any of that security to the laws, which ought to be the principal object; they render the executive power, which is in truth the government, the instrument of a few grandees. If these are capable of a combination with each other, they will seldom disagree in their opinion, which is the richest man and of the first family; and, as these will be all their inquiries, they will generally carry their election. If they are divided, in constant wrangles with each other, and perpetual attacks upon the president about the discharge of his functions, they will keep the nation anxious and irritated, with controversies which can never be decided nor ended. If they agree, and the plebeians still carry the vote against them, the choice will nevertheless probably fall upon one of their number, who will be disposed to favor them too much; but if it falls upon a plebeian, there commences at once a series of contests between the rich and the poor, which will never end but in the ruin of the popular power and the national liberty; or at least in a revolution and a new constitution. As the executive power, the essence of government, is ever odious to popular envy and jealousy, it will ever be in the power of a few illustrious and wealthy citizens to excite clamors and uneasiness, if not commotions and seditions, against it. Although it is the natural friend of the people, and the only defence which they or their representatives can have against the avarice and ambition of the rich and distinguished citizens, yet, such is their thoughtless simplicity, they are ever ready to believe that the evils they feel are brought upon them by the executive power. How easy is it, then, for a few artful men among the aristocratical body to make a president, thus appointed and supported, unpopular, though he conducts himself with all the integrity and ability which his office requires?

But we have not yet considered how the legislative power is to be exercised in this single assembly. Is there to be a constitution? Who are to compose it? The assembly itself, or a convention called for that purpose? In either case, whatever rules are agreed on for the preservation of the lives, liberties, properties, and characters of the citizens, what is to hinder this assembly from transgressing the bounds which they have prescribed to themselves, or which the convention has ordained for them? The convention has published its code and is no more. Shall a new convention be called, to determine every question which arises concerning a violation of the constitution? This would require that the convention should sit whenever the assembly sits, and consider and determine every question which is agitated in it. This is the very thing we contend for, namely,—that there may be two assemblies; one to divide, and the other to choose. Grant me this, and I am satisfied; provided you will confine both the convention and assembly to legislation, and give the whole executive power to another body. I had almost ventured to propose a third assembly for the executive power; but the unity, the secrecy, the dispatch of one man has no equal; and the executive power should be watched by all men; the attention of the whole nation should be fixed upon one point, and the blame and censure, as well as the impeachments and vengeance for abuses of this power, should be directed solely to the ministers of one man. But to pursue our single assembly. The first year, or the first seven years, they may be moderate; especially in dangerous times, and while an exiled royal family, or exiled patricians or nobles, are living, and may return; or while the people’s passions are alive, and their attention awake, from the fresh remembrance of danger and distress. But when these transitory causes pass away, as there is an affection and confidence between the people and their representatives, suppose the latter begin to make distinctions, by making exceptions of themselves in the laws. They may frank letters; they are exempted from arrests; they can privilege servants; one little distinction after another, in time makes up a large sum. Some few of the people will complain; but the majority, loving their representatives, will acquiesce. Presently they are exempted from taxes. Then their duration is too short; from annual they become biennial, triennial, septennial, for life; and at length, instead of applying to constituents to fill up vacancies, the assembly takes it upon itself, or gives it to their president. In the mean time, wars are conducted by heroes to triumph and conquest, negotiations are carried on with success, commerce flourishes, the nation is prosperous; the citizens are flattered, vain, proud of their felicity, envied by others. It would be the basest, the most odious ingratitude, at least it would be so represented, to find fault with their rulers. In a word, as long as half a score of capital characters agree, they will gradually form the house and the nation into a system of subordination and dependence to themselves, and govern all at their discretion—a simple aristocracy or oligarchy in effect, though a simple democracy in name. But, as every one of these is emulous of others, and more than one of them is constantly tormented with a desire to be the first, they will soon disagree; and then the house and the nation gradually divides itself into four parties, one of which, at least, will wish for monarchy, another for aristocracy, a third for democracy, and a fourth for various mixtures of them; and these parties can never come to a decision but by a struggle, or by the sword. There is no remedy for this, but in a convention of deputies from all parts of the state; but an equal convention can hardly be obtained, except in times like those we have lately seen, when the danger could only be warded off by the aid and exertions of the whole body of the people. When no such danger from without shall press, those who are proud of their wealth, blood, or wit, will never give way to fair and equal establishments. All parties will be afraid of calling a convention; but if it must be agreed to, the aristocratical party will push their influence, and obtain elections even into the conventions, for themselves and their friends, so as to carry points there which perhaps they could not have carried in the assembly.

But shall the people at large elect a governor and council annually to manage the executive power, and a single assembly to have the whole legislative? In this case, the executive power, instead of being independent, will be the instrument of a few leading members of the house; because the executive power, being an object of jealousy and envy to the people, and the legislative an object of their confidence and affection, the latter will always be able to render the former unpopular, and undermine its influence. But if the people for a time support an executive disagreeable to the leaders in the legislative, the constitution will be disregarded, and the nation will be divided between the two bodies, and each must at last have an army to decide the question. A constitution consisting of an executive in one single assembly, and a legislative in another, is already composed of two armies in battle array; and nothing is wanting but the word of command to begin the combat.

In the present state of society and manners in America, with a people living chiefly by agriculture, in small numbers, sprinkled over large tracts of land, they are not subject to those panics and transports, those contagions of madness and folly, which are seen in countries where large numbers live in small places, in daily fear of perishing for want. We know, therefore, that the people can live and increase under almost any kind of government, or without any government at all. But it is of great importance to begin well; misarrangements now made, will have great, extensive, and distant consequences; and we are now employed, how little soever we may think of it, in making establishments which will affect the happiness of a hundred millions of inhabitants at a time, in a period not very distant. All nations, under all governments, must have parties; the great secret is to control them. There are but two ways, either by a monarchy and standing army, or by a balance in the constitution. Where the people have a voice, and there is no balance, there will be everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors, until a standing army, with a general at its head, commands the peace, or the necessity of an equilibrium is made appear to all, and is adopted by all.

end of volume iv.

[1 ]This resolution was passed on the 15th. Force’s American Archives, fourth series, vol. vi. c. 1524.

[1 ]This refers to a small pamphlet published by Dunlap, at Philadelphia, and evidently designed as an answer to “Thoughts on Government.” Its title is “An Address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia, on the subject of Government in general, and recommending a particular Form to their Consideration, by a Native of that Colony.” The name of the writer has not been ascertained. Much interest attached to the proceedings of Virginia in framing a constitution, and an apprehension lest the popular features of the form recommended by Mr. Adams should find favor, seems to have led to this effort to counteract it. The address was reprinted in the Virginia Gazette, at Williamsburgh, on the eighth of June, 1776, being the time fixed for the consideration of the declaration of rights by the Convention. The form recommended is in direct conflict with the first principles laid down in “Thoughts on Government.” A governor, during good behavior, elected by a house of representatives, renewed but once in three years; a council of twenty-four persons to serve for life, also chosen by the house; and a judiciary and military appointed by the governor,—constitute its main features. It is reprinted in the Great Collection made under the authority of Congress by Mr. Force, fourth series, vol. vi. cc. 748-754.

On the other hand, the tendency in Pennsylvania was to consider Mr. Adams’s theory as not popular enough. In the Collection alluded to, is to be found a paper entitled, “The Interest of America,” the purport of which is to recommend a single legislative branch, in which most of the powers are to be vested; a suggestion which was acted upon, as is well known, in the first constitution of Pennsylvania.

[1 ]The clergy partook strongly of the feeling at this time. See the Memoir of Dr. Thacher, in Mass. Hist. Society Collections, vol. viii. p. 281.

[1 ]“These letters have been produced upon the spur of a particular occasion, which made it necessary to write and publish with precipitation, or it might have been useless to have published at all. The whole have been done in the midst of other occupations, in so much hurry, that scarce a moment could be spared to correct the style, adjust the method, pare off excrescences, or even obliterate repetition; in all which respects it stands in need of an apology.”

This reasoning, found at the close of the book, might avail to excuse errors in the first edition; but the author declined to return to his labors when requested by the printer, Stockdale, to do so for his reprint in 1794.

[1 ]Political Philosophy, vol. iii. pp. 322, 340.

[* ](Note by Dr. Price.) “It is the constitution of Delaware that imposes the test here meant.”

[* ]Lib. iii. 81, 82.

[1 ]On the Populousness of Ancient Nations. Hume’s Essays, vol. i. p. 477, note BB.

[* ]“Mr. Pulteney and Mr. Pitt were ostracized, but the intent of their being so was neither honest nor useful. They lost, however, their popular influence, by their removal into the house of lords, which proves the use of a senate, as contended for. Unluckily, indeed, these examples go somewhat further. They show how the ostracism of a senate may be abused.”

S.

No such abuse as is here pointed out is likely to happen through any form of popular election. The working of the present constitution of the United States, in the particular noticed in the text, appears thus far to have excited little observation. It would be a curious, and not unprofitable subject of speculation, to consider what might have been the effect upon the government, had several leading members of the senate been, for an equally long period, in the house of representatives.

[* ]“Query, whether the principles of the American governments are not rather the result of reason and judgment, than the dictates of simple nature?

“But be this as it may, it is perhaps saying rather too much, to affirm that the United States have exhibited the first example, &c., especially after the great and just encomiums on the English constitution to be found throughout this work. A constitution which the American legislator and politician professedly drew his system from.”

S.

It would seem as if the question of the commentator should be answered affirmatively. But this answer will impair the force of his subsequent remark. The author, in his reasoning, obviously has reference only to the intent of the lawgiver, which is not so clearly discernible in the slow and unequal progress of formation of the English constitution, as in the models adopted in America.

[* ]Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains.

[1 ]Annales, liber iv. c. 33.

[2 ]Since this was written, a considerable addition to the former fragments has been made, through the industry of Angelo Mai; but, so far as it goes, it does not fulfil the conjecture here made.

[1 ]“Id enim tenetote, quod initio dixi, nisi æquabilis hæc in civitate compensatio sit et juris et officii et muneris, ut et potestatis satis in magistratibus, et auctoritatis in principum consilio, et libertatis in populo sit, non posse hunc incommutabilem rei publicæ conservari statum.” De Republica.

[* ]“Should it appear that the real object of the committees and conventions in endeavoring to depose the governor and senate is the passing of pernicious laws by the representative body, such as the abolishing or postponing the payment of debts, or the emission of an unfunded paper currency, the necessity of supporting the governor and senate will be more obvious.”

S.

[1 ]Twenty-seven square miles.

[2 ]This is in substance the language of Addison.

[1 ]History scarcely justifies this inference. In 1502, Cæsar Borgia threatened them. Sismondi says of this:—

“Les habitans, effrayés de la ruine de leur protecteur, offrirent aux Vénitiens de se donner à eux, s’ils vouloient les défendre contre César Borgia; mais les Vénitiens n’osèrent pas les accepter. Borgia, d’autre part, leur demanda seulement de recevoir un podestat de ses mains; les citoyens de San-Marino y consentirent; ils profitèrent ensuite des premières revolutions de la Romagne, pour se remettre en liberté.” Répub. Ital. vol. xiii. p. 156.

It is true that the latest historian of San Marino attempts to question the correctness of this statement, as it would seem with little reason.

But experience has further shown their inability to resist the process of siege by famine. Through the command of the surrounding country, Cardinal Alberoni was enabled, in no long time, to place the institutions of the republic at the mercy of the Roman pontiff, Clement XII., to whose generosity the people owed their restoration.

Once more, Napoleon Bonaparte had the republic in his power, but he made it an occasion for a dramatic exhibition of generosity to free institutions, which cost little real sacrifice.

[2 ]The council consists of sixty persons; forty of them chosen from the township, and twenty from the country.

[1 ]This appears to be an error.

“Après la capitainerie, la première charge est celle du juge appelé commissaire de la république; mais elle n’est presque jamais remplie, cette judicature n’etant nécessaire que dans les cas extraordinaires, et lorsque les capitaines, soit dans la crainte d’être récusés, soit dans les momens de troubles civils, se trouvent dans l’obligation de ne pouvoir rendre eux-mêmes la justice, auquel cas on choisit un docteur étranger, qui prononce sur toutes les causes civiles et criminelles.”

Mattéo Valli, quoted in Auger-Saint-Hyppolite, p. 317.

[2 ]The practice of sending abroad for a judge was general among the Italian republics. The Duke, in the Merchant of Venice, says,—
- “Upon my power, I may dismiss this court,
- Unless Bellario, a learned doctor,
- Whom I have sent for to determine this,
- Come here to-day.
- Salario. My lord, here stays without
- A messenger, with letters from the doctor,
- New come from Padua.”
[3 ]“Après le commissaire, viennent les deux juges d’appel qui revoient en seconde instance. Mais les causes peuvent encore être portées au conseil des douze, formé chaque année dans le sein du conseil-général des soixante. L’autorité de ce conseil de douze ne s’étend pas plus loin; il n’est convoqué que par les soins d’un rapporteur ou instructeur, nommé à l’effet d’examiner chaque cause, et chargé d’être arbitre dans les cas que les lois n’ont pas prévus.”

Mattéo Valli.

[1 ]“Les capitaines sont élus tous les six mois, par scrutin secret, au nombre de douze candidats, parmi lesquels les six qui ont le plus grand nombre de suffrages sont accouplés deux à deux par la voie du sort, et inscrits sur trois bulletins. Accompagnés des capitaines encore en fonctions, du camerlingue et des conseillers, ils sont conduits dans la piève et devant le maître-autel ou reposent les ossemens de Saint-Marino; l’archiprêtre chante le Te Deum, après quoi les trois bulletins sont déposés dans une urne; un jeune enfant en tire un qu’il remet entre les mains de l’officiant; celui-ci en fait la lecture à haute et intelligible voix, et les deux citoyens ainsi désignés par le sort sont légitimement capitaines.”

Mattéo Valli.

[1 ]“Il arrive souvent que les deux capitaines élus sont plébeïens, tandis qu’il est impossible que deux nobles le soient, les nobles faisant leur séjour dans la ville, et l’un des deux candidats étant toujours villageois, c’est à dire habitant de la campagne.” Saint-Hyppolite.

[2 ]They are chosen for life.

[1 ]It should be recollected that these were the States inclined to adopt M. Turgot’s theory.

[1 ]In the Essai Historique sur la République de San Marino, published in Paris, in 1827, by M. Auger-Saint-Hyppolite, the work already quoted, are to be found some strictures upon this sketch of the author. He says:—

“Adams n’est guères que le commentateur d’Addison, et ne connaissant San Marino que sur les notions très-superficielles données par le premier, ses raisonnemens sur les institutions San Marinoises portent sur des assertions fausses; il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’il ait regardé la petite république comme une démocratie imparfaite, puisqu’il a cru, d’aprés Addison, que le conseil ou prince était formé de façon que la moitié devait être composée de nobles.”

It should be noted, that this error is found in every modern account of San Marino. But it does not appear to invalidate the position of Mr. Adams. That can scarcely be called any thing but an imperfect democracy, in which the representative body, however chosen, is chosen for life.

[1 ]Probably German miles, fifteen to a degree. The latest statistical works give the surface of Appenzel at two hundred and fifty-six square miles, sixty to a degree.

[2 ]It should be remarked that this was a religious and not a political contest. The division which ensued has ever since marked a line of separation between the inner or catholic Appenzel, and the outer, which follows the reformed faith. The mediating cantons were six; three of them, Lucerne, Schwitz, and Underwalden, for the catholics; three, Zurich, Glarus, and Schaffhausen, for the reformers.

[1 ]This assembly consists of all the male citizens of the canton over the age of sixteen. It elects the four chiefs and the six other magistrates mentioned for the Exterior Rhodes.

In the Inner Rhodes the age of citizenship is two years later, eighteen. The officers elected serve for one year, and are reëligible.

[2 ]Now, three times a year, in spring and autumn, and one month before the meeting of the general assembly.

[3 ]Three times a year.

[1 ]These observations apply to the Exterior Rhodes. The organization of the Inner Appenzel is slightly different. The little council is composed of the first magistrates and of counsellors named from each Rhode. It is divided into three sections, sitting alternately, and each section is called the weekly council. The same principle of election prevails however throughout. The general assembly is said at times to have collected as many as eight thousand men.

[2 ]The system in substance here described, has survived all the struggles of the last century, and even the dictation of Napoleon. The profound attachment of the people to their ancient habits overcomes all opposition.

[3 ]One hundred and seventy-nine square miles. Durand, Statistique Elémentaire de la Suisse.

[1 ]In 1816, this canton was regularly divided into two, each having its own form of government. The age of citizenship was advanced in both to twenty.

In the upper canton—the general assembly elects all the chief officers of the state by hand vote. It also chooses the deputy to the diet.

The council is composed of the chief officers and of sixty-five members chosen in the respective parishes, by hand vote. A father and a son cannot sit at the same time, nor two brothers.

The chief Land-Amman is chosen every year. The treasurer and inspector may be reelected. Some of the chief officers, however, serve for life.

In the lower canton—the general assembly elects all the chief officers; but only two of them, the treasurer and stadtholder, require confirmation annually. Some of the officers require confirmation at the end of six years.

The legislative and executive authority is distributed in several bodies, most of which are based upon one consisting of fifty-eight members, elected in the respective communities.

The judicial power is also confided to tribunals, sometimes separate, and sometimes formed from the executive bodies.

[1 ]Each sect has its separate assembly. That of the catholics is held at Naefels. That of the protestants at Schwamden, eight days before the meeting of the general assembly.

[2 ]The stadtholder must, however, be named by that side to which the Land-Amman does not belong.

[3 ]Each sect has also its particular council.

[4 ]This would make a greater number than sixty. Some of the authorities speak of as many as eleven or twelve additional persons admitted in the same proportion as to their religious faith. The past Land-Ammans are also entitled to sit as members.

The council of Glarus published, in 1816, a memorial relating to the government of the canton, of which the following is an extract:—

“We have never had any constitutional form for the canton drawn up in authentic shape. The custom of successive construction, followed for centuries, and the acts of agreement established between the two religious divisions, have gradually given birth to the constitution actually in being, and which, under divine providence, we desire to transmit unchanged to our descendants.”

This was followed by a very brief recapitulation of principles, which was sent to the general diet to be recorded as the constitution of Glarus.

[1 ]The age is now nineteen.

[2 ]This assembly ordinarily numbers three thousand citizens.

[3 ]The constitution of Zug was remodelled in 1814, and some of the obnoxious features of unequal representation in the old system removed.

The canton is divided into two circles. The inner circle is composed of the town and community of Zug, and of the communities of Cham, Hüneberg, Steinhausen, Risch, and Walchwyl.

The outer circle consists of the communities of Aegeri, upper and lower Menzingen, Neuheim and Baar.

The cantonal, or executive council, is composed of fifty-four members, elected in the following proportion:—
Inner Circle. Outer Circle.
Zug, 11 Upper Aegeri, 5
Cham and Hüneberg, 9 Lower Aegeri, 4
Steinhausen, 2 Menzingen, 9
Risch, 2 Baar, 9
Walchwyl, 3
27 27
The triple or legislative council is composed of the fifty-four members of the cantonal, and one hundred and eight others, all chosen annually by their respective townships.

The Land-Amman is chosen for two years, alternately from each circle. He presides over both councils, there being no joint action.

The statthalter is chosen by the cantonal council for one year, and must reside in Zug.

The places of captain, banneret, and ensign are for life.

[1 ]Now twenty years.

[2 ]The district of Uri has ten communities; that of Urseren has one. Each of these chooses four members to the council, which is composed besides of the chief officers elected by the general assembly.

[1 ]And statthalter, elected biennially by the general assembly, by show of hands.

[2 ]The sixty counsellors are chosen from the district of Schwitz alone. The five other districts send thirty more; and these, with the chief officers chosen by the general assembly, are called the council.

There is another body, called the triple council, of two hundred and seventy members, with the chief officers. It assembles twice a year, and its duties are confined to the business of the federal diet.

[3 ]Casa Dei, God’s house.

[1 ]The grand council is now composed of sixty-five members, chosen for a year.

An executive council, of three persons, is chosen by the grand council, one from the people at large of each league. These can serve but two years successively.

“The supreme authority is not absolutely and finally vested in the diet, but in the communities at large; for, in all affairs of importance, such as declaring war, making peace, and imposing taxes, the deputies either bring positive instructions from their constituents, or refer those points, concerning which they have no instructions, to the decision of the several communities; so that, in effect, the supreme power constitutionally resides in the body of the people, and not in their representatives at the diet.” Coxe, Switzerland, iii. p. 227.

[2 ]“Corruption and influence are not in any national parliament more conspicuous than in the diet of the Grisons. For although, in general, those deputies, annually chosen by every male of a stated age, are subject to be controlled in their votes by written orders from their constituents, yet they frequently contrive to elude this restriction. Sometimes the instructions are drawn up, with the consent of the community, under the sole direction of the deputy himself; at other times, an exemption from positive instructions, and the power of voting at his own pleasure, is purchased by the deputy from his constituents. Sometimes, again, the deputy, although he may not have interest sufficient to gain either of these points, has still sufficient address to get his instructions so obscurely worded as to admit a doubtful interpretation.

“By various intrigues of this kind, the greatest part of the deputies ultimately acquire the power of voting as they please; and, as they chiefly obtain this power by corrupting their constituents, most of them, in return, sell their vote to the leading members of the diet. For most questions are carried, and most causes decided by bribery.” Coxe, iii. pp. 231-2.

“The corruption which prevailed in this Grison confederacy is known to have been great and universal. Ever since the treaty of Milan, in 1639, the influence of Austria was predominant in all its concerns.”

Brougham, Political Philosophy, pt. iii. p. 393.

“In treating of the democratical cantons in Switzerland, it is asserted, that their governments, and in particular that of Glarus, are not entirely democratical; for, though the sovereign is the whole country, and the sovereignty resides in the general assembly, yet it is a mixed government, in which the Land-Amman, statthalter or proconsul, the aristocratical order in the senate, and the democratical in the general assembly, are distinctly marked.

“To this it may be observed that, if these governments are mixed, the sovereignty is not so; and it is from the formation or constitution of the sovereignty that one judges of the nature of a society, and classes it as monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. The Land-Amman, statthalter, proconsul, or senate, is no part of the sovereignty in any of the Swiss cantons. They are not properly called the government, but are rather the administrators of government in the executive and judicial departments. Their powers are derived from the democratical part, and are subordinate to that part which is the sovereign alone, without any mixture, it should seem, of monarchy or aristocracy; as neither the Land-Amman, statthalter, proconsul, or senate has any share in the making of the laws, imposing of taxes, forming of alliances, declaring war, or making of peace, which powers are vested in the democracy alone, and constitute the sovereign of the state.

“The officers in these governments and the senate (which acts merely officially and ministerially) are no checks to the assembly of the people; but, on the contrary, are obliged to comply with and obey the democratic will expressed therein, as much as the bailiff or constable is obliged to do, and make no more a part of the sovereignty than does the lowest officer.

“If the various councils, committees, corporations, and officers, established for the public, or any particular service in subordinancy to the sovereign, are considered as checks to, or making a part of it, there is no such government in the world as pure monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, for there are councils, committees, &c. in all of them.

“Should, however, some of the Swiss cantons, particularly that of Glarus, be perfectly democratical, they are by no means models for the citizens of America. The forms of government which might maintain the peace and promote the happiness of those small districts, would be ineffectual to promote the happiness of the citizens of the United States, the extent of whose country, their temper, disposition to each other, eagerness for unlimited commerce, &c. require a different system.

“If the reflections on what regards the supreme power of sovereignty are well founded, they are applicable to several parts of this publication.”

S.

The remarks of the commentator are acute; but they seem hardly to do justice to the meaning, much less to confute the reasoning of the author. He assumes, as a basis, a proposition wholly at variance with that adopted at the outset of this work, and which would change the classification made of forms of government. It is not, and cannot be, from the mere formation of the sovereignty that a judgment can be made of the nature of a system; inasmuch as such a rule would resolve all governments derived from the popular will into simple democracies, no matter how much the powers may have been distributed. It moreover leaves no room for those mixed forms, in which many of the ancients and moderns perceive the greatest probability of duration and success.

The author, in his preliminary observations, takes a different point of departure. He assumes, as a rule of judging the nature of a government, the extent to which the sovereign power is exclusively reserved or generally distributed. Thus, his idea of a pure democracy is the sway of numbers acting directly upon every subject involving the common interest of a community. This is the only case in which the sovereignty is completely reserved to the people. Such a simple democracy he maintains to be impracticable; and, further, he denies that it can ever have existed.

As a consequence, the next step in his chain of reasoning, and one which his commentator appears to overlook, is, that the devolution of power to any man or body of men, having a recognized, independent, continuous existence for any period of time, is inconsistent with the idea of a simple democracy. “A simple democracy by representation,” he says, “is a contradiction in terms.” The same idea is more fully developed in the tenth number of the Federalist, written by Mr. Madison. It is laid down just as broadly by Filangieri:—

“Ma io demanderei a Polibio, che cosa intendera egli sotto il nome di democrazia semplice. Forse quella, nella quale il popolo è nel tempo istesso legislatore, magistrato, senato, giudice, condottiero dell’ esercito in tempo di guerra? Se questa era secondo lui una semplice democratia, l’esistensa di questa specie di governo è un imposibile politico.”

Power may, however, be distributed in two separate forms; one, that of mere delegation, where all discretion is reserved from the agent employed to do certain specific and commanded acts; the other, that of representation, in which a general trust is conferred to act for the best interests of those represented. It is the presence of the last form which makes the characteristic feature of a republic. In the United States much confusion of ideas prevails on this subject, which is the origin of a good deal of the party violence of the times. The true distinction is generally well laid down in the sixth chapter of the third part of Lord Brougham’s Political Philosophy, page 33.

It only remains in this connection to test the argument of the commentator by an appeal to the constitution of Glarus, upon which he rests for support. It appears that the general assembly or body of the people, in which the sovereignty resides, ordinarily meets only once a year. On the other hand, it elects the Amman, or chief executive magistrate, but twice in five years. Here is a clear grant of power for a long term. Next comes the senate or council, chosen annually, but not in the general assembly. The members represent the several smaller communities, organized upon a distribution of power differing from that centered in the mass. They exercise all the usual legislative, with some executive and judicial powers, subject, however, to a single restriction. Every law passed must be submitted for ratification to the general assembly. None can be proposed to the latter body, which has not been subjected to the ordeal of the senate at least a month beforehand, and upon which the sense of that body has not been taken. From all which, it is plain that great trusts, beyond that of mere agency, are necessarily created, subject only to the supervision of the people in their annual assembly. These must, in practice, materially limit the exercise of their sovereignty.

It would seem, then, to be clear, that the single fact of the democratic origin of power distributed in any form of government does not invalidate the position of the author, which excepts it from the scope of his definition of a simple democracy, where power is never supposed to go out of its hands. In truth, if a judgment were to be made of forms solely from their outward show, the most complete democracy among the Swiss republics would not seem to be Glarus. The reduction of power to its first elements, the township or local community, is carried further in the Grisons than anywhere else. The principle of representation is not acknowledged; inasmuch as every delegate to the diet is denied the right of exercising the smallest discretion, and is bound to act in every instance as the instructed agent of his employers. The age at which men vote is regulated in each community. In many it is fixed at fourteen years. The diet is a federal, rather than a representative assembly, in which the chief of each of the three leagues forming the confederacy presides in his turn. And these three chiefs, in conjunction with a commission of nine persons, equally selected from each league, constitute all of the executive power established.

There is nothing in appearance so democratic as this in any form adopted in the United States. Yet it is admitted that the practical working of the system is somewhat aristocratic. From whence it may be observed, that those who look at the mere theory of any government, without paying close attention to the modes of thought, the feelings, the manners, and the customs of a community, which do much the most to determine its character, will always be liable to commit great mistakes. Thus it is with the present instance in another remarkable particular. The strict jealousy of all delegated power shown among the Grisons would at first sight appear likely to secure the greatest degree of purity in all their agents. The fact is notorious, nevertheless, that the system is one of the most corrupt ever established. In some cases, the delegate has been known to buy his post, by a regular and specified payment of money to every voter. He, in his turn, sells his vote to some leading person at home, or to a government abroad. In this way, the Austrian government has heretofore exercised great sway over the canton, and directed its policy. The administration of justice, unfortunately, partakes of the corruption thus established in politics. Such an example would seem to furnish new arguments in support of the author’s theory of the necessity of balancing powers.

[1 ]The senate is now elected by the grand council, and is subject to annual confirmation.

The members of the great council are also subject to annual confirmation.

The operation of this is to make the will of the majority of the latter body almost absolute.

[1 ]The government of Bern, though extremely aristocratic in its character, seems until lately to have been satisfactory to the great mass of the people. The doctrines of the French revolution excited little sympathy, and the invasion which followed was resisted by the whole nation, although feebly seconded by the government itself. The old system was overturned by the French power, which imposed upon the people a new one. The people of Switzerland were ordered by General Brune, at the head of thirty thousand French troops, to enjoy a free government, “one and indivisible.” It was not until after the general settlement of Europe, in 1816, that any part of the old form was permanently reëstablished. Certain modifications were then introduced, all of them of a popular character, without materially changing the nature of the government. Yet, as they serve to show the progress of liberal principles, it may not be without use to point them out.

The right of citizenship in the town, carrying with it eligibility to the grand council, is opened to the citizens of the country.

The country is admitted to a share of the administration, being entitled to ninety-nine members of the grand council, the city retaining two hundred.

Of these ninety-nine members, the towns have the right of choosing seventeen. The election is made by the magistrates, and not by the people.

The country districts have the right of choosing seventy more. The election is made by electoral colleges, especially organized for the purpose, but not distinctly provided for in the constitution.

The remaining twelve are chosen by the grand council itself, on the nomination of the little council and the committee of sixteen. The motive assigned for this reservation is, “to equalize any disproportion of representation which may happen from the preceding division, as well as to consider persons who, either in public employments, in high military posts, or in scientific pursuits, may have distinguished themselves, and deserved well of their country.”

The two hundred members of the city are chosen by the little council and a committee of sixteen taken from the larger body. This smaller body forms a list of candidates over the age of twenty-five. At each vacancy, the eldest on this list is admitted. The qualifications are,—that he be over twenty-nine years of age, of good character, possessed of a certain amount of property, or have served the country five years.

In the course of the violent convulsions of the last century, the territory of Bern has undergone some change. It lost the northern part, which was joined to the canton of Aargau, and the southwestern part, or the Pays de Vaud, has been made into a new canton of that name. On the other hand, by the decree of the Congress of Vienna, a large part of the former bishopric of Basle was annexed to it, with the city and territory of Bienne.

[1 ]A Berne, il y a un exercice bien singulier pour les jeunes patriciens qui sortent du collége. C’est ce qu’on appelle l’état extérieur. C’est une copie en petit de tout ce qui compose le gouvernement de la république. Un sénat, des avoyers, des officiers, des huissiers, des orateurs, des causes, des jugemens, des solemnités. L’état extérieur a même un petit gouvernement et quelques rentes, et cette institution, autorisée et protégée par le souverain, est la pepinière des hommes d’état qui dirigeront un jour les affaires publiques dans les mêmes emplois qu’ils n’exercent d’abord que par jeu.” Rousseau, Considérations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne.

[1 ]The constitution of Soleure has undergone some change since this was written.

The grand council, or legislative body, chooses its own members, thirty-five out of the one hundred and one directly; of whom twenty-four must represent the city, and eleven for the country.

The remaining sixty-six are to be selected from a list of candidates, treble the number to be chosen, presented by an electoral college of fifteen, organized by lot for the purpose, in each of the respective tribes or districts to which the representation is apportioned.

The little council, or executive body, consists of twenty-one members, chosen from the larger body, and containing a part of it. One member must be taken for each of the eleven tribes of the city, four from the country, and the rest at large.

At intervals of eight years, a body of fifteen members is constituted by lot to decide the question, whether a new election of the little council shall take place. If a majority decide in the affirmative, their decision is then submitted to the grand council; and if two thirds of that assembly approve, they then proceed to a new election.

[1 ]The most important change made in the government is found in the abolition of all distinctions between the old and new burghers, and in the extension of the mutual privilege of gaining citizenship among the respective tribes in city and country.

The qualifications for election to the council are, that a man be twenty-four years of age; that he be dependent on no one for wages or bread; that he have a certain amount of property; and that he be a native or a citizen of ten years’ standing.

[1 ]The government of Lucerne has undergone changes, although none which materially alter the principle at its foundation. The most important is the extension of the right of election of members of the great council of one hundred, so that fifty are taken from the burghers of the city, and fifty from the country. Of these, thirty-one are chosen by the citizens of the respective towns or districts to which they are apportioned; the remaining sixty-nine are chosen by the council itself. They hold their places for life.

The smaller or daily council is composed of thirty-six members, at least ten of them from the country. They nominate persons to fill their own vacancies from members of the grand council, which nominations are confirmed by the latter body. They form a part of the greater council.

This daily council, with the two avoyers, constitute the acting body; but all laws prepared by it must be submitted to the larger body for ratification.

All elections are by ballot, and an absolute majority is necessary to make a choice.

The qualifications of voters are, that they be twenty years of age; have a small property; have suffered no infamous punishment; have made no insolvency injurious to creditors.

[1 ]The qualifications for the grand council are, over and above the preceding, the age of twenty-five; and, in default of the requisite property, some valuable service to the state.

A father and son, or two brothers, cannot be members of the daily council at the same time.

[1 ]The exclusive character of this system has been very much changed. The right of election is extended to the population of the whole canton, divided into sixty-five tribes, the number of representatives being apportioned, as nearly as possible, to the number of citizens. The city of Zurich chooses two for each of the thirteen tribes; the tribe of Winterthur chooses five; and each of the fifty-one remaining tribes chooses one. The grand council chooses the rest, one hundred and thirty in number.

[2 ]The senate now consists of only twenty-five chosen from and by the great council. The members of both bodies hold their places for six years, one third going out every two years.

There is, in addition, another council composed of the two burgomasters and of five members of the senate, elected by the grand council, which has the management of the foreign affairs.

[1 ]This organization is done away by the constitution adopted in 1814. A provision is therein made for a revision by the two bodies once in twelve years.

A material omission in this account is, that the councils were elective. Since this was written, however, a great change has taken place.

The canton is now divided into twenty-four tribes, of which twelve are of the city and twelve of the country.

Burghers and their sons of age are entitled to vote in the city, and all over twenty in the country.

The great council is composed of seventy-four members. Each tribe of the city chooses four, the town of Stein four, and each of the tribes in the country two.

The little council is composed of twenty-four members. They make a part of the grand council, and are chosen one by each of the city tribes and by the town of Stein, making one of the four already enumerated in the grand council; the country members of the grand council select five more from among themselves, and the grand council in like manner elects the remaining six. They serve four years.

The burgomasters are elected by the grand council from the members of the little council.

[1 ]By the act of the congress of Vienna, the city and territory of Bienne was annexed and made a part of the canton of Bern.

[1 ]By the act of the congress of Vienna, St. Gall was constituted a canton, and its constitution confirmed. By this constitution the territory was divided into eight districts and subdivided into forty-four circles.

The grand council consists of one hundred and fifty members, of whom eighty-four are of the catholic, and sixty-six of the reformed faith. They serve for three years, one third going out every year. One hundred of the number are chosen by the people, fifty-one directly, forty-nine through the intervention of electoral colleges; the remaining fifty are selected by the council itself from a triple list of candidates nominated by a special board.

The little council consists of nine members of the great council, elected by that body to serve for nine years, one third going out every three years.

Two persons, one a catholic, the other a protestant, are chosen biennially from the little council to serve as Land-Ammans. They preside in the councils.

It is proper to add, that since the revolution of 1830, in France, many of the aristocratic forms in Switzerland have been impaired, if not entirely overturned. But the great topic of interest has been a proposed modification of the federal system, which, if adopted, would materially affect the independence of the smaller cantons. This does not, however, come within the scope of the present work.

[* ]Let me add here, that the facts relating to the Swiss cantons and their environs, are taken from Quarante Tables Politiques de la Suisse, par C. E. Faber, Bernois, Pasteur à Bishviller, in 1746; with some additional observations from the beautiful Sketches of Mr. Coxe, which are as instructive as they are entertaining.

[* ]To prove this, I need only refer to the Historical and Political View of the Constitution and Revolutions of Geneva in the Eighteenth Century, by F. D’Ivernois.

[1 ]The French revolution, which broke out not long after the composition of these volumes, swept over Switzerland, overturning much of the old system, and introducing new features, which have not yet acquired a great share of stability. Napoleon remodelled the forms of government of all the different cantons, consulting the advantage of the people far more than their prejudices. The consequence was, that, with the fall of his power, his system ceased to have any support. Yet one fundamental change has survived all the conflicts and shocks of the last half century. The act of mediation decreed in 1803, that “there should be no longer, in Switzerland, any subject countries, nor special privileges of place or of birth, of persons or of families”; and the subsequent congress of the allied sovereigns at Vienna, in the reestablishment of the various powers of Europe, acknowledged this principle in Switzerland, by organizing some of those subject countries as new cantons, with constitutions partaking of the general character of all the rest.

The purpose of the author, in reviewing these forms of government in Switzerland, seems to have been to try them by his standard of a well-balanced system. To this end, it was not necessary to extend his observation to the federal relation among the cantons, in some respects assimilating itself, however imperfectly, to that which binds together the United States. It is the organic, and not the superinduced structure, to which he confines his attention. Viewed in this light, the history of the Swiss, during the period since this book was written, indicates movement in a favorable direction. The most marked defect, however, still remains in almost undiminished force; the concentration of all power in the legislative body, by uniting with it the executive department, and retaining the principle of self-election closely in its hands.

Geneva, for example, which, up to 1782, had been gradually losing its republican, and acquiring a fixed aristocratic character, under the shock of the French revolution, has since been moving in an opposite direction. The constitution adopted in 1816 declares, in so many words, that “all Genevans are equal before the law.”

The grand council, or legislative body, is composed of two hundred and fifty members, together with the syndics and the council of state, who make twenty-eight more. The former are chosen by all persons over twenty-five years old, who pay a specified amount in direct taxes. The clergy, the members of the university, and other establishments of education, are entitled to vote without regard to taxes. The mode of election is complicate. Thirty of the body go out every year, and are not reeligible in that year.

The council of state, or executive department, is filled by the votes of the grand council, and from its own members. Those not in by virtue of holding certain offices, as syndics, &c., are chosen for life, subject, however, to the scrutiny called grabeau, which may be entered into once a year by the larger body, on the requisition of one more than half, or a hundred and twenty-six. If demanded, each individual is subjected to the test of a vote; and in case the number specified are found to be against him, he is obliged to vacate his seat, and return to the larger body. Four syndics are chosen annually by ballot from the grand council.

It is obvious that the whole power centres in a majority of the greater assembly. Rousseau remarked very justly of the system,—“Le corps chargé de l’exécution de vos loix en est l’interprète et l’arbitre suprême; il les fait parler comme il lui plaît; il peut les faire taire; il peut même les violer sans que vous puissiez y mettre ordre; il est au dessus des loix.”

[1 ]By the act of the Congress of Vienna, Lucca was granted to the Infanta Maria Louisa, with the title of a duchy, and with complete sovereignty. In case of the extinction of her family, it was to be united to Tuscany.

[1 ]The government was finally overturned, in 1799, by the armies of France. Genoa was granted by the allies, at Vienna, to the King of Sardinia, with certain conditions.

[2 ]The republic ceased to exist in 1798.

[1 ]Les historiens vénitiens se sont fait un point d’honneur de prouver que, par ce changement, Venise n’avait perdu ni son titre de république, ni sa liberté. Ceci ne serait qu’une dispute de mots. Qui gouverne seul est un monarque; la liberté n’est pas impossible dans la monarchie, ni la tyrannie dans la république. Venise elle-même nous fournira l’un et l’autre exemple. Daru, Histoire de la République de Venise, vol. i. p. 50.

[2 ]Out of fifty successively exercising the powers of this office during this period, five were massacred, nine deposed, five of whom were banished with deprivation of sight, five voluntarily abdicated, and one was killed in foreign war.

[3 ]Piero Candiano. See Daru, Hist. de Venise, vol. i. pp. 104-107.

[1 ]“Quant aux attributions de ce conseil, il est probable qu’on ne les considéra d’abord que comme une délégation de l’assemblée générale, et que toute l’autorité du sénat s’établit par prescription.” Daru, Hist. de Vénise.

[2 ]This most important modification of the system deserves a little more notice. Count Daru describes it thus:—

“Les assemblees sont sujettes à se laisser entraîner par la passion au-delà des formes ou des lois existantes; on sentit la nécessité d’un pouvoir régulateur ou modérateur, qui réclamât, dans l’interêt des lois, même devant l’autorité suprême. On créa, sous le nom d’avogadors, trois magistrats, pour représenter la partie publique, non seulement dans les délibérations sur les affaires de l’état, mais encore dans les causes des particuliers. Devant les tribunaux, ils réglaient la compétence, ils défendaient les interets publics dans les affaires civiles, et poursuivaient l’accusation dans les affaires criminelles. Devant les conseils, ils requéraient la constante observation des lois et des formes, ils s’opposaient à la publication des ordonnances qui y étaient contraires. La présence de l’un deux au moins était nécessaire, pour la validité des délibérations du grand conseil et du sénat; ils étaient dépositaires de tous les actes de la législation; ils poursuivaient le paiement des amendes pécuniaires auxquelles les fonctionnaires pouvaient être condamnés. Enfin, rélativement aux magistrats, leur pouvoir s’étendait jusqu’à mettre opposition à la prise de possession des charges, lorsque ceux qui y avaient été nommés, étaient susceptibles de quelque reproche.” Daru, vol. i. pp. 257-8.

These officers were further clothed with a power of veto upon the action of all the other powers in the state, which lasted for one month and a day, and could be renewed three times.

[1 ]This singularly complicated mode of election lasted for five centuries and a half.

[1 ]“Cette institution offre une particularité rémarquable sous un autre rapport. En même temps qu’on donnait au grand-chancelier la prééminence sur les membres de tous les conseils excepté les conseillers du doge et les procurateurs de Saint-Marc, on réglait que le titulaire de cette dignite serait toujours choisi dans le corps des secrétaires. Or les secrétaires n’étaient pas tirés des familles nobles, mais de la bourgeoisie, qu’on appelait à Venise la citadinance. Daru.

[1 ]Daru, in his history, assigns the year 1454 as the true date of this tribunal.

[2 ]In specified cases. There were other cases in which the power given was more limited. The patricians could not be condemned to death by this tribunal, nor by the council of ten.

[3 ]Any one of them might order the arrest and imprisonment of whom he pleased.

“A Venise le peuple l’appelle communément, le tribunal suprême, ou les trois d’en haut (i tre de sora), en baissant les yeux, et élévant un doigt vers le ciel, quand il en parle, comme pour indiquer une divinité terrible, et toute puissante, où qui au moins n’a de supérieur, que dans le ciel, (qui non habet ultorem nisi Deum).” Mémoires Historiques et Politiques sur la République de Venise, 1795, pt. i. p. 87.

[1 ]‘De tous les gouvernemens de l’Europe, celui de Venise était seul réglé, stable, et uniforme. Il n’avait qu’un vice radical qui n’en était pas un aux yeux du sénat; c’est qu’il manquait un contre-poids à la puissance patricienne, et un encouragement aux plébéiens. Le mérite ne put jamais dans Venise élever un simple citoyen.” Voltaire.

[2 ]“Rex in purpurâ, senator in curiâ, in urbe captivus, extra urbem privatus.”

[1 ]The storm which raged all over Europe carried with it the remnants of the once haughty and formidable aristocracy of Venice. By the act of the Congress of Vienna, Venice was transferred to Austria, which, on the twenty-fourth of April, 1815, promulgated a constitution for what was denominated the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Of this the Milanese made one part, and the Venetian territory the other. Its principal feature consists in what are called congregations. These are of two kinds, the central and the provincial. The central congregation is composed of nobles, of land owners not noble, and of representatives of royal towns. Each province sends one noble and one not noble. They are selected by the Austrian sovereign from lists of three candidates named by the corporate authorities. They serve for six years; one half go out every three years. The provincial congregation is composed in much the same way. The powers of both these bodies are merely advisory. In truth, it is the shadow of a popular form, whilst the substantial power is retained in the hands of the sovereign.

[1 ]The government of Holland grew out of the immediate necessities of the heroic struggle with the power of Spain. It never could be presented as a model for imitation by any people. It was a singular combination of corporation and aristocratic influence with the federal principle. The author had good reasons for avoiding at the moment of publication any analysis of the system, which was then crumbling, and has been since swept completely away. The present government is constructed somewhat, though not entirely, upon the principles advocated in this work. The executive power is vested in one person. The legislative department consists of two bodies,—one of one hundred and ten deputies, and the other of not less than forty. The former are elected by the states; one third go out yearly. The latter are appointed by the king, and serve for life. The system has worked sufficiently well thus far to resist the pressure which is again heaving the social foundations of Europe.

[1 ]They have, to a certain extent, already done so by the reform bill of 1830.

[2 ]“This negative was an innovation on the true limited constitution, and, therefore, the Americans have been prudent in not trusting it with any executive power.”

The negative thus spoken of has practically become a nullity in the British constitution. The author, in his opinion, does but carry out his idea as developed in his draught of the constitution of Massachusetts. See p. 231. Even the qualified negative accorded to the executive head, by the constitution of the United States, has excited some disapprobation in its exercise; yet it has always been resorted to by those who claim the most closely to adhere to popular principles.

[1 ]“If the Americans preserve this most valuable right of electing officers in the militia, they will preserve a fundamental right of the English constitution. It is the only true means of preserving popular liberty, and of rendering the commons respectable. It is the true antidote to standing armies.”

S.

This was another modification of the system of the author, as presented in his draught of the constitution of Massachusetts. See p. 249.

[2 ]This would seem to be stated with sufficient distinctness; yet the author was for many years charged in the United States with favoring the very provision which he condemns.

[3 ]The land.

[4 ]“A true agrarian law is, therefore, highly necessary to be established in due time to limit the greedy monopolizers, and to invest the unoccupied lands in the community at large.”

S.

The preceding is the natural view of a resident of Great Britain.

It would be difficult to predict the period when the lands of the United States will get into few hands. The tendency of the laws of inheritance is perpetually to distribute and to subdivide whatever portion of land acquires any great market value. The remainder is not worth monopolizing.

[1 ]Much of the following account is abridged from, where it is not in the very words of Coxe. Travels into Poland, Russia, &c., vol. i. chapter 1.

[1 ]“This can never happen while the people preserve their natural right of electing their own heads, or militia officers; for this will always enable them to suppress every insurrection and partial violence, to redress every grievance without any dangerous struggles or commotions, and to withhold from any other power, but their own general assembly, the ability of opposing their will by a negative.”

S.

[1 ]“The danger of a negative on the proceedings of a great national council.”

S.

[1 ]“La république de Pologne, a t’on souvent dit et répété, est composée de trois ordres; l’ordre équestre, le sénat, et le roi. J’aimerois mieux dire que la nation Polonaise est composée de trois ordres; les nobles, qui sont tout; les bourgeois, qui ne sont rien; et les paysans, qui sont moins que rien.”

Rousseau, Cons. sur le Gouvernement de la Pologne.

[1 ]This was the name given to the government of Massachusetts by a formal vote of the convention. See p. 215.

[1 ]Oeuvres du Philosophe Bienfaisant, tome iii. p. 2.

The extracts are not made continuously, but only of such paragraphs as are most to the point.

[1 ]“But unhappily they did not elect their own officers and magistrates, and therefore could not put a negative on any the most atrocious tyranny and violence.”

S.

[2 ]“ ‘Gentleman;’ rather a landowner, to avoid, in this case, a strange perversion of the word gentleman!”

S.

[1 ]“Les écrivains les plus éloquens, les plus savans publicistes, ont démontré les vices de la constitution de Pologne, ont indiqué les moyens de les corriger; mais les baionettes Russes, Autrichiennes, et Prussiennes n’ont pas laissé le temps d’éprouver l’effet des innovations proposées; elles ont rendu le repos à la nation Polonaise, en lui ôtant l’existence.” Précis de l’Histoire du Gouvernement de Pologne; Collection des Constitutions, etc., par MM. Dufau, etc., tome iv. p. 24.

Since this was written, the second partition has wiped Poland out of the list of independent nations. At the very same period that the constitution of the United States was formed, a new frame of government was maturing in Poland, designed to remedy the great evils under which the country had suffered from an unbalanced system. The constitution of 1791, in its leading features, seemed well calculated to answer this purpose. It made the crown hereditary in a family, thus endeavoring to correct the ill effects resulting from the old mode of election; it abolished the liberum veto of the diet, substituting a legislative department of two branches, according to the common form. But it rather opened a futurity to the popular will, than acknowledged its sovereign power; and could thus be considered more as a step in advance towards liberal institutions than as a really free government itself. But even this was probably the cause of its immediate destruction.

Catherine II., alarmed at the spread of the principles of the French revolution, deemed it all-important to prevent them from taking root in Poland. She first corrupted the system, and then she sent her forces into that country to crush all sincere opposition. In 1797, the final treaty was made between the three great powers of eastern Europe, which established the complete triumph of force over the will of a nation of eight millions of people.

Two observations naturally suggest themselves in reading the history of Poland. The one is, that no form of written constitution, however good it may be in itself, can ever be expected to avail, if it do not reflect the character and principles of the community that adopts it. This is the cause of the general failure of written forms in Europe and America. In all cases, they have been the work of a few minds acting without the circle of the national sympathies. The consequence has been, that the smallest agitation of public sentiment adverse to it has brought the whole of their labors to nought.

The other remark is, that much of the favorable working of a form of government, or the opposite, may be traced to circumstances having no necessary connection with its intrinsic excellence. The Polish constitution of 1791 was immediately overthrown by the interference of neighboring powers interested to destroy it. The constitution of the United States has survived until now, and bids fair to last yet longer. But, if we could for a moment suppose the geographical position of the two countries to have been exactly changed, looking back at the nature of the political controversies which agitated America for many years, it is at least open to question, whether as marked disorders would not have been developed under the constitution of the United States, as were ever found in the worst of times in Poland.

[1 ]Neuchatel is now one of the twenty-two cantons of the Helvetic confederacy. Its form of local constitution has not been, however, materially changed. The King of Prussia ceded it, in 1806, to Napoleon, who made out of it a principality for one of his officers, Maréchal Berthier. In 1814, the sovereignty was restored, by the peace of Paris, to the King of Prussia; but in the next year, by the act of the congress of Vienna, the canton was recognized as one of three new ones joined to the confederation of Switzerland.

[* ]Liv. lib. iii. c. 63.

[* ]Pye’s Poems, vol. i. p. 154, 155.

[† ]Otway’s Fall of Marius, act i. sc. 1.

[1 ]“Would that it had constantly been refused! A standing army is dangerous in any hands! Even if the people had preserved their share in the legislature, a standing army in their pay would be inexpedient and dangerous.”

S.

[* ]“A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome, with the Consequences they had upon both those States.”

Much of the substance of this, the best of all the political tracts of Dean Swift, is given in the text.

[† ]Fragm. lib. vi.

[1 ]“It was the throne of the dragon, that is, of the devil and his angels, whose dominion was permitted by the Almighty, and foretold by his prophets.”

S.

[1 ]“The answer of Dr. Franklin is oracular; that is to say, is ambiguous. It may be taken both ways, like the oracles of old.”

S.

Dr. Franklin’s marked characteristic was caution. The only inference that can be drawn from this declaration is to be obtained from the decision of the assembly. Since the publication of his Writings, however, there can be no doubt of his opinion. See Sparks’s Franklin, vol. i. p. 409, vol. v. p. 165, vol. x. pp. 345, 361.

[1 ]The late election of a president in France, by the popular vote, will occur as a striking illustration of the force of these observations.

[1 ]This is an allusion to the massacre of Stockholm, committed by Christian II., denominated the Nero of the North.

[1 ]“If this means the appointment to offices, it is not advisable any more than the negative.”

S.

[1 ]“But future conduct may give just cause of suspicion; and, therefore, the representative, (according to the English constitution in its purity,) was elected only for a single session, the cause of which, if novel, was expressed in the election writs; and the representative had no right to determine in any new device, without consulting his constituents. These are the proper checks to aristocracy.”

S.

[1 ]Politicaster, scene 2.

[* ]Οἱ πλεῖστοι χαχόι. The majority are wicked. Bias. (J. A.)

The notes marked with the author’s initials have been found written in the margin of his copy.

[* ]Hooker’s Ecc. Pol. lib. i. ss. 1; Ibid. ss. 10.

“Laws politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience unto the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions that they be no hindrance unto the common good for which societies are instituted; unless they do this, they are not perfect.”

[* ]
- “Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself
- That hideous sight, a naked human heart.”
- Night Thoughts. Narcissa. (J. A.)
[1 ]So great is the depravity of the human heart, that ministers, who only can know it, are in charity to mankind bound to keep it a secret, &c. (J. A.)

[* ]Book i. c. 2.

[* ]See Blainville’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 227; Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy.

[† ]Book 11, c. vi.

[* ]Prerogative of Popular Government, c. iii. p. 226.

[1 ]
- Τιμοϰϱατία,
- Ἥ τε ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἐπαινουμένη.
- “That which is praised by many.”
[2 ]
- Συχνῶν γέμουσα ϰαϰῶν.
- “Full of many evils.”
[1 ]Here are slight errors. The barony was a geographical division, and not a title. There were no barons in Mr. Locke’s plan; and the landgraves had forty-eight, and not eighty, thousand acres assigned them.

[* ]“It cannot be imagined that Mr. Locke considered this as the best plan of government, but that he was employed to lay out a plan of legislation, and was under the necessity of forming such a one as would best suit the oligarchical views of the proprietors. A similar plan was formed by the late Lord Egmont for the settling the island of St. John, by which his nobles had almost an arbitrary power of punishing their dependents. And this being made by his lordship an inducement to an acquaintance of mine to go thither and carry with him a number of settlers, he answered that he had not, for his own part, any objection in possessing the power of whipping and scourging those who might be under him, but he doubted whether he should be able to get anybody to submit to it.”

H.

[* ]“Not less frequently than for every session.”

[1 ]“Why the county members should be abolished is not easy to say.”

S.

“The patriotic party which attempted to reform the constitution, thought the county members ought to be increased, and not abolished.”

H.

The preceding comments are illustrative of the difference which exists between the English and American way of viewing similar questions. To the former, the county representation is indicative of the popular sentiment. To the latter, it signifies an unequal rule of representation. That this is the reason of the author’s objection is plain, from his proposal of a substitute, in “representatives proportionally chosen,” &c.

[1 ]Yet it seems clear that he discriminated in the moral nature of offences.

“The few fragments of the Draconian tables which have reached us, far from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first time, into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to homicide; founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances.” Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 102.

It is difficult also to account for the popularity the author of so unpopular a system is reputed to have enjoyed till his death.

[1 ]The extent to which he went in his interference between the debtor and creditor, is a subject which, like almost every other connected with these times, has been much disputed. But the better opinion is, that the statement in the text is below the truth. He diminished the weight of the money of account more than a quarter part, and probably annulled, directly or indirectly, the mortgages on all lands. It may be doubted whether any more radical measure was ever adopted in legislation.

[1 ]This subject has been since very carefully examined by Boeckh, in his work on The Public Economy of Athens, and he makes the number of citizens of Attica twenty thousand, in a population of half a million. Clinton comes to the same result. Fast. Hell. vol. ii. appendix, p. 477.

There are about the same number of citizens at this time, 1851, in Boston, with a population of one hundred and forty thousand; and the proportion is smaller there than in other parts of Massachusetts, and the free States generally.

[1 ]The precise manner in which this body was formed is not clearly understood, and it has therefore given rise to much discussion. Niebuhr and some later writers maintain that the four Ionic tribes were exclusively of the class of Eupatridæ, in which case, the senate must have been purely aristocratic, and made still more so by the property qualifications superinduced by Solon. The weight of authority must be conceded to be against this construction. But, whether this be correct or not, the effect of an exclusive distinction granted to a well-defined portion of the community was very certainly in the end to create, if it did not merely confirm, an aristocracy. To form an idea of the effect of it, we have only to imagine what would now be the case had a similar exception been made in favor of the first Puritan families of Massachusetts, or of the Dutch race in New York, or of the Quakers in Pennsylvania. That this must have been a consequence at Athens is clear, from the fact, that one of the first steps taken by Cleisthenes, the real founder of the democracy, was to do away with the confined division of the Ionic tribes, and to form the more extended one mentioned in the text, by which the nature of the senate was completely altered, and it was subjected to popular influences.

[1 ]Mr. Grote, in his late work on Greece, assigns a different cause for this regulation,—the necessity of bringing such disturbances to an end as soon as possible, by the active interposition of the whole community.

[1 ]Many writers consider this court as one of the conservative checks upon the popular will devised by Solon. In fact, it became the lever by which to shake the whole system. It is scarcely possibly that a sagacious lawgiver could have made so great a mistake. The probability would seem to favor the idea, founded on the language of Aristotle, that Cleisthenes made some changes in the formation of the court which let in the democratic influence.

[1 ]This statement depends upon authority comparatively modern, and somewhat questionable.

[1 ]The tendency among modern scholars who have pursued their investigations into the nature of the institutions of Greece with extraordinary industry, is to consider Cleisthenes as the real author of the democratic system of ancient Athens. He scarcely could have been a man of “no great abilities.”

Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 186.

[1 ]This is declared by Wachsmuth not to be sustained by any authority, as it certainly conflicts with the statement made a few pages back, (p. 480,) that they were chosen by lot. Dr. Thirlwall, on the other hand, maintains that they were elected. The truth is, that very little is known of the constitution of Solon’s senate. Wachsmuth, Historical Antiquities of the Greeks, translated by E. Woolrych, vol. i. p. 378; Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 42.

[1 ]Mr. Grote’s defence of the ostracism as a conservative feature of the government, on the grounds recited in the text, is deserving of consideration on account of its ingenuity, even if it do not create entire conviction of its soundness.

History of Greece, vol. iii. pp. 200-215.

[1 ]“There was no want, at Athens, of well-conceived and strict regulations; but what is the use of provident measures, where the spirit of the administration is bad? Men have at all times been unjust, and covetous, and unprincipled, and above all, the Greeks distinguished themselves for the uncontrolled gratification of their own desires, and their contempt for the happiness of others. If any competent judge of moral actions will contemplate their character without prejudice, and unbiased by their high intellectual endowments, he will find that their private life was unstable, and devoid of virtue; that their public life was a tissue of restless intrigues and passions; and, what was the worst of all, that there existed, to a far greater degree than in the Christian world, a want of moral principle, and a harshness and cruelty in the popular mind. The display of noble actions, it is true, has ceased, and will never re-appear with the same brilliancy; but the principles of the majority of mankind have been elevated, even if we allow that some distinguished individuals in ancient times were as pure as the most exalted characters in modern days; and in this general elevation consists the progress of mankind.” Boeckh’s Public Economy of Athens, translated by Lewis, p. 194.

[1 ]Polybius, vol. i. b. 2, translated by Sir H. S.

[1 ]“In the same manner, numerical divisions of the people connect and unite the whole, each smaller part being restrained and awed by a larger, and the whole by the resolution of the general assembly.” S.

[2 ]“A noble character of the patriot Aratus.” S.

[* ]“But this had not then an odious meaning.” S.

[† ]On Government, l. 5, c. 12.

[* ]Lib. vi.

[* ]Lib. xii. p. 6.

[1 ]The following pages contain a summary of the first book of Adam Ferguson’s History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, accompanied, however, with a running commentary, as usual, which it is difficult without collation to distinguish from the text.

During the last half century, the industry of scholars in investigating the nature and origin of the Roman government has been unwearied; and so much progress has been made, that Dr. Ferguson’s work now seems but a superficial production. Nevertheless, much yet remains to be done fully to elucidate the difficulties under which the subject labors. It is to be regretted that the author’s analysis of this, the most extensive and successful republican experiment ever made, should not have been more complete.

[2 ]“The affirmative is as difficult of proof as the negative.” H.

[* ]This alludes to the following sentiment of Dr. Ferguson, which is not cited in the text.

“This singular constitution will appear to possess at least one of the highest political advantages, in being the most excellent nursery of statesmen and warriors, and in forming the most conspicuous example of national ability and success.”

[1 ]It is a common trick of parties to assail the motives of formidable opponents, in order to weaken their influence, if not to destroy them entirely. The result proves that the measure of Cassius was felt to be reasonable, even though he was himself sacrificed as the advocate of it. Yet it is not uncommon among popular men to push good measures from bad reasons.

The course of modern criticism has been to doubt the correctness of many of the judgments passed upon men in the ancient republics, but it can do no more than doubt. In high party times, a vanquished reformer is most likely to be branded by the victors as an incendiary and a demagogue, as on the other hand a conservative statesman, when overthrown, is liable to be handed down as unfaithful to popular government. And these judgments are made up under excitement, which leaves no room for an analysis of the merits of the questions put at issue. It is not unlikely that the best critics of ancient politics in Greece and Rome, may yet be found hereafter among the statesmen active in the struggles of America.

[1 ]It is difficult at all times to analyze the springs of popular movements. Multitudes are necessarily subject to an infinite diversity of impulses, the precise extent of each of which cannot be defined. But there is no reason in this case to suppose that the love of justice and the spirit of liberty did not animate the same breasts in which the other motive had its play. The desire for victory is an inevitable attendant upon eager contention for even the best object.

[1 ]It is hardly reasonable in a historian of a popular government to suppose that these labors are all confined to one party.

[1 ]Something akin to this is expressed by Niebuhr:—

“Instead of relieving the distress, the patricians obstinately insisted on their rights, and thus arose a contest between beneficent ambition on the one hand, and the most stubborn oligarchy on the other. The natural consequence was, a very general feeling that any change would be better than such a government; and that Manlius, as a usurper, might be as useful as many a Greek tyrant. This state of things undoubtedly became very dangerous. When a government is in a bad course, and unwilling to retrace its steps, it drives men to sin, and has much to answer for before God and man.” Lectures on the History of Rome, edited by Dr. L. Schmitz, vol. i. p. 280.

The adoption of the Licinian laws seems to have been the popular reversal of the patrician verdict against Manlius. Some further comments on his case are made in the concluding chapter of this work.

[1 ]The author leaves us here without clearly defining the points in the Roman system in which the balance was defective. His observations on the same subject, scattered in the last chapter of the work, are more forcible than this analysis. Some valuable reflections upon the subject have been supplied by Lord Brougham, in his Political Philosophy, part ii. ch. 13, and others are to be found scattered in the pages of Niebuhr and Dr. Arnold; but a thoroughly republican and philosophical history, written by one familiar with all the phases of a popular government, remains yet to be written.

[1 ]Upon this relation, as well as the story of the early kings, much has been written of late years, calculated to throw doubt upon former impressions, but not to substitute entirely clear ideas.

[1 ]“Deinde equitum magno numero ex omni populi summa separato, reliquum populum distribuit in quinque classes, senioresque a junioribus divisit; eosque ita disparavit, ut suffragia non in multitudinis sed in locupletium potestate essent; curavitque, quod semper in republica tenendum est, ne plurimum valeant plurimi.” Cicero, De Rep. ii. 22.

[* ]Herodotus.

[* ]“No authority for this ‘perhaps.’ ” S.

[1 ]“That opinion is continually gaining ground, which in the main regards Lycurgus as the regulator of existing institutions, and in particular instances only, as the author of original laws.” Wachsmuth, Historical Antiq. of the Greeks, vol. i. p. 322.

[1 ]“Sur la forme des gouvernemens, et quelle en est la meilleure?”

This dissertation was read at Berlin, on the twenty-ninth of January, 1784, the sixty-third anniversary of the birthday of Frederic II. Of course, as Baron Hertzberg was the King’s minister, it is not surprising that he proceeds to assume the government of Prussia to be one of the best in the world, and one “which will serve as a model for princes and for centuries to come.”

The main proposition is, that “a hereditary monarchy, tempered by good fundamental laws, adapted to the situation of a country and the character of a nation, is that form of government best fitted to create and to perfect the happiness of men, of societies, and of nations.”

There is no attempt made in it to show the nature of the foundation upon which the laws, tempering the absolute power of such a sovereign as Frederic II., are to rest. Neither is the texture of the argument, in support of his proposition, much stronger than is that of an ordinary oration, delivered on the fourth of July, in America, in favor of a republic. Eulogy is equally the purpose of both.

[* ]History of England, chap. lxxi. Concluding Observations.

[† ]The facts here given relative to Venice, are taken from the Abbé Laugier and Moore’s Travels; those relative to the ancient republics, excepting the authorities already quoted, are taken from Robertson, Montagu, Potter, the Universal History, and especially from Mitford, Gillies, and Ferguson, three very valuable and elegant productions, which deserve to be carefully studied by all America. I have made free use of their expressions as well as reflections, without noting them.

[The enumeration of these authorities will prove to most students of the present day only a landmark of progress in the knowledge of ancient history; a field in which the Germans have most particularly distinguished themselves during the present century. Ed.]

[* ]There cannot be a stronger proof than this, that the monarchy was of the most absolute kind, that it was indeed a simple despotism; and Tacitus himself gives the explanation of it, in his account of the origin of this kind of slavery: “Aleam sobrii inter seria exercent, tanta lucrandi perdendive temeritate, ut, cum omnia defecerunt, extremo ac novissimo jactu, de libertate et de corpore contendant. Victus voluntariam servitutem adit; quamvis junior, quamvis robustior, alligari se ac venire patitur. Ea est in re pravà pervicacia; ipsi fidem vocant. Servos conditionis hujus per commercia tradunt, ut se quoque pudore victoriæ exsolvant.

“Libertini non multum supra servos sunt, rarò aliquod momentum in domo, nunquam in civitate, exceptis duntaxat iis gentibus quæ regnantur,” &c. If in these nations those freedmen, who were nothing in the others, neither in the family or the state, were held in more estimation and advanced to more power than the citizens, even than the nobles, these kings must have been despots in the strictest sense of the word; otherwise, neither nobles nor people would have suffered the indignity. Tacitus, Germania, c. xxv.

[1 ]“But then it could not be ‘penes plebem arbitrium,’ for this proves that the business was still according to the people’s will, after the great men or principes had debated the matter. The princes had a right to advise, but not to determine for the people; for the arbitrium was penes plebem, in the people’s own power.”

S.

[1 ]“Not ‘were taken,’ nor ‘were chosen,’ for the verb is active, not passive, and must, therefore, have a very different construction; so that the nobilitas here mentioned must mean mental nobility, or personal virtue and honor; and not hereditary honor.” S.

This is not the construction of Montesquieu, who says in reference to the same passage,—

“Tacite dit que dans le choix de leur roi ils se déterminoient par sa noblesse et dans le choix de leur chef par sa vertu. Voilà les rois de la première race et les maires du palais; les premièrs étoient héréditaires, les seconds étoient électifs.” De l’Esprit des Loix, livre 31, c. iv.

A remarkable instance of the sense attached to the word by Tacitus, is found in the sixth book of his Annals, where, speaking of Manius Lepidus, he says,—

“Neque nobilitas diutiùs demonstranda est; quippe Æmilium genus fecundum bonorum civium, et qui eâdem familià corruptis moribus, illustri tamen fortunà egêre.”

[2 ]“The word hierarchy seems improperly applied in this place; but with respect to the supposed hereditary nobility or dukes of those times, the preceding Latin quotation proves a contrary doctrine; the duces surely were not dukes, that is, not hereditary titled dukes, but mere leaders, by the example of their valor, rather than their authority.” S.

[1 ]“And the counts have as little foundation as the dukes. The comites and comitatus mean here the whole body of companions, or the whole band or company of each leader. See the next page, which shows the sense of comitatus, and p. 565 shows the sense of comites.”

S.

Mr. Hallam has examined this subject with his usual fidelity, and expresses what is probably the correct meaning of the word:—

“There has been some dispute about the origin of nobility in France, which might perhaps be settled, or at least better understood, by fixing our conception of the term. In our modern acceptation, it is usually taken to imply certain distinctive privileges in the political order, inherent in the blood of the possessor, and, consequently, not transferable like those which property confers. Limited to this sense, nobility, I conceive, was unknown to the conquerors of Gaul, till long after the downfall of the Roman empire. They felt no doubt the common prejudice of mankind in favor of those whose ancestry is conspicuous, when compared with persons of obscure birth. Though I do not think that the tribes of German origin paid so much regard to genealogy as some Scandinavian and Celtic nations, there are abundant traces of the respect in which families of known antiquity were held among them.”

And further on,—

“Although in the lapse of four centuries between the ages of Tacitus and Clovis, some change may have been wrought by long intercourse with the Romans, yet the foundations of their political system were unshaken.

“The kingdom of Clovis was divided into a number of districts, each under the government of a count, a name familiar to Roman subjects, by which they rendered the graf of the Germans. The authority of this officer extended over all the inhabitants, as well Franks as natives. It was his duty to administer justice, to preserve tranquillity, to collect the revenues, and to lead, when required, the free proprietors into the field. The title of a duke implied a higher dignity, and commonly gave authority over several counties. These offices were originally conferred during pleasure; but the claims of a son to succeed his father would often be found too plausible or too formidable to be rejected; and it is highly probable that, even under the Merovingian kings, those provincial governors had laid the foundations of that independence which was destined to change the countenance of Europe.”

To which Mr. Hallam appends the following as part of a note:—

“That the offices of count and duke were originally but temporary, may be inferred from several passages in Gregory of Tours; as l. v. c. 37, l. viii. c. 18. But it seems by the Laws of the Alemanni, c. 35, that the hereditary succession of their dukes was tolerably established at the beginning of the seventh century, when their code was promulgated. The Bavarians chose their own dukes out of one family, as is declared in their laws; tit. 11, c. i. and c. xx. &c. &c.

View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, part ii. chapter i.

[1 ]“On the contrary, the text declares that they are not summoned at all.”

S.

[2 ]“The comites mentioned in the preceding page were equally commoners, or else he might as well have deemed these counts.” S.

That there was a difference between the offices referred to appears clear, from the Laws of the Alemanni tit. xxxvi. leg. 1. “Conventus secundum antiquam consuetudinem fiat in omni centenâ coram comite, aut suo misso, et coram centenario ipsum placitum fiat.”

Tit. xxxvi. leg. 2. “Ipsum placitum fiat de sabbato in sabbatum, aut quali die comes, aut centenarius voluerit.” See Brotier’s note to the twelfth chapter of Tacitus on the Germans.

[* ]Od. vii. 57.

[* ]Od. viii. 425.

[† ]Od. vii. 182-194.

[‡ ]Od. viii. 421-459.

[* ]Od. viii. 515-532.

[† ]Od. vii. 196-205.

[1 ]“But perhaps otherwise; it is as good an argument, and weighs as much.”

S.

[* ]Od. i. 315-508.

[† ]Od. ii. 83-88.

[‡ ]Od. i. 509-514.

[* ]Od. xvi. 386-405.

[† ]Od. xvi. 409-419.

[* ]Germania, c. xii.

[* ]Il. ii. 233-244.

[* ]Il. ii. 61-174.

[* ]Il. ii. 224-272.

[* ]Od. xi. 605.

[1 ]This sentence drew from Mr. Jefferson a remonstrating comment. In a letter dated Paris, 23 February, 1787, hitherto unpublished, occurs the following passage, which, in view of the subsequent history of both the parties, is worthy of record.

“I have read your book with infinite satisfaction and improvement. It will do great good in America. Its learning and its good sense will, I hope, make it an institute for our politicians, old as well as young. There is one opinion in it, however, which I will ask you to reconsider, because it appears to me not entirely accurate, and not likely to do good. ‘Congress is not a legislative, but a diplomatic assembly.’ Separating into parts the whole sovereignty of our states, some of these parts are yielded to congress. Upon these I should think them both legislative and executive, and that they could have been judiciary also, had not the confederation required them for certain purposes to appoint a judiciary. It has accordingly been the decision of our courts, that the confederation is a part of the law of the land, and superior in authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be altered by the legislature of any one state. I doubt whether they are at all a diplomatic assembly.”
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9: 9. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution - Part 2

Adams replies directly to the criticism of Mably.

John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 5. Chapter: APPENDIX.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2103/159885 on 2008-04-29

The text is in the public domain.

APPENDIX.

POSTSCRIPT.

The following was appended to the first volume of the original edition of the Defence, which made its appearance alone. As it seems to have no necessary connection with that place, it has been transferred to this, where it seems equally appropriate, and where it serves more nearly to equalize the size of the volumes.

The foreign gazettes and journals have announced to the world that the Abbé De Mably was applied to by the United States of America for his advice and assistance in the formation of a code of laws.1 It is unnecessary to say any thing to this, only that it is a part of a million volumes of lies, according to the best computation, which are to be imposed upon posterity, relative to American affairs. The Abbé himself, in his observations, has said that I desired his sentiments. This is true; but the manner of the request ought to be known, that those who think it of any consequence may understand in what sense it is true. Upon my arrival in Paris, in October, 1782, upon the business of the peace, the Abbé de Mably’s book, upon the manner of writing history, was put into my hands. At the conclusion of that publication, he declared his intention of writing on the American Revolution. Meeting the Abbé soon afterwards, at dinner, at Monsieur De Chalut’s, the farmer-general, my friends, the Abbés De Chalut and Arnoux, who were of the party, informed me that their friend was about writing the history of the American Revolution, and would be obliged to me for any facts or memorials that might be in my power. The question was asked, What part of the revolution he intended to write? The whole. Where had he obtained the materials? It was supposed they might be obtained from the public papers, and inquiry of individuals. In answer to this a few difficulties were started, and the conversation spun into length. At last the gentlemen asked to have, in writing, what had been then said upon the subject, as, the conversation being in French it might not have been fully comprehended. Accordingly, in a few days, I wrote the Abbé a letter, the translation of which, by a friend, into French, is here inclosed; the original, in English, not being in my possession. By this it will be seen, that the request to the Abbé to write upon American affairs, was a mere civility; and rather a desire that he would not expose himself, by attempting a history that he was altogether unprovided for, than any formal request that he should write at all. We ought to be obliged to any gentleman in Europe who will favor us with his thoughts; but, in general, the theory of government is as well understood in America as it is in Europe; and by great numbers of individuals is every thing relating to a free constitution infinitely better comprehended than by the Abbé De Mably or M. Turgot, amiable, learned, and ingenious as they were.1

TO THE ABBÉ DE MABLY.

It is with pleasure that I have learned your design to write upon the American Revolution; because your other writings, which are much admired by Americans, contain principles of legislation, policy, and negotiation, which are perfectly analogous to their own; so that you cannot write upon this subject, without producing a work instructive to the public, and especially to my fellow-citizens.

But I hope, sir, you will not accuse me of presumption, of affectation, or of singularity, if I venture to express my opinion, that it is yet too soon to undertake a complete history of that great event; and that there is no man, either in America or Europe, at this day, capable of performing it, or who is in possession of the materials requisite and necessary for that purpose.

To engage in such a work, the writer ought to divide the history of America into several periods.

1. From the first establishment of the Colonies, in 1600, to the commencement of their disputes with Great Britain, in 1761.

2. From the commencement of those disputes in 1761, occasioned by an order of the board of trade and plantations in Great Britain, sent to the officers of the customs in America, to carry into execution in the strictest manner the acts of trade, and to apply to the courts of judicature for writs of assistance for that purpose, to the commencement of hostilities on the nineteenth of April, 1775. During this period of fourteen years, there was little more than a war of the quill.

3. From the battle of Lexington to the signature of the treaty with France, on the sixth of February, 1778. During this period of three years, the war was exclusively between Great Britain and the United States.

4. From the treaty with France to the commencement of hostilities between Great Britain and France, in the first place; afterwards, with Spain; then to the gradual progress of the armed neutrality, and the war of England against Holland. Finally, all these scenes have their catastrophe in the negotiations of the peace.

Without a distinct knowledge of the history of the colonies in the first period, a writer will find himself embarrassed, from the beginning to the end of his book, to account for events and characters which will present themselves in every step of his path, as he advances to the second, third, and fourth periods. To acquire a sufficient knowledge of the first period, it will be necessary to read all the charters granted to the colonies, and the commissions and instructions given to governors, all the codes of laws of the different colonies, (and thirteen volumes in folio, of dry, disgusting statutes, cannot be read with pleasure, or in a short time,) all the records of the legislatures of the several colonies, (which cannot be found but in manuscript, and by travelling in person from New Hampshire to Georgia); the records of the board of trade and plantations in Great Britain, from its institution to its dissolution; as also the files in the offices of some of the Secretaries of State.

There is another branch of reading which cannot be neglected, if the former might be omitted. I mean those writings which have appeared in America from time to time. I pretend not, however, in the place where I am, at a distance from all books and writings, to make an exact enumeration. The writings of the ancient Governors Winthrop and Winslow, Dr. Mather, Mr. Prince, Neal’s History of New England, Douglas’s Summary, the Progressive Amelioration of the Lands and the present state of the British Colonies, Hutchinson’s History of the Massachusetts Bay, Smith’s History of New York, Smith’s History of New Jersey, the Works of William Penn, Dummer’s Defence of the New England Charters, the History of Virginia, and many other public writings. All these were anterior to the present quarrel, which began in 1761.

During the second period, the writings are more numerous, and more difficult to be procured. There were then given to the public, works of great importance. In the controversies between those who were actors in this scene, as writers, there are some who ought to be distinguished. Among them are the Governors under the king, Pownall, Bernard, and Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, Mr. Sewall, the Judge of Admiralty for Halifax, Jonathan Mayhew, D. D., James Otis, Oxenbridge Thacher, Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, Joseph Warren; and perhaps the following have not been less important than the foregoing, namely,—the writings of Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Wilson, and Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia; of Mr. Livingston, and Mr. McDougall, of New York; of Colonel Bland and Arthur Lee, of Virginia, and of many others. The records of the town of Boston, and especially of the Committee of Correspondence, the records of the Board of Commissioners of the Customs in Boston, the journals of the House of Representatives, and of the Council of Massachusetts Bay. Moreover, the gazettes of the town of Boston, not forgetting those of New York and Philadelphia, ought to be collected and examined from the year 1760. All this is necessary in order to write with precision, and in detail, the history of the discussions, before hostilities commenced, during the period from the year 1761, to the nineteenth of April, 1775.

During the third and the fourth periods, the records, pamphlets, and gazettes of the thirteen states ought to be collected, as well as the journals of Congress, (of which, nevertheless, a great part is still secret,) and the collection of the new constitutions of the several states. The Remembrancer, and the Annual Register, periodical papers, published in England. The Affaires de l’Angleterre et de l’Amérique, and the Mercure de France, published in Paris, and the PolitiqueHollandois, printed at Amsterdam. The whole course of the Correspondence of General Washington with Congress, from the month of July, 1775, to this day, which has not yet been published, and which will not be published till Congress shall order or permit it. Allow me to say, that until this vast source of information shall be opened, it will be scarcely possible for any man to undertake the history of the American War. There are still other writings of importance, in the office of the Secret Committee of Congress, in the Committee of Foreign Affairs, in the Committee on the Treasury, in the Marine or Naval Committee, in the Board of War, as long as it existed, and of the Departments of War, of the Navy, the Finances, and of Foreign Affairs, from their institution. There are also letters of American ministers in France, Spain, Holland, and other parts of Europe.

The greatest part of the documents and materials being still secret, it is premature to undertake a general history of the American Revolution. But too much labor and care cannot be employed in making collections of those materials. There exist, however, in part, already two or three general histories of the American War, and the American Revolution, published in London, and two or three others published in Paris. Those in the English language are only materials, indigested and confused, without discernment; and all these histories, both in French and English, are only monuments of the complete ignorance of the writers of their subject. The whole of a long life, to begin at the age of twenty years, will be necessary to assemble from all nations, and from all parts of the world in which they are deposited, the documents proper to form a complete history of the American Revolution, because it is indeed the history of mankind during that epoch. The histories of France, Spain, Holland, England, and the neutral powers, must be united with that of America. The materials ought to be assembled from all those nations; and the documents, the most important of all, as well as the characters of actors and the secret springs of action, are still concealed in cabinets, and enveloped in ciphers. Whether you, sir, undertake to give a general history, or only observations and remarks, like those you have published concerning the Greeks and Romans, you will produce a work very interesting and instructive in morality, policy, and legislation; and I shall esteem it an honor and a pleasure to furnish you with any little assistance in my power to facilitate your researches.

It is impossible for me to say whether the government of France would wish to see any work profoundly written, and by an author of great celebrity, in the French language. Principles of government must be laid open, so different from those which we find in Europe, especially in France, that such an essay, perhaps, would not be seen with indifference; but of this I am not a competent judge.

Permit me, sir, before I finish this letter, to point at a key to all this history. There is a general analogy in the governments and characters of all the thirteen states; but it was not till the debates and the war began in Massachusetts Bay, the principal province of New England, that their primitive institutions produced their first effect. Four of these institutions ought to be amply investigated and maturely considered by any person who wishes to write with correct information upon this subject; for they have produced a decisive effect, not only in the first determinations of the controversies in writing, and the first debates in council, and the first resolutions to resist in arms, but also by the influence they had on the minds of the other colonies, by giving them an example to adopt more or less the same institutions and similar measures. The four institutions intended are:—
- 1. The towns or districts.
- 2. The congregations.
- 3. The schools.
- 4. The militia.
The towns are certain extents of country, or districts of territory, into which Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, are divided. These towns contain upon an average, say, six miles or two leagues square. The inhabitants who live within these limits are formed by law into corporations, or bodies politic, and are invested with certain powers and privileges, as, for example, to repair the great roads or highways, to support the poor, to choose their selectmen, constables, collectors of taxes, and above all, their representatives in the legislature; as also, the right to assemble, whenever they are summoned by their selectmen, in their town halls, there to deliberate upon the public affairs of the town, or to give instructions to their representatives in the legislature. The consequences of these institutions have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

2. The congregations are religious societies, which comprehend the whole people. Every district contains a parish or religious congregation. In general, they have but one, though some of them have several. Each parish has a temple for public worship, and a minister, maintained at the public expense. The constitutions of these congregations are extremely popular, and the clergy have little influence or authority beyond that which their own piety, virtues, and talents naturally give them. They are chosen by the people of their parishes, and receive their ordinations from the neighboring clergy. They are all married, have families, and live with their parishioners in an intimate and perfect friendship. They visit the sick; they are charitable to the poor; they solemnize marriages and funerals, and preach twice every Sunday. The smallest imputation on their moral character would destroy their influence, and ruin them forever. They are, therefore, wise, virtuous, and pious men; their sentiments are generally conformable to those of their people, and they are jealous friends of liberty.

3. There are schools in every town, established by an express law of the colony. Every town containing sixty families, is obliged, under a penalty, to maintain constantly a school and a schoolmaster, who shall teach his scholars reading, writing, arithmetic, and the rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages. All the children of the inhabitants, the rich as well as the poor, have a right to go to these public schools. There, are formed the candidates for admission as students into the colleges at Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, and Dartmouth. In these colleges are educated future masters for these schools, future ministers for these congregations, doctors of law and medicine, and magistrates and officers for the government of the country.

4. The militia comprehends the whole people. By virtue of the laws of the country, every male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty years of age, is enrolled in a company, and a regiment of militia completely organized with all its officers. He is enjoined to keep always in his house, and at his own expense, a firelock in good order, a powder horn, a pound of powder, twelve flints, four-and-twenty balls of lead, a cartridge box, and a knapsack; so that the whole country is ready to march for its own defence upon the first signal of alarm. These companies and regiments are obliged to assemble at certain times in every year, under the orders of their officers, for the inspection of their arms and ammunition, and to perform their exercises and manœuvres.

Behold, sir, a little sketch of the four principal sources of that prudence in council and that military valor and ability, which have produced the American Revolution, and which I hope will be sacredly preserved as the foundations of the liberty, happiness, and prosperity of the people.

If there are any other particulars, concerning which I can give you any information, be so good as to point them out.

I have the honor to be,
1782.
John Adams.

This letter was privately communicated to M. Marmontel, who seems to have had some intention of writing on America, as well as the person to whom it was addressed, and it drew from both the following acknowledgments.

L’Abbé de Mably est bien faché de ne s’être pas trouvé chez lui quand Monsieur Adams lui a fait l’honneur d’y passer. Il a celui de lui remettre l’écrit qu’il lui a addressé. Jamais l’Abbé de Mably ne s’est proposé d’écrire l’histoire de la révolution d’Amérique; il seroit mort avant que d’avoir rassemblé la moitié des materiaux d’un si important ouvrage. Il sera tres obligé à Monsieur Adams s’il veut avoir la bonté de lui faire tirer une copie de la dernière partie de cet écrit, en y joignant quelques remarques sur le génie et les intérêts de quelques-uns des premiers confédérés, et surtout sur l’état actuel des richesses ou fortunes des particuliers, et sur la nature du luxe connu en Amérique.

M. Marmontel a l’honneur de faire milles complimens à Monsieur Adams, et de lui renvoyer l’excellente lettre qu’il a eu la bonté de lui confier. Elle lui fait sentir plus que jamais l’extrême besoin qu’il a de ses secours et de ses lumières pour être en état d’ecrire passablement l’histoire de la grande révolution, qui fait la gloire de l’Amérique septentrionale et qui assure son bonheur.

Ce 8 Mars, 1783.

end of volume v.

[1 ]This statement is made by Baron de Grimm in his Literary Correspondence for the month of January, 1783, and corrected in his review of de Mably’s “Observations sur le Gouvernement et les Lois des États-Unis d’Amérique,” in October, 1784. The story was revived in some of the American newspapers in 1816, which drew from the author a note to the editor of the North American Review, inclosing a copy in English of the letter to the Abbé de Mably, and both were published in that Magazine for the month of November, 1816, together with two notes of acknowledgment, one from the Abbé himself, and the other from Marmontel, which are now appended.

[1 ]In the original edition of this work, the letter was in French; but as it was not so written by the author, and as an authorized English version has been since published, that has been adopted in the present instance.

10: 10. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution - Part 3

Adams concludes his defense of moderate republicanism with a discussion of Marchmont Nedham, a seventeenth-century English republican.

John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 6. Chapter: A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/2104/159889 on 2008-04-29

The text is in the public domain.

A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

CHAPTER FIRST.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

THE RIGHT CONSTITUTION OF A COMMONWEALTH EXAMINED.

The English nation, for their improvements in the theory of government, has, at least, more merit with the human race than any other among the moderns. The late most beautiful and liberal speculations of many writers, in various parts of Europe, are manifestly derived from English sources. Americans, too, ought for ever to acknowledge their obligations to English writers, or rather have as good a right to indulge a pride in the recollection of them as the inhabitants of the three kingdoms. The original plantation of our country was occasioned, her continual growth has been promoted, and her present liberties have been established by these generous theories.

There have been three periods in the history of England, in which the principles of government have been anxiously studied, and very valuable productions published, which, at this day, if they are not wholly forgotten in their native country, are perhaps more frequently read abroad than at home.

The first of these periods was that of the Reformation, as early as the writings of Machiavel himself, who is called the great restorer of the true politics. The “Shorte Treatise of Politicke Power, and of the True Obedience which Subjects owe to Kyngs and other Civile Governors, with an Exhortation to all True Natural Englishemen, compyled by John Poynet, D. D.,” was printed in 1556, and contains all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterwards dilated on by Sidney and Locke. This writer is clearly for a mixed government, in three equiponderant branches, as appears by these words:—

“In some countreyes they were content to be governed and have the laws executed by one king or judge; in some places by many of the best sorte; in some places by the people of the lowest sorte; and in some places also by the king, nobilitie, and the people all together. And these diverse kyndes of states, or policies, had their distincte names; as where one ruled, a monarchie; where many of the best, aristocratie; and where the multitude, democratie; and where all together, that is a king, the nobilitie, and commons, a mixte state; and which men by long continuance have judged to be the best sort of all. For where that mixte state was exercised, there did the commonwealthe longest continue.”

The second period was the Interregnum, and indeed the whole interval between 1640 and 1660. In the course of those twenty years, not only Ponnet and others were reprinted, but Harrington, Milton, the Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos, and a multitude of others, came upon the stage.

The third period was the Revolution in 1688, which produced Sidney, Locke, Hoadley, Trenchard, Gordon, Plato Redivivus, who is also clear for three equipollent branches in the mixture, and others without number. The discourses of Sidney were indeed written before, but the same causes produced his writings and the Revolution.

Americans should make collections of all these speculations, to be preserved as the most precious relics of antiquity, both for curiosity and use. There is one indispensable rule to be observed in the perusal of all of them; and that is, to consider the period in which they were written, the circumstances of the times, and the personal character as well as the political situation of the writer. Such a precaution as this deserves particular attention in examining a work, printed first in the Mercurius Politicus, a periodical paper published in defence of the commonwealth, and reprinted in 1656, by Marchamont Nedham, under the title of “The Excellency of a Free State, or the Right Constitution of a Commonwealth.”1 The nation had not only a numerous nobility and clergy at that time disgusted, and a vast body of the other gentlemen, as well as of the common people, desirous of the restoration of the exiled royal family, but many writers explicitly espoused the cause of simple monarchy and absolute power. Among whom was Hobbes, a man, however unhappy in his temper, or detestable for his principles, equal in genius and learning to any of his contemporaries. Others were employed in ridiculing the doctrine, that laws, and not men, should govern. It was contended, that to say “that laws do or can govern, is to amuse ourselves with a form of speech, as when we say time, or age, or death, does such a thing. That the government is not in the law, but in the person whose will gives a being to that law. That the perfection of monarchy consists in governing by a nobility, weighty enough to keep the people under, yet not tall enough, in any particular person, to measure with the prince; and by a moderate army, kept up under the notion of guards and garrisons, which may be sufficient to strangle all seditions in the cradle; by councils, not such as are coördinate with the prince, but purely of advice and despatch, with power only to persuade, not limit, the prince’s will.”* In such a situation, writers on the side of liberty thought themselves obliged to consider what was then practicable, not abstractedly what was the best. They felt the necessity of leaving the monarchical and aristocratical orders out of their schemes of government, because all the friends of those orders were their enemies, and of addressing themselves wholly to the democratical party, because they alone were their friends; at least there appears no other hypothesis on which to account for the crude conceptions of Milton and Nedham. The latter, in his preface, discovers his apprehensions and feelings, too clearly to be mistaken, in these words:—“I believe none will be offended with this following discourse, but those that are enemies to public welfare. Let such be offended still; it is not for their sake that I publish this ensuing treatise, but for your sakes that have been noble patriots, fellow soldiers; and sufferers for the liberties and freedoms of your country.” As M. Turgot’s idea of a commonwealth, in which “all authority is to be collected into one centre,” and that centre the nation, is supposed to be precisely the project of Marchamont Nedham, and probably derived from his book, and as “The Excellency of a Free State” is a valuable morsel of antiquity well known in America, where it has many partisans, it may be worth while to examine it, especially as it contains every semblance of argument which can possibly be urged in favor of the system, as it is not only the popular idea of a republic both in France and England, but is generally intended by the words republic, commonwealth, and popular state, when used by English writers, even those of the most sense, taste, and learning.

Marchamont Nedham lays it down as a fundamental principle and an undeniable rule, “that the people, (that is, such as shall be successively chosen to represent the people,) are the best keepers of their own liberties, and that for many reasons. First, because they never think of usurping over other men’s rights, but mind which way to preserve their own.”

Our first attention should be turned to the proposition itself,—“The people are the best keepers of their own liberties.”

But who are the people?

“Such as shall be successively chosen to represent them.”

Here is a confusion both of words and ideas, which, though it may pass with the generality of readers in a fugitive pamphlet, or with a majority of auditors in a popular harangue, ought, for that very reason, to be as carefully avoided in politics as it is in philosophy or mathematics. If by the people is meant the whole body of a great nation, it should never be forgotten, that they can never act, consult, or reason together, because they cannot march five hundred miles, nor spare the time, nor find a space to meet; and, therefore, the proposition, that they are the best keepers of their own liberties, is not true. They are the worst conceivable; they are no keepers at all. They can neither act, judge, think, or will, as a body politic or corporation. If by the people is meant all the inhabitants of a single city, they are not in a general assembly, at all times, the best keepers of their own liberties, nor perhaps at any time, unless you separate from them the executive and judicial power, and temper their authority in legislation with the maturer counsels of the one and the few. If it is meant by the people, as our author explains himself, a representative assembly, “such as shall be successively chosen to represent the people,” still they are not the best keepers of the people’s liberties or their own, if you give them all the power, legislative, executive, and judicial. They would invade the liberties of the people, at least the majority of them would invade the liberties of the minority, sooner and oftener than an absolute monarchy, such as that of France, Spain, or Russia, or than a well-checked aristocracy, like Venice, Bern, or Holland.

An excellent writer has said, somewhat incautiously, that “a people will never oppress themselves, or invade their own rights.” This compliment, if applied to human nature, or to mankind, or to any nation or people in being or in memory, is more than has been merited. If it should be admitted that a people will not unanimously agree to oppress themselves, it is as much as is ever, and more than is always, true. All kinds of experience show, that great numbers of individuals do oppress great numbers of other individuals; that parties often, if not always, oppress other parties; and majorities almost universally minorities. All that this observation can mean then, consistently with any color of fact, is, that the people will never unanimously agree to oppress themselves. But if one party agrees to oppress another, or the majority the minority, the people still oppress themselves, for one part of them oppress another.

“The people never think of usurping over other men’s rights.”

What can this mean? Does it mean that the people never unanimously think of usurping over other men’s rights? This would be trifling; for there would, by the supposition, be no other men’s rights to usurp. But if the people never, jointly nor severally, think of usurping the rights of others, what occasion can there be for any government at all? Are there no robberies, burglaries, murders, adulteries, thefts, nor cheats? Is not every crime a usurpation over other men’s rights? Is not a great part, I will not say the greatest part, of men detected every day in some disposition or other, stronger or weaker, more or less, to usurp over other men’s rights? There are some few, indeed, whose whole lives and conversations show that, in every thought, word, and action, they conscientiously respect the rights of others. There is a larger body still, who, in the general tenor of their thoughts and actions, discover similar principles and feelings, yet frequently err. If we should extend our candor so far as to own, that the majority of men are generally under the dominion of benevolence and good intentions, yet, it must be confessed, that a vast majority frequently transgress; and, what is more directly to the point, not only a majority, but almost all, confine their benevolence to their families, relations, personal friends, parish, village, city, county, province, and that very few, indeed, extend it impartially to the whole community. Now, grant but this truth, and the question is decided. If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations.

The proposition of our author, then, should be reversed, and it should have been said, that they mind so much their own, that they never think enough of others. Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

If the first part of the proposition, namely, that “the people never think of usurping over other men’s rights,” cannot be admitted, is the second, namely, “they mind which way to preserve their own,” better founded?

There is in every nation and people under heaven a large proportion of persons who take no rational and prudent precautions to preserve what they have, much less to acquire more. Indolence is the natural character of man, to such a degree that nothing but the necessities of hunger, thirst, and other wants equally pressing, can stimulate him to action, until education is introduced in civilized societies, and the strongest motives of ambition to excel in arts, trades, and professions, are established in the minds of all men. Until this emulation is introduced, the lazy savage holds property in too little estimation to give himself trouble for the preservation or acquisition of it. In societies the most cultivated and polished, vanity, fashion, and folly prevail over every thought of ways to preserve their own. They seem rather to study what means of luxury, dissipation, and extravagance they can invent to get rid of it.

“The case is far otherwise among kings and grandees,” says our author, “as all nations in the world have felt to some purpose.”

That is, in other words, kings and grandees think of usurping over other men’s rights, but do not mind which way to preserve their own. It is very easy to flatter the democratical portion of society, by making such distinctions between them and the monarchical and aristocratical; but flattery is as base an artifice, and as pernicious a vice, when offered to the people, as when given to the others. There is no reason to believe the one much honester or wiser than the other; they are all of the same clay; their minds and bodies are alike. The two latter have more knowledge and sagacity, derived from education, and more advantages for acquiring wisdom and virtue. As to usurping others’ rights, they are all three equally guilty when unlimited in power. No wise man will trust either with an opportunity; and every judicious legislator will set all three to watch and control each other. We may appeal to every page of history we have hitherto turned over, for proofs irrefragable, that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.

“They naturally move,” says Nedham, “within the circle of domination, as in their proper centre.”

When writers on legislation have recourse to poetry, their images may be beautiful, but they prove nothing. This, however, has neither the merit of a brilliant figure, nor of a convincing argument. The populace, the rabble, the canaille, move as naturally in the circle of domination, whenever they dare, as the nobles or a king; nay, although it may give pain, truth and experience force us to add, that even the middling people, when uncontrolled, have moved in the same circle; and have not only tyrannized over all above and all below, but the majority among themselves has tyrannized over the minority.

“And count it no less security, than wisdom and policy, to brave it over the people.”

Declamatory flourishes, although they may furnish a mob with watchwords, afford no reasonable conviction to the understanding. What is meant by braving it? In the history of Holland you will see the people braving it over the De Witts; and in that of Florence, Siena, Bologna, Pistoia, and the rest, over many others.*

“Cæsar, Crassus, and another, made a contract with each other, that nothing should be done without the concurrence of all three: Societatem iniere, ne quid ageretur in republica, quod displicuisset ulli e tribus.”

Nedham could not have selected a less fortunate example for his purpose, since there never was a more arrant creature of the people than Cæsar; no, not even Catiline, Wat Tyler, Massaniello, or Shays. The people created Cæsar on the ruins of the senate, and on purpose to usurp over the rights of others. But this example, among innumerable others, is very apposite to our purpose. It happens universally, when the people in a body, or by a single representative assembly, attempt to exercise all the powers of government, they always create three or four idols, who make a bargain with each other first, to do nothing which shall displease any one; these hold this agreement, until one thinks himself able to disembarrass himself of the other two; then they quarrel, and the strongest becomes single tyrant. But why is the name of Pompey omitted, who was the third of this triumvirate? Because it would have been too unpopular; it would have too easily confuted his argument, and have turned it against himself, to have said that this association was between Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus, against Cato, the senate, the constitution, and liberty, which was the fact.

Can you find a people who will never be divided in opinion? who will be always unanimous? The people of Rome were divided, as all other people ever have been, and will be, into a variety of parties and factions. Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar, at the head of different parties, were jealous of each other. Their divisions strengthened the senate and its friends, and furnished means and opportunities of defeating many of their ambitious designs. Cæsar perceived it, and paid his court both to Pompey and Crassus, in order to hinder them from joining the senate against him. He separately represented the advantage which their enemies derived from their misunderstandings, and the ease with which, if united, they might concert among themselves all affairs of the republic, gratify every friend, and disappoint every enemy.* The other example, of Augustus, Lepidus, and Antony, is equally unfortunate. Both are demonstrations that the people did think of usurping others’ rights, and that they did not mind any way to preserve their own. The senate was now annihilated, many of them murdered. Augustus, Lepidus, and Antony were popular demagogues, who agreed together to fleece the flock between them, until the most cunning of the three destroyed the other two, fleeced the sheep alone, and transmitted the shears to a line of tyrants.

How can this writer say, then, that, “while the government remained untouched in the people’s hands, every particular man lived safe?” The direct contrary is true. Every man lived safe, only while the senate remained as a check and balance to the people; the moment that control was destroyed, no man was safe. While the government remained untouched in the various orders, the consuls, senate, and people, mutually balancing each other, it might be said, with some truth, that no man could be undone, unless a true and satisfactory reason was rendered to the world for his destruction. But as soon as the senate was destroyed, and the government came untouched into the people’s hands, no man lived safe but the triumvirs and their tools; any man might be, and multitudes of the best men were, undone, without rendering any reason to the world for their destruction, but the will, the fear, or the revenge of some tyrant. These popular leaders, in our author’s own language, “saved and destroyed, depressed and advanced whom they pleased, with a wet finger.”

The second argument to prove that the people, in their successive single assemblies, are the best keepers of their own liberties, is,—

“Because it is ever the people’s care to see that authority be so constituted, that it shall be rather a burden than benefit to those that undertake it; and be qualified with such slender advantages of profit or pleasure, that men shall reap little by the enjoyment. The happy consequence whereof is this, that none but honest, generous, and public spirits will then desire to be in authority, and that only for the common good. Hence it was that, in the infancy of the Roman liberty, there was no canvassing of voices; but single and plain-hearted men were called, entreated, and, in a manner, forced with importunity to the helm of government, in regard of that great trouble and pains that followed the employment. Thus Cincinnatus was fetched out of the field from his plough, and placed (much against his will) in the sublime dignity of dictator. So the noble Camillus, and Fabius, and Curius, were, with much ado, drawn from the recreation of gardening to the trouble of governing; and, the consul-year being over, they returned with much gladness again to their private employment.”

The first question which would arise in the mind of an intelligent and attentive reader would be, whether this were burlesque, and a republic travesty? But as the principle of this second reason is very pleasing to a large body of narrow spirits in every society, and as it has been adopted by some respectable authorities, without sufficient consideration, it may be proper to give it a serious investigation.

The people have, in some countries and seasons, made their services irksome, and it is popular with some to make authority a burden. But what has been the consequence to the people? Their service has been deserted, and they have been betrayed. Those very persons who have flattered the meanness of the stingy, by offering to serve them gratis, and by purchasing their suffrages, have carried the liberties and properties of their constituents to market, and sold them for very handsome private profit to the monarchical and aristocratical portions of society. And so long as the rule of making their service a burthen is persisted in, so long will the people be served with the same kind of address and fidelity, by hypocritical pretences to disinterested benevolence and patriotism, until their confidence is gained, their affections secured, and their enthusiasm excited, and by knavish bargain and sale of their cause and interest afterwards. But, although there is always among the people a party who are justly chargeable with meanness and avarice, envy and ingratitude, and this party has sometimes been a majority, who have literally made their service burdensome, yet this is not the general character of the people. A more universal fault is too much affection, confidence, and gratitude; not to such as really serve them, whether with or against their inclinations, but to those who flatter their inclinations, and gain their hearts. Honest and generous spirits will disdain to deceive the people; and if the public service is wilfully rendered burdensome, they will really be averse to be in it; but hypocrites enough will be found, who will pretend to be also loth to serve, and feign a reluctant consent for the public good, while they mean to plunder in every way they can conceal.

There are conjunctures when it is the duty of a good citizen to hazard and sacrifice all for his country. But, in ordinary times, it is equally the duty and interest of the community not to suffer it. Every wise and free people, like the Romans, will establish the maxim, to suffer no generous action for the public to go unrewarded. Can our author be supposed to be sincere, in recommending it as a principle of policy to any nation to render her service in the army, navy, or in council, a burden, an unpleasant employment, to all her citizens? Would he depend upon finding human spirits enough to fill public offices, who would be sufficiently elevated in patriotism and general benevolence to sacrifice their ease, health, time, parents, wives, children, and every comfort, convenience, and elegance of life, for the public good? Is there any religion or morality that requires this? which permits the many to live in affluence and ease, while it obliges a few to live in misery for their sakes? The people are fond of calling public men their servants, and some are not able to conceive them to be servants, without making them slaves, and treating them as planters treat their negroes. But, good masters, have a care how you use your power; you may be tyrants as well as public officers. It seems, according to our author himself, that honesty and generosity of spirit, and the passion for the public good, were not motives strong enough to induce his heroes to desire to be in public life. They must be called, entreated, and forced. By single and plain-hearted men, he means the same, no doubt, with those described by the other expressions, honest, generous, and public spirits. Cincinnatus, Camillus, Fabius, and Curius, were men as simple and as generous as any; and these all, by his own account, had a strong aversion to the public service. Either these great characters must be supposed to have practised the Nolo Episcopari, to have held up a fictitious aversion for what they really desired, or we must allow their reluctance to have been sincere. If counterfeit, these examples do not deserve our imitation; if sincere, they will never be followed by men enough to carry on the business of the world.

The glory of these Roman characters cannot be obscured, nor ought the admiration of their sublime virtues to be diminished; but such examples are as rare among statesmen, as Homers and Miltons are among poets. A free people of common sense will not depend upon finding a sufficient number of such characters at any one time, still less a succession of them for any long duration, for the support of their liberties. To make a law that armies should be led, senates counselled, negotiations conducted, by none but such characters, would be to decree that the business of the world should come to a full stand. And it must have stood as still in those periods of the Roman history as at this hour; for such characters were nearly as scarce then as they are now. The parallels of Lysander, Pericles, Themistocles, and Cæsar, are much easier to find in history, than those of Camillus, Fabius, and Curius. If the latter were with much difficulty drawn from their gardens to government, and returned with pleasure at the end of the consular year to their rural amusements, the former are as ardent to continue in the public service; and if the public will not legally reward them, they plunder the public to reward themselves. The father of Themistocles had more aversion to public life than Cincinnatus; and to moderate the propensity of his son, who ardently aspired to the highest offices of the state, pointed to the old galleys rolling in the docks. “There,” says he, “see the old statesmen, worn out in the service of their country, thus always neglected when no longer of use!”* Yet the son’s ardor was not abated, though he was not one of those honest spirits that aimed only at the public good. Pericles, too, though his fortune was small, and the honest emoluments of his office very moderate, discovered no such aversion to the service; on the contrary, he entered into an emulation in prodigality with Cimon, who was rich, in order equally to dazzle the eyes of the multitude. To make himself the soul of the republic, and master of the affections of the populace, to enable them to attend the public assemblies and theatrical representations for his purposes, he lavished his donations; yet he was so far from being honest and generous, and aiming solely at the public good, that he availed himself of the riches of the state to supply his extravagance of expense, and made it an invariable maxim to sacrifice every thing to his own ambition. When the public finances were exhausted, to avoid accounting for the public money, he involved his country in a war with Sparta.

But we must not rely upon these general observations alone; let us descend to a particular consideration of our author’s examples, in every one of which he is very unfortunate. The retirement of Cincinnatus to the country was not his choice, but his necessity. Cæso, his son, had offended the people by an outrageous opposition to their honest struggles for liberty, and had been fined for a crime; the father, rather than let his bondsmen suffer, paid the forfeiture of his recognizance, reduced himself to poverty, and the necessity of retiring to his spade or plough.1 Did the people entreat and force him back to Rome? No. It was the senate in opposition to the people, who dreaded his high aristocratical principles, his powerful connections, and personal resentments. Nor did he discover the least reluctance to the service ordained him by the senate, but accepted it without hesitation. All this appears in Livy, clearly contradictory to every sentiment of our author.* At another time, when disputes ran so high between the tribunes and the senate that seditions were apprehended, the senators exerted themselves in the centuries for the election of Cincinnatus, to the great alarm and terror of the people.† Cincinnatus, in short, although his moral character and private life were irreproachable among the plebeians, appears to have owed his appointments to office, not to them, but the senate; and not for popular qualities, but for aristocratical ones, and the determined opposition of himself and his whole family to the people. He appears to have been forced into service by no party; but to have been as willing, as he was an able, instrument of the senate.

In order to see the inaptitude of this example in another point of view, let the question be asked, What would have been the fortune of Cincinnatus, if Nedham’s “right constitution” had then been the government of Rome? The answer must be, that he would have lost his election, most probably even into the representative assembly; most certainly he would never have been consul, dictator, or commander of armies, because he was unpopular. This example, then, is no argument in favor of our author, but a strong one against him.

If we recollect the character and actions of Curius, we shall find them equally conclusive in favor of balanced government, and against our author’s plan. Manius Curius Dentatus, in the year of Rome 462, obtained as consul a double triumph, for forcing the Samnites to sue for peace. This nation, having their country laid waste, sent their principal men as ambassadors, to offer presents to Curius for his credit with the senate, in order to their obtaining favorable terms of peace. They found him sitting on a stool before the fire, in his little house in the country, and eating his dinner out of a wooden dish. They opened their deputation, and offered him the gold and silver. He answered them politely, but refused the presents.* He then added somewhat, which at this day does not appear so very polished: “I think it glorious to command the owners of gold, not to possess it myself.”

And which passion do you think is the worst, the love of gold, or this pride and ambition? His whole estate was seven acres of land, and he said once in assembly, “that a man who was not contented with seven acres of land, was a pernicious citizen.” As we pass, it may be proper to remark the difference of times and circumstances. How few in America could escape the censure of pernicious citizens, if Curius’s rule were established. Is there one of our yeomen contented with seven acres? How many are discontented with seventy times seven! Examples, then, drawn from times of extreme poverty, and a state of a very narrow territory, should be applied to our circumstances with great discretion. As long as the aristocracy lasted, a few of those rigid characters appeared from time to time in the Roman senate. Cato was one to the last, and went expressly to visit the house of Curius, in the country of the Sabines; was never weary of viewing it, contemplating the virtues of its ancient owner, and desiring warmly to imitate them.

But, though declamatory writers might call the conduct of Curius “exactissima Romanæ frugalitatis norma,” it was not the general character, even of the senators, at that time. Avarice raged like a fiery furnace in the minds of creditors, most of whom were patricians; and equal avarice and injustice in the minds of plebeians, who, instead of aiming at moderating the laws against debtors, would be content with nothing short of a total abolition of debts. Only two years after this, namely, in 465, so tenacious were the patricians and senators of all the rigor of their power over debtors, that Veturius, the son of a consul, who had been reduced by poverty to borrow money at an exorbitant interest, was delivered up to his creditor; and that infamous usurer, C. Plotius, exacted from him all the services of a slave, and the senate would grant no relief; and when he attempted to subject his slave to a brutal passion, which the laws did not tolerate, and scourged him with rods because he would not submit, all the punishment which the consuls and senate would impose on Plotius was imprisonment. This anecdote proves that the indifference to wealth was far from being general, either among patricians or plebeians; and that it was confined to a few patrician families, whose tenaciousness of the maxims and manners of their ancestors, proudly transmitted it from age to age.

In 477, Curius was consul a second time, when the plague, and a war with Pyrrhus, had lasted so long as to threaten the final ruin of the nation, and obliged the centuries to choose a severe character, not because he was beloved, but because his virtues and abilities alone could save the state. The austere character of the consul was accompanied by correspondent austerities, in this time of calamity, in the censors, who degraded several knights and senators, and among the rest, Rufinus, who had been twice consul and once dictator, for extravagance and luxury. Pyrrhus was defeated, and Curius again triumphed; and because a continuance of the war with Pyrrhus was expected, he was again elected consul, in 478. In 480, he was censor. After all, he was so little beloved, that an accusation was brought against him for having converted the public spoils to his own use, and he was not acquitted till he had sworn that no part of them had entered his house but a wooden bowl, which he used in sacrifice. All these sublime virtues and magnanimous actions of Curius, make nothing in favor of Nedham. He was a patrician, a senator, and a consul; he had been taught by aristocratical ancestors, formed in an aristocratical school, and was full of aristocratical pride. He does not appear to have been a popular man, either among the senators in general,1 or the plebeians. Rufinus, his rival, with his plate and luxury, appears, by his being appointed dictator, to have been more beloved, notwithstanding that the censors, on the prevalence of Curius’s party, in a time of distress, were able to disgrace him.

It was in 479 that the senate received an embassy from Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, and sent four of the principal men in Rome, Q. Fabius Gurges, C. Fabius Pistor, Numer. Fabius Pistor, and Q. Ogulnius, ambassadors to Egypt, to return the compliment. Q. Fabius, who was at the head of the embassy, was prince of the senate, and on his return, reported their commission to the senate; said that the king had received them in the most obliging and honorable manner; that he had sent them magnificent presents on their arrival, which they had desired him to excuse them from accepting; that at a feast, before they took leave, the king had ordered crowns of gold to be given them, which they placed upon his statues the next day; that on the day of their departure, the king had given them presents far more magnificent than the former, reproaching them in a most obliging manner, for not having accepted them; these they had accepted, with most profound respect, not to offend the king, but that, on their arrival in Rome, they had deposited them in the public treasury; that Ptolemy had received the alliance of the Roman people with joy. The senate were much pleased, and gave thanks to the ambassadors for having rendered the manners of the Romans venerable to foreigners by their sincere disinterestedness; but decreed that the rich presents deposited in the treasury should be restored to them, and the people expressed their satisfaction in this decree. These presents were undoubtedly immensely rich; but where was the people’s care to make the service a burden? Thanks of the senate are no burdens; immense presents in gold and silver, voted out of the treasury into the hands of the ambassadors, were no “slender advantages of profit or pleasure,” at a time when the nation was extremely poor, and no individual in it very rich. But, moreover, three of these ambassadors were Fabii, of one of those few simple, frugal, aristocratical families, who neither made advantage of the law in favor of creditors, to make great profits out of the people by exorbitant usury on one hand, nor gave largesses to the people to bribe their affection on the other; so that, although they were respected and esteemed by all, they were not hated nor much beloved by any; and such is the fate of men of such simple manners at this day in all countries. Our author’s great mistake lies in his quoting examples from a balanced government, as proofs in favor of a government without a balance. The senate and people were at this time checks on each other’s avarice; the people were the electors into office, but none, till very lately, could be chosen but patricians; none of the senators, who enriched themselves by plundering the public of lands or goods, or by extravagant usury from the people, could expect their votes to be consuls or other magistrates; and there was no commerce or other means of enriching themselves; all, therefore, who were ambitious of serving in magistracies, were obliged to be poor. To this constant check and balance between the senate and people the production and the continuance of these frugal and simple patrician characters and families appear to be owing.

If our author meant another affair of 453, it is still less to his purpose, or rather still more conclusively against him. It was so far from being true, in the year 454, the most simple and frugal period of Roman history, that “none but honest, generous, and public spirits desired to be in authority, and that only for the common good,” and that there “was no canvassing for voices,” that the most illustrious Romans offered themselves as candidates for the consulship; and it was only the distress and imminent danger of the city from the Etrurians and Samnites, and a universal alarm, that induced the citizens to cast their eyes on Fabius, who did not stand. When he saw the suffrages run for him, he arose and spoke: “Why should he be solicited, an old man, exhausted with labors, and satiated with rewards, to take the command? That neither the strength of his body or mind were the same. He dreaded the caprice of fortune. Some divinity might think his success too great, too constant, too much for any mortal. He had succeeded to the glory of his ancestors, and he saw himself with joy succeeded by others. That great honors were not wanting at Rome to valor, nor valor to honors.”* It was extreme age, not the “slender advantages of honors,” that occasioned Fabius’s disinclination, as it did that of Cincinnatus on another occasion. This refusal, however, only augmented the desire of having him. Fabius then required the law to be read, which forbade the reëlection of a consul before ten years. The tribunes proposed that it should be dispensed with, as all such laws in favor of rotations ever are when the people wish it. Fabius asked why laws were made, if they were to be broken or dispensed with by those who made them; and declared that the laws governed no longer, but were governed by men.† The centuries, however, persevered, and Fabius was chosen. “May the gods make your choice successful!” says the old hero; “dispose of me as you will, but grant me one favor, Decius for my colleague, a person worthy of his father and of you, and one who will live in perfect harmony with me.”

There is no such stinginess of honors on the part of the people, nor any such reluctance to the service for want of them, as our author pretends; it was old age and respect to the law only. And one would think the sentiments and language of Fabius sufficiently aristocratical; his glory, and the glory of his ancestors and posterity, seem to be uppermost in his thoughts. And that disinterest was not so prevalent in general appears this very year; for a great number of citizens were cited by the ædiles, to take their trials for possessing more land than the law permitted. All this rigor was necessary to check the avidity of the citizens. But do you suppose Americans would make or submit to a law to limit to a small number, or to any number, the acres of land which a man might possess?

Fabius fought, conquered, and returned to Rome, to preside in the election of the new consuls; and there appear circumstances which show that the great zeal for him was chiefly aristocratical. The first centuries, all aristocratics, continued him. Appius Claudius, of consular dignity, and surely not one of our author’s “honest, generous, and public spirits,” nor one of his “single and plain-hearted men,” but a warm, interested, and ambitious man, offered himself a candidate, and employed all his credit, and that of all the nobility, to be chosen consul with Fabius; less, as he said, for his private interest, than for the honor of the whole body of the patricians, whom he was determined to reëstablish in the possession of both consulships. Fabius declined, as the year before; but all the nobility surrounded his seat, and entreated him, to be sure; but to do what? Why, to rescue the consulship from the dregs and filth of the people, to restore the dignity of consul and the order of patricians to their ancient aristocratical splendor. Fabius appears, indeed, to have been urged into the office of consul; but by whom? By the patricians, and to keep out a plebeian. The senate and people were checking each other; struggling together for a point, which the patricians could carry in no way but by violating the laws, and forcing old Fabius into power. The tribunes had once given way, from the danger of the times; but this year they were not so disposed. The patricians were still eager to repeat the irregularity; but Fabius, although he declared he should be glad to assist them in obtaining two patrician consuls, yet he would not violate the law so far as to nominate himself; and no other patrician had interest enough to keep out L. Volumnius, the plebeian, who was chosen with Appius Claudius. Thus facts and events, which were evidently created by a struggle between two orders in a balanced government, are adduced as proofs in favor of a government with only one order, and without a balance.

Such severe frugality, such perfect disinterestedness in public characters, appear only, or at least most frequently, in aristocratical governments. Whenever the constitution becomes democratical, such austerities disappear entirely, or at least lose their influence, and the suffrages of the people; and if an unmixed and unchecked people ever choose such men, it is only in times of distress and danger, when they think no others can save them. As soon as the danger is over, they neglect these, and choose others more plausible and indulgent.

There is so much pleasure in the contemplation of these characters, that we ought by no means to forget Camillus. This great character was never a popular one. To the senate and the patricians he owed his great employments, and seems to have been selected for the purpose of opposing the people.

The popular leaders had no aversion, for themselves or their families, to public honors and offices with all their burdens. In 358, P. Licinius Calvus, the first of the plebeian order who had ever been elected military tribune, was about to be reëlected, when he arose and said, “Romans, you behold only the shadow of Licinius. My strength, hearing, memory, are all gone, and the energy of my mind is no more. Suffer me to present my son to you, (and he held him by the hand,) the living image of him whom you honored first of all the plebeians with the office of military tribune. I devote him, educated in my principles, to the commonwealth, and shall be much obliged to you if you will grant him the honor in my stead.” Accordingly, the son was elected. The military tribunes acted with great ardor and bravery, but were defeated, and Rome was in a panic, very artfully augmented by the patricians, to give a pretext for taking the command out of plebeian hands. Camillus was created dictator by the senate, and carried on the war with such prudence, ability, and success, that he saw the richest city of Italy, that of Veii, was upon the point of falling into his hands with immense spoils. He now felt himself embarrassed. If he divided the spoils with a sparing hand among the soldiery, he would draw upon himself their indignation, and that of the plebeians in general. If he distributed them too generously, he should offend the senate; for, with all the boasted love of poverty of those times, the senate and people, the patricians and plebeians, as bodies, were perpetually wrangling about spoils, booty, and conquered lands; which further shows, that the real moderation was confined to a very few individuals or families.

Camillus, to spare himself reproach and envy, dictator as he was, wrote to the senate “that, by the favor of the gods, his own exertions, and the patience of the soldiers, Veii would soon be in his hands, and, therefore, he desired their directions what to do with the spoils.” The senate were of two opinions: Licinius was for giving notice to all the citizens, that they might go and share in the plunder; Appius Claudius would have it all brought into the public treasury, or appropriated to the payment of the soldiers, which would ease the people of taxes. Licinius replied, that if that money should be brought to the treasury, it would be the cause of eternal complaints, murmurs, and seditions. The latter advice prevailed, and the plunder was indiscriminate; for the city of Veii, after a ten years’ siege, in which many commanders had been employed, was at last taken by Camillus by stratagem; and the opulence of it appeared so great, that the dictator was terrified at his own good fortune and that of his country. He prayed the gods, if it must be qualified with any disgrace, that it might fall upon him, not the commonwealth. This piety and patriotism, however, did not always govern Camillus. His triumph betrayed an extravagance of vanity more than bordering on profaneness; he had the arrogance and presumption to harness four white horses in his chariot, a color peculiar to Jupiter and the Sun, an ambition more than Roman, more than human. Here the people were very angry with Camillus, for having too little reverence for religion. The next moment they were still more incensed against him, for having too much; for he reminded them of the vow he had made, to consecrate a tenth part of the spoils to Apollo. The people, in short, did not love Camillus; and the senate adored him, because he opposed the multitude on all occasions, without any reserve, and appeared the most ardent and active in resisting their caprices. It was easier to conquer enemies than to please citizens.* This mighty aristocratic grew so unpopular, that one of the tribunes accused him before the people of applying part of the spoils of Veii to his own use; and finding, upon consulting his friends, that he had no chance of acquittal, he went into voluntary banishment at Ardea. But he prayed to the gods to make his ungrateful country regret his absence. He was tried in his absence, and condemned in a fine.

Had Nedham’s constitution existed at Rome, would Camillus have taken Veii, or been made dictator, or employed at all? Certainly not. Characters much more plausible would have run him down, or have obliged him to imitate all their indulgences.

In all these examples, of Cincinnatus, Curius, Fabius, and Camillus, &c., our author quotes examples of virtues which grew up only in a few aristocratical families, were cultivated by the emulation between the two orders in the state, and by their struggles to check and balance each other, to prove the excellence of a state where there is but one order, no emulation, and no balance. This is like the conduct of a poet, who should enumerate the cheerful rays and refulgent glories of the sun in a description of the beauties of midnight.

Whether succession is or is not the grand preservative against corruption, the United States of America have adopted this author’s idea in this “reason,”1 so far as to make the governor and senate, as well as the house of representatives, annually elective. They have, therefore, a clear claim to his congratulations. They are that happy nation. They ought to rejoice in the wisdom and justice of their trustees; for certain limits and bounds are fixed to the powers in being, by a declared succession of the supreme authority annually in the hands of the people.

It is still, however, problematical, whether this succession will be the grand preservative against corruption, or the grand inlet to it. The elections of governors and senators are so guarded, that there is room to hope; but, if we recollect the experience of past ages and other nations, there are grounds to fear. The experiment is made, and will have fair play. If corruption breaks in, a remedy must be provided; and what that remedy must be, is well enough known to every man who thinks.

Our author’s examples are taken from the Romans, after the abolition of monarchy, while the government was an aristocracy, in the hands of a senate, balanced only by the tribunes. It is most certainly true, that a standing authority in the hands of one, the few, or the many, has an impetuous propensity to corruption; and it is to control this tendency that three orders, equal and independent of each other, are contended for in the legislature. While power was in the hands of a senate, according to our author, the people were ever in danger of losing their liberty. It would be nearer the truth to say, that the people had no liberty, or a very imperfect and uncertain liberty; none at all before the institution of the tribunes, and but an imperfect share afterwards; because the tribunes were an unequal balance to the senate; and so, on the other side, were the consuls. “Sometimes in danger from kingly aspirers.” But whose fault was that? The senate had a sufficient abhorrence of such conspiracies. It was the people who encouraged the ambition of particular persons to aspire, and who became their partisans. Mælius would have been made a king by the people, if they had not been checked by the senate; and so would Manlius. To be convinced of this, it is necessary only to recollect the story.

Spurius Mælius, a rich citizen of the Equestrian order, in the year before Christ 437, and of Rome the three hundred and fifteenth, a time of scarcity and famine, aspired to the consulship. He bought a large quantity of corn in Etruria, and distributed it among the people. Becoming, by his liberality, the darling of the populace, they attended his train wherever he went, and promised him the consulship. Sensible, however, that the senators, with the whole Quinctian family at their head, would oppose him, he must use force; and, as ambition is insatiable, and cannot be contented with what is attainable, he conceived that to obtain the sovereignty would cost him no more trouble than the consulship. The election came on, and as he had not concerted all his measures, T. Quinctius Capitolinus and Agrippa Menenius Lanatus were chosen by the influence of the senate. L. Minucius was continued præfectus annonæ, or superintendent of provisions. His office obliged him to do in public the same that Mælius affected to do in private; so that the same kind of people frequented the houses of both. From them he learned the transactions at Mælius’s, and informed the senate that arms were carried into his house, where he held assemblies, made harangues, and was taking measures to make himself king; and that the tribunes, corrupted by money, had divided among them the measures necessary to secure the success of the enterprise. Quinctius Capitolinus proposed a dictator, and Quinctius Cincinnatus (for the Quinctian family were omnipotent) was appointed. The earnest entreaties and warm remonstrances of the whole senate prevailed on him to accept the trust, after having long refused it, not from any reluctance to public service, but on account of his great age, which made him believe himself incapable of it. Imploring the gods not to suffer his age to be a detriment to the public, he consented to be nominated, and immediately appointed Ahala master of the horse, appeared suddenly in the forum, with his lictors, rods, and axes, ascended the tribunal with all the ensigns of the sovereign authority, and sent his master of horse to summon Mælius before him. Mælius endeavored, in his first surprise to escape; a lictor seized him. Mælius complained that he was to be sacrificed to the intrigues of the senate for the good he had done the people. The people grew tumultuous. His partisans encouraged each other, and took him by force from the lictor. Mælius threw himself into the crowd. Servius followed him, run him through with his sword, and returned, covered with his blood, to give an account to the dictator of what he had done. “You have done well,” said Cincinnatus; “continue to defend your country with the same courage as you have now delivered it,—Macte virtute esto, liberata republica.”

The people being in great commotion, the dictator calls an assembly, and pronounces Mælius justly killed. With all our admiration for the moderation and modesty, the simplicity and sublimity of his character, it must be confessed that there is in the harangue of Cincinnatus more of the aristocratical jealousy of kings and oligarchies, and even more of contempt of the people, than of a soul devoted to equal liberty, or possessed of understanding to comprehend it. It is the speech of a simple aristocratic, possessed of a great soul. It was a city in which, such was its aristocratical jealousy of monarchy and oligarchy, Brutus had punished his son; Collatinus Tarquinius, in mere hatred of his name, had been obliged to abdicate the consulship and banish himself; Spurius Cassius had been put to death for intending to be king; and the decemvirs had been punished with confiscation, exile, and death, for their oligarchy. In such a city of aristocratics, Mælius had conceived a hope of being a king. “Et quis homo?” says Cincinnatus; and who was Mælius? “quanquam nullam nobilitatem, nullos honores, nulla merita cuiquam ad dominationem pandere viam; sed tamen Claudios, Cassios, consulatibus, decemviratibus, suis majorumque honoribus, splendore familiarum sustulisse animos, quo nefas fuerit.”* Mælius, therefore, was not only a traitor but a monster; his estate must be confiscated, his house pulled down, and the spot called Æquimelium, as a monument of the crime and the punishment;† and his corn distributed to the populace, very cheap, in order to appease them. This whole story is a demonstration of the oppression of the people under the aristocracy; of the extreme jealousy of that aristocracy of kings, of an oligarchy, and of popular power; of the constant secret wishes of the people to set up a king to defend them against the nobles, and of their readiness to fall in with the views of any rich man who flattered them, and set him up as a monarch; but it is a most unfortunate instance for Nedham. It was not the people who defended the republic against the design of Mælius; but the senate, who defended it against both Mælius and the people. Had Rome been then governed by Marchamont Nedham’s “Right Constitution of a Commonwealth,” Mælius would infallibly have been made a king, and have transmitted his crown to his heirs. The necessity of an independent senate, as a check upon the people, is most apparent in this instance. If the people had been unchecked, or if they had only had the right of choosing a house of representatives unchecked, they would, in either case, have crowned Mælius.

At the critical moment, when the Gauls had approached the capitol with such silence as not to awaken the sentinels or even the dogs, M. Manlius, who had been consul three years before, was awakened by the cry of the geese, which, by the sanctity of their consecration to Juno, had escaped with their lives in an extreme scarcity of provisions. He hastened to the wall, and beat down one of the enemy who had already laid hold of the battlement, and whose fall from the precipice carried down several others who followed him. With stones and darts the Romans precipitated all the rest to the bottom of the rock. Manlius the next day received in a public assembly his praises and rewards. Officers and soldiers, to testify their gratitude, gave him their rations for one day, both in corn and wine, half a pound of corn and a quarter of a pint of wine. “Ingens caritatis argumentum, cum se quisque victu suo fraudans, detractum corpori atque usibus necessariis ad honorem unius viri conferret,” says Livy; and in the year of Rome 365, the commonwealth gave to Manlius a house upon the capitol, as a monument of his valor and his country’s gratitude.

In the year of Rome 370, fifty-five years after the execution of Mælius, and five years after the defence of the capitol from the attack of Brennus, Manlius is suspected of ambition. Those who had hitherto excited, or been excited by the people to faction, had been plebeians. Manlius was a patrician of one of the most illustrious families. He had been consul, and acquired immortal glory by his military exploits and by saving the capitol; he was, in short, the rival of Camillus, who had obtained two signal victories over the Gauls, and from the new birth of the city had been always in office, either as dictator or military tribune; and even when he was only tribune, his colleagues considered him as their superior, and held it an honor to receive his orders as their chief. In short, by his own reputation, the support of the Quinctian family, and the enthusiastic attachment to him he had inspired into the nation, he was, in fact and effect, to all intents and purposes, king in Rome, without the name, but under the various titles of consul, dictator, or military tribune. “He treats,” said Manlius, “even those created with powers equal to his own, not as his colleagues, but officers and substitutes to execute his orders.” The aristocratical Livy, and all the other aristocrats of Rome, accuse Manlius of envy. They say he could not bear such glory in a man whom he believed no worthier than himself. He despised all the rest of the nobility. The virtues, services, and honors of Camillus alone excited his haughtiness and self-sufficiency, and tortured his jealousy and pride. He was enraged to see him always at the head of affairs, and commanding armies. It is certain that this practice of continuing Camillus always at the head was inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, by which a rotation was established, and the consuls who had the command of armies could remain in office but one year. But this is the nature of an aristocratical assembly as well as of a democratical one. Some eminent spirit, assisted by three or four families connected with him, gains an ascendency, and excites an enthusiasm, and then the spirit and letter too of the constitution is made to give way to him. In the case before us, when Camillus could not be consul, he must be military tribune; and when he could not be military tribune, he must be dictator.

Manlius is charged with envy, and with vain speeches. “Camillus could not have recovered Rome from the Gauls if I had not saved the capitol and citadel.” This was literally true; but aristocratical historians must brand the character of Manlius in order to depress the people, and extol and adore that of Camillus in order to elevate the senate and the nobles. But there is no solid reason to believe that Manlius envied Camillus, more than that Camillus and the Quinctian family were both envious and jealous of Manlius. The house upon the capitol was what the Quinctian family could not bear.

The truth is, an aristocratical despotism then ruled in Rome, and oppressed the people to a cruel decree; and one is tempted to say, that Manlius was a better man than Camillus or Cincinnatus, though not so secret, designing, and profound a politician, let the torrent of aristocratical history and philosophy roll as it will. There were two parties, one of the nobles, and another of the people; Manlius, from superior humanity and equity, embraced the weaker; Camillus, and the Quinctii, from family pride like that of Lycurgus, domineered over the stronger party, of which they were in full possession. Manlius threw himself into the scale of the people; he entered into close intimacy and strict union with the tribunes; he spoke contemptuously of the senate, and flattered the multitude. “Jam aurâ, non consilio ferri, famæque magnæ malle quam bonæ esse,” says the aristocrat Livy. But let us examine his actions, not receive implicitly the epithets of partial historians. The Roman laws allowed exorbitant interest for the loan of money; an insolvent debtor, by the decree of the judge, was put into the hands of his creditor as his slave, and might be scourged, pinched, or put to death, at discretion; the most execrable aristocratical law that ever existed among men; a law so diabolical, that an attempt to get rid of it at almost any rate was a virtue. The city had been burnt, and every man obliged to rebuild his house. Not only the poorest citizen, but persons in middle life, had been obliged to contract debts. Manlius, seeing the rigor with which debts were exacted, felt more commiseration than his peers for the people. Seeing a centurion, who had distinguished himself by a great number of gallant actions in the field, adjudged as a slave to his creditor, his indignation as well as his compassion, were aroused; he inveighed against the pride of the patricians, cruelty of the usurers, deplored the misery of the people, and expatiated on the merit of his brave companion in war; surely no public oration was ever better founded; he paid the centurion’s debt, and set him at liberty, with much ostentation to be sure, and strong expressions of vanity, but this was allowable by the custom and manners of the age. The centurion too displayed his own merit and services, as well as his gratitude to his deliverer. Manlius went further; he caused the principal part of his own patrimony to be sold, “in order, Romans,” said he, “that I may not suffer any of you, whilst I have any thing left, to be adjudged to your creditors, and made slaves.” This, no doubt, made him very popular; but, in the warmth of his democratical zeal, he had been transported upon some occasion to say in his own house, that the senators had concealed, or appropriated to their own use, the gold intended for the ransom of the city from the Gauls, alluding, probably, to the fact; for that gold had been deposited under the pedestal of Jupiter’s statue. Manlius, perhaps, thought that this gold would be better employed to pay the debts of the people. The senate recalled the dictator, who repaired to the forum attended by all the senators, ascended his tribunal, and ordered his lictor to cite Manlius before him. Manlius advanced with the people; on one side was the senate with their clients, and Camillus at their head; and on the other, the people, headed by Manlius; and each party ready for battle at the word of command. And such a war will, sooner or later, be kindled in every state, where the two parties of poor and rich, patricians and plebeians, nobles and commons, senate and people, call them by what names you will, have not a third power, in an independent executive, to intervene, moderate, and balance them. The artful dictator interrogated Manlius only on the story of the gold. Manlius was embarrassed, for the superstition of the people would have approved of the apparent piety of the senate in dedicating that treasure to Jupiter, though it was probably only policy to hide it. He evaded the question, and descanted on the artifice of the senate in making a war the pretext for creating a dictator, while their real design was to employ that terrible authority against him and the people. The dictator ordered him to prison. The people were deeply affected; but the authority was thought to be legal, and the Romans had prescribed bounds to themselves, through which they dared not break. The authority of the dictator and senate held them in such respect, that neither the tribunes nor the people ventured to raise their eyes or open their mouths. They put on mourning, however, and let their hair and beards grow, and surrounded the prison with continual crowds, manifesting every sign of grief and affliction. They publicly said, that the dictator’s triumph was over the people, not the Volsci, and that all that was wanting was to have Manlius dragged before his chariot. Every thing discovered symptoms of an immediate revolt.

Here comes in a trait of aristocratical cunning, ad captandum vulgus, much more gross than any that had been practised by Manlius. To soften the people, the senate became generous all at once, ordered a colony of two thousand citizens to be sent out, assigning each of them two acres and a half of land. Though this was a largess, it was confined to too small a number, and was too moderate to take off all Manlius’s friends. The artifice was perceived, and when the abdication of the dictatorship of Cossus had removed the fears of the people and set their tongues at liberty, it had small effect in appeasing the people, who reproached one another with ingratitude to their defenders, for whom they expressed great zeal at first, but always abandoned in time of danger; witness Cassius and Mælius. The people passed whole nights round the prison, and threatened to break down the gates. The senate set Manlius at liberty to prevent the people from doing it.

The next year, 371, dissensions were renewed with more acrimony than ever. Manlius, whose spirit was not accustomed to humiliation, was exasperated at his imprisonment; Cossus not having dared to proceed with the decision of Cincinnatus against Mælius, and even the senate having been compelled to give way to the discontent of the people, he was animated to attempt a reformation of the constitution. “How long,” said he to the people, “will you be ignorant of your own strength, of which nature has not thought fit that beasts themselves should be ignorant? Count your number and that of your adversaries; show them war, and you will have peace. Let them see that you are prepared, and they will immediately grant what you ask; determine to be bold in undertaking, or resolve to suffer the utmost injuries. How long will you fix your eyes upon me? Must I repeat the fate of Cassius and Mælius? I hope the gods will avert such a misfortune from me. But those gods will not descend from heaven to defend me. You must remove the danger from me. Shall your resistance to the senate always end in submission to the yoke? That disposition is not natural to you; it is the habit of suffering them to ride you, which they have made their right and inheritance. Why are you so courageous against your enemies abroad, and so soft and timorous in defence of your liberty at home? Yet you have hitherto always obtained what you demanded. It is now time to undertake greater things. You will find less difficulty in giving the senators a master, than it has cost you to defend yourselves against them, while they have had the power and the will to lord it over you. Dictatorsand consuls must be abolished, if you would have the people raise their heads. Unite with me; prevent debtors from suffering the rigors of those odious laws. I declare myself the patron and protector of the people. If you are for exalting your chief by any more splendid title, or illustrious dignity, you will only augment his power for your support, and to obtain your desires.” Ego me patronum profiteor plebis. Vos, si, quo insigni magis imperii honorisve nomine vestrum appellabitis ducem, eo utemini potentiore ad obtinenda ea quæ vultis. This is a manifest intention of introducing a balance of three branches.

In this oration are all the principles of the English constitution. The authority and power of the people to demolish one form of government and erect another, according to their own judgment or will, is clearly asserted. The necessity of abolishing the dictators and consuls, and giving to one chief magistrate the power to control the senate and protect the people, is pointed out. The senate is not proposed to be abolished, nor the assemblies of the people, nor their tribunes; but the abolition of cruel debtors’ laws and redress of all the people’s grievances is to be the consequence. The aristocracy was at that time a cruel tyranny; the people felt it; Manlius acknowledged it. Both saw the necessity of new-modelling the constitution and introducing the three branches of Romulus and Lycurgus, with better and clearer limitations; and both were desirous of attempting it.

If, in reading history, the glosses and reflections of historians are taken implicitly, a mistaken judgment will often be formed. Rome was an aristocracy, and Livy an aristocratical writer. The constitution of government, the principles, prejudices, and manners of the times, should never be a moment out of sight. If we believe the Romans, Manlius was actuated only by envy and ambition; but if we consider his actions, and the form of government at the time, we should be very apt to pronounce him both a greater and a better man than Camillus. To speak candidly, there was a rivalry between the Manlian and the Quinctian families, and the struggle was, which should be the first family and who the first man. And such a struggle exists, not only in every empire, monarchy, republic, but in every city, town, and village in the world. But a philosopher might find as good reason to say that Manlius was sacrificed to the envy, jealousy, and ambition of Camillus and the Quinctii, as that his popular endeavors for the plebeians sprung from envy of Camillus, and ambition to be the first man. Both were heads of parties, and had all the passions incident to such a situation. But if a judgment must be pronounced, which was the best man and citizen, there are very strong arguments in favor of Manlius.

The name of king was abhorred by the Romans. But who and what had made it so? Brutus, and his brother aristocrats, at the expulsion of Tarquin, by appointing religious execrations to be pronounced in the name of the whole state and for all succeeding ages against such as should dare to aspire to the throne. In this way, any word or any thing may be made unpopular at any time and in any nation. The senate were now able to set up the popular cry, that Manlius aspired to the throne; this revived all the religious horror which their established execrations had made an habitual part of their natures, and turned an ignorant, superstitious populace against the best friend and the only friend they had in the republic. The senate first talked of assassination and another Ahala; but, to be very gentle, they ordered “the magistrates to take care that the commonwealth sustained no prejudice from the pernicious designs of Manlius.” This was worse than private assassination; it was an assassination by the senate. It was judgment, sentence, and execution, without trial. The timid, staring people were intimidated, and even the tribunes caught the panic, and offered to take the odium off the senate, and cite Manlius before the tribunal of the people themselves, and accuse him in form. It is impossible not to suspect, nay, fully to believe, that these tribunes were bribed secretly by the senators. They not only abandoned him with whom they had coöperated, but they betrayed the people, their constituents, in the most infamous manner. They said, that in the present disposition, Manlius could not be openly attacked, without interesting the people in his defence; that violent measures would excite a civil war; that it was necessary to separate the interests of Manlius from those of the people. They themselves would cite him before the tribunal of the people, and accuse him in form. Nothing, said the tribunes, is less agreeable to the people than a king. As soon as the multitude sees that your aim is not against them; that from protectors they are become judges; that their tribunes are the accusers, and that a patrician is accused for having aspired at the tyranny, no interest will be so dear to them as that of their liberty. Their liberty! The liberty of plebeians at that time! What a prostitution of sacred terms! Yet, gross as was this artifice, it laid fast hold of those blind prejudices which patricians and aristocrats had inspired, and duped effectually a stupid populace. Manlius was cited by the tribunes before the people. In a mourning habit he appeared, without a single senator, relation, or friend, or even his own brothers, to express concern for his fate. And no wonder; a senator, and a person of consular dignity, was never known to have been so universally abandoned. But nothing can be more false than the reflections of historians upon this occasion. “So much did the love of liberty and the fear of being enslaved prevail in the hearts of the Romans over all the ties of blood and nature!” It was not love of liberty, but absolute fear, which seized the people. The senate had already condemned him by their vote, and given their consuls dictatorial power against Manlius and his friends. The tribunes themselves were corrupted with bribes or fear; and no man dared expose himself to aristocratical vengeance, unprotected by the tribunes.

To prove that it was fear, and not patriotism, that restrained his relations and friends, we need only recollect another instance. When Appius Claudius, the decemvir, was imprisoned for treason, much more clear than that of Manlius, and for conduct as wicked, brutal, and cruel, as Manlius’s appears virtuous, generous, and humane, the whole Claudian family, even C. Claudius, his professed enemy, appeared as suppliants before the judges, imploring mercy for their relation. His friends were not afraid. Why? Because Claudius was an enemy and hater of the people, and, therefore, popular with most of the patricians. His crimes were aristocratical crimes, therefore, not only almost venial, but almost virtues. Manlius’s offence was, love of the people; and democratical misdemeanors are the most unpardonable of all that can be committed or conceived in a government where the demon of aristocracy domineers. Livy himself betrays a consciousness of the insufficiency of the evidence to prove Manlius’s guilt. He says he can discover no proof, nor any other charge of any crime of treason, “regni crimen,” except some assemblies of people, seditious speeches, generosity to debtors, and the false insinuation of the concealment of the gold.

But here we see what the people are when they meet in one assembly with the senators. They dare not vote against the opinion or will of the nobles and patricians. The aristocratical part of mankind ever did, and ever will, overawe the people, and carry what votes they please in general, when they meet together with the democratical part, either in a collective or representative assembly. Thus it happened here. Superstition decided. While in sight of the capitol, their religious reverence for the abode of Jupiter, saved and inhabited by Manlius, was a counterbalance to their fears and veneration for the senators descended from the gods. The people could not condemn him in sight of the capitol. The tribunes, knowing what was in them, adjourned to another place the next day. The capitol out of sight, and the senators present, condemned their deliverer; and he died a sacrifice to the rancorous envy of his peers in the senate, the consulate, and patrician order, who could not bear the sight of so splendid a distinction and elevation above themselves in any one of their order, as Manlius’s house upon the capitol, and his title of Capitolinus. “Homines prope quadringentos produxisse dicitur, quibus sine fœnore expensas pecunias tulisset, quorum bona venire, quos duci addictos prohibuisset. Ad hæc, decora quoque belli non commemorasse tantùm, sed protulisse etiam conspicienda; spolia hostium cæsorum ad triginta, dona imperatorum ad quadraginta, in quibus insignes duas murales coronas, civicas octo. Ad hæc servatos ex hostibus cives produxisse; inter quos, C. Servilium magistrum equitum absentem nominatum; et, quum ea quoque quæ bello gesta essent, pro fastigio rerum, oratione etiam magnificâ facta dictis æquando, memorasset, nudasse pectus insigne cicatricibus bello acceptis; et identidem, Capitolium spectans, Jovem deosque alios devocasse ad auxilium fortunarum suarum; precatusque esse, ut, quam mentem sibi Capitolinam arcem protegenti ad salutem populi Romani dedissent, eam populo Romano in suo discrimine darent; et orasse singulos universosque, ut capitolium atque arcem intuentes, ut ad deos immortales versi, de se judicarent.”

By removing the assembly from the Campus Martius, where the people were assembled in centuries, (centuriatim,) to the Grove, (Petelinum Lucum,) from whence the capitol could not be seen, obstinatis animis triste judicium, with gloomy obstinacy the fatal sentence was passed, and the tribunes cast him down from the Tarpeian rock. “Such was the catastrophe,” says Livy, “of a man who, if he had not lived in a free city, would have merited fame.” He should have said, if he had not lived in a simple aristocracy, and alarmed the envy of his fellow aristocrats by superior merit, services, and rewards, especially that most conspicuous mark, his house upon the capitol, and his new title,1 or agnomen, Capitolinus, which mortal envy could not bear.

He was no sooner dead, than the people repented and regretted him. A sudden plague that broke out was considered as a judgment from Heaven upon the nation, for having polluted the capitol with the blood of its deliverer.

The history of Manlius is an unanswerable argument against a simple aristocracy; it is a proof that no man’s liberty or life is safe in such a government; the more virtue and merit he has, the more in danger, the more certain his destruction.2 It is a good argument against a standing sovereign and supreme authority in an hereditary aristocracy: so far Nedham quotes it pertinently, and applies it justly. But, when the same example is cited to prove that the people in one supreme assembly, successively chosen, are the best keepers of their liberty, so far from proving the proposition, it proves the contrary, because Camillus, the Quinctii, and Manlius will all be chosen into that one assembly by the people; the same emulation and rivalry, the same jealousy and envy, the same struggles of families and individuals for the first place, will arise between them. One of them will have the rich and great for his followers, another the poor; hence will arise two, or three, or more parties, which will never cease to struggle till war and bloodshed decide which is the strongest. Whilst the struggle continues, the laws are trampled on, and the rights of the citizens invaded by all parties in turn; and when it is decided, the leader of the victorious army is emperor and despot.

Nedham had forgotten the example of Cassius, which would have been equally apposite to prove a simple aristocracy a bad government, and equally improper to prove that the people, in their supreme assemblies, successively chosen, are the best keepers of their liberty. It is also equally proper to prove the contrary, and to show that such a simple democracy is as dangerous as a simple aristocracy. These examples all show that the natural principles of the English constitution were constantly at work among the Roman people; that nature herself was constantly calling out for two masters to control the senate, one in a king or single person, possessed of the executive power, and the other in an equal representation of the people, possessed of a negative on all the laws, and especially on the disposal of the public money. As these examples are great illustrations of our argument, and illustrious proofs of the superior excellence of the American constitutions, we will examine the story of Cassius before we come to that of the decemvirs.

The first notice that is taken of Cassius is in the year 252, when he was consul, gained considerable advantages over the Sabines, and received the honor of a triumph. In 256, he was chosen by Lartius, the first dictator, general of the horse, and commanded a division of the army with success against the Latins. In the year 261, disputes ran so high between patricians and plebeians, that no candidate appeared for the consulship, and several refused; the vessel was in such a storm, that nobody would accept the helm. The people who remained in the city at last nominated Posthumus Cominius, and Spurius Cassius, who were believed equally agreeable to plebeians and patricians. The first thing they did was to propose the affair of the debts to the senate. A violent opposition ensued, headed by Appius, who constantly insisted that all the favor shown the populace only made them the more insolent, and that nothing but inflexible severity could reduce them to their duty. The younger senators all blindly adopted this opinion. Nothing passed in several tumultuous assemblies, but altercations and mutual reproaches. The ancient senators were all inclined to peace. Agrippa, who had observed a sagacious medium, neither flattering the pride of the great, nor favoring the license of the people, being one of the new senators whom Brutus had chosen after the expulsion of Tarquin, supported the opinion, that the good of the state required the reëstablishment of concord among the citizens. Sent by the senate to treat with the people retired to the sacred mountain, he spoke his celebrated fable of the Belly and the Members. The people, at this conference, insisted that, as by the creation of dictators with unlimited authority, the law which admitted appeals to the people from the decrees of any magistrate whatever, was eluded, and in a manner made void, tribunes should be created, a new species of magistrates, whose sole duty should be the conservation of their rights. The affair of Coriolanus happened in this interval, between the first consulate of Sp. Cassius, in 261, and the second, in 268; in which, probably, he had acted in favor of the people, in establishing the tribunate, and in defending them against Coriolanus, Appius Claudius, and the other oligarchic senators. This year, 268, he marched against the Volsci and Hernici, who made peace, and the consul obtained the honor of a triumph.

Cassius, after his triumph, represented to the senate, that “the people merited some reward for the services they had rendered the commonwealth, for defending the public liberty, and subjecting new countries to the Roman power; that the lands acquired by their arms belonged to the public, though some patricians had appropriated them to themselves; that an equitable distribution of these lands would enable the poor plebeians to bring up children for the benefit of the commonwealth; and that such a division alone could establish that equality which ought to subsist between the citizens of the same state.” He associated in this privilege the Latins settled at Rome, who had obtained the freedom of the city. “Tum primum lex agraria promulgata est.”* This law, which had at least a great appearance of equity, would have relieved the misery of the people, and no doubt rendered Cassius popular. The Romans never granted peace to their enemies until they had taken some of their territory from them. Part of such conquests were sold to defray the expense of the war; another portion was distributed among the poor plebeians. Some cantons were farmed out for the public; rapacious patricians, solely intent upon enriching themselves, took possession of some; and these lands, unjustly usurped by the rich, Cassius was for having distributed anew in favor of the plebeians.1

The aristocratical pride, avarice, and ambition, were all incensed, and the senators greatly alarmed. The people discovered symptoms, that they had begun to think themselves of the same species with their rulers; and one patrician of consular dignity, dared to encourage them in such presumptuous and aspiring thoughts. Some device or other must be invented to dupe the people and ruin their leader. Virginius, the consul, soon hit upon an expedient. Rabuleius, the tribune, asked him in assembly what he thought of this law? He answered, he would willingly consent that the lands should be distributed among the Roman people, provided the Latins had no share. Divide et impera. This distinction, without the least appearance of equity, was addressed simply to the popular hatred between the Romans and Latins, and the bait was greedily swallowed. The people were highly pleased with the consul, and began to despise Cassius, and to suspect him of ambition to be king. He continued his friendly intentions towards the people, and proposed in senate to reimburse, as it was but just, out of the public treasury, the money which the poor citizens had paid for the corn, of which Gelo, King of Syracuse, had made the commonwealth a present during the scarcity. But even this was now represented by the senate, and suspected by the people, to be only soliciting popular favor; and, although the people felt every hour the necessity of a king to protect them against the tyranny of the senate, yet they had been gulled by patrician artifice into an oath against kings, and, although they felt the want of such a magistrate, they had not sense enough to see it. The agrarian law was opposed in the senate by Appius and Sempronius, and evaded by the appointment of ten commissioners to survey the lands.

The next year Cassius was cited before the people, and accused by the quæstors of having taken secret measures for opening a way to the sovereignty; of having provided arms, and received money from the Latins and Hernici; and of having made a very great party among the most robust of their youth, who were continually seen in his train.

The people heard the quæstors, but gave no attention to Cassius’s answer and defence. No consideration for his children, his relations and friends, who appeared in great numbers to support him; no remembrance of his great actions, by which he had raised himself to the first dignities; nor three consulships and two triumphs, which had rendered him very illustrious, could delay his condemnation; so unpardonable a crime with the Romans, was the slightest suspicion of aspiring at regal power!1 So ignorant, so unjust, so ungrateful, and so stupid, were that very body of plebeians, who were continually suffering the cruel tyranny of patricians, and continually soliciting protectors against it! Without regarding any moderation or proportion, the blind tools of the hatred and vengeance of their enemies, they condemned Cassius to die, and the quæstors instantly carried him to the Tarpeian rock, which fronted the forum, and threw him down, in the presence of the whole people. His house was demolished, and his estate sold to purchase a statue to Ceres; and the faction of the great grew more powerful and haughty, and rose in their contempt for the plebeians, who lost courage in proportion, and soon reproached themselves with injustice, as well as imprudence, in the condemnation of the zealous defender of their interests. They found themselves cheated in all things. The consuls neither executed the senate’s decree for distributing the lands, nor were the ten commissioners elected. They complained, with great truth, that the senate did not act with sincerity; and accused the tribunes of the last year of betraying their interests. The tribunes of this year warmly demanded the execution of the decree, to elude which a new war was invented. The patricians preserved their aristocratical tyranny for many centuries, by keeping up continually some quarrel with foreigners, and by frequently creating dictators. The patricians, in the assemblies by centuries, had an immense advantage over the plebeians. The consuls were here chosen by the patricians, as Cassius and Manlius were murdered by assemblies in centuries. In 270, Cæso Fabius, one of Cassius’s accusers, was chosen consul, though very unpopular. In 271, the other of Cassius’s accusers was chosen consul.

In these contests the steadiness of the patricians is as remarkable as the inconstancy of the plebeians; the sagacity of the former as obvious as the stupidity of the latter; and the cruelty of the former as conspicuous as the ingratitude of the latter. Prejudice, passion, and superstition, appear to have altogether governed the plebeians, without the least appearance of their being rational creatures, or moral agents; such was their total ignorance of arts and letters, all the little advantages of education which then existed being monopolized by the patricians. The aristocracy appears in precisely the same character, in all these anecdotes, as we before saw it in Venice, Poland, Bern, and elsewhere. The same indispensable necessity appears in all of them, in order to preserve even the appearance of equity and liberty, to give the patricians a master in the first executive magistrate, and another master in a house of commons; I say, master; for each of the three branches must be, in its turn, both master and servant, governing and being governed by turns.

To understand how the people were duped upon these occasions, and particularly how Manlius was condemned to death, we must recollect that the tribunes cited him before the people, not in their curiæ, but centuries. The centuries were formed on an artful idea, to make power accompany wealth. The people were divided into classes, according to the proportion of the fortunes; each class was divided into centuries; but the number of centuries in the different classes was so unequal, that those of the first, or richest class, made a majority of the whole, and when the centuries of this class were unanimous they decided the question. By this institution the rich were masters of the legislature.

STATE OF THE CLASSES AND CENTURIES.
Class		Roman Valuation.		Sterling			No of Centuries
		Roman Valuation.		£	s.		No of Centuries
1	—	100,000	=	322	18	—	98
2	—	75,000	=	242	3	—	21
3	—	50,000	=	161	9	—	21
4	—	25,000	=	80	14	—	21
5	—	11,000	=	35	10	—	31
6	—		=			—	1
						Total,	193	from
							98	sub.
							95
			Majority of the first class,					3

So that by citing Manlius before the people by centuries, the senate were sure of a vote for his destruction, and the people had not sense to see it, or spirit to alter it.

Nedham, thus far, appears to reason fairly and conclusively, when he adduces the examples of Mælius and Manlius, and he might have added Cassius, to prove that the people are ever in danger of losing their liberty; and, indeed, he might have advanced that they never have any liberty, where they are governed by one senate. But these examples do not prove what he alleges them to prove, namely,—“that the people, in their supreme assemblies, successively chosen, are the best keepers of their liberty;” because such an assembly is subject to every danger of a standing, hereditary senate; and more, the first vote divides it into two parties, and the majority is omnipotent, and the minority defenceless. He should have adduced these examples to prove the necessity of separating the executive, legislative, and judicial, and of dividing the legislature into three branches, making the executive one of them, and independent of the other two. This is the only scientific government; the only plan which takes into consideration all the principles in nature, and provides for all cases that occur.

He is equally right, and equally wrong, in the application of his other examples. “The people,” says he, “were sometimes in danger of a surprise by a grandee cabinet or junto, as that upstart tyranny of the decemviri, where ten men made a shift to enslave the senate as well as the people.” It is no wonder that Cassius, Mælius, and Manlius, were sacrificed to the passions of the senate, for until the year of Rome 300, the Romans had no certain laws; so that the consuls and senators, acting as judges, were absolute arbiters of the fate of the citizens. Terentillus, a tribune, had proposed an ordinance that laws should be instituted, as rules of right, both in public and private affairs. The senate had eluded and postponed, by various artifices, the law of Terentillus until this year, 300, when the tribunes solicited the execution of it with great spirit; and the senate, weary of contention, or apprehensive of greater danger, at length decreed, “That ambassadors should be sent to Athens, and to the Greek cities in Italy, to collect such laws as they should find most conformable to the constitution of the Roman commonwealth; and that at their return, the consuls should deliberate with the senate upon the choice of legislators, of the power to be confided to them, and the time they were to continue in office.” Sp. Posthumius, Servius Sulpicius, and A. Manlius, three persons of consular dignity, were appointed deputies. Three galleys were prepared by the public, of a magnificence that might do honor to the Roman people.

In the year 302, the ambassadors were returned, and Appius Claudius, whose ancestors had always been haughty aristocratics, was chosen consul, with T. Genucius for his colleague. The senate assembled and resolved that decemviri should be elected out of the principal senators, whose authority should continue a year; that they should govern the commonwealth with all the power which the consuls then had, and as the kings had formerly exercised, and without any appeal from their judgments; that all other magistracies, and even the tribuneship, should be abolished. This decree was received by the people with loud acclamations. An assembly, by centuries, was immediately held, and the new magistrates created, and the old ones all abdicated their offices. Thus the constitution was wholly changed, and all authority transferred to one centre, the decemvirs. It was soon exercised like all other authorities in one centre. We see here the effect of two powers, without a third. The people from hatred to the consuls, and the senate from hatred to the tribunes, unite at once in a total abolition of the constitution.

The constitution of the decemvirs was precisely Nedham’s idea; it was annually eligible; it was the people’s government in their successive assemblies; but we find that an annual power, without any limits, was a great temptation. The decemvirs were all senators of consular dignity, and therefore, in the opinion of the people themselves, the most eminent for talents and virtues; yet their virtues were not sufficient to secure an honest use of their unbounded power. They took many precautions to preserve their own moderation, as well as to avoid exciting jealousy in their fellow-citizens; only one had the rods and axes, the others had nothing to distinguish them but a single officer, called Accensus, who walked before each of them. Their president continued only one day; and they succeeded each other daily till the end of the year.

It is much to our purpose to enlarge upon this example; because, instead of being an argument for Nedham’s inconcinnate system, it is full proof against it. The course of passions and events, in this case, were precisely the same as will take place in every simple government of the people, by a succession of their representatives, in a single assembly; and whether that assembly consists of ten members, or five hundred, it will make no difference. In the morning, the decemviri all went to their tribunal, where they took cognizance of all causes and affairs, public and private; justice was administered with all possible equity; and everybody departed with perfect satisfaction. Nothing could be so charming as the regard they professed for the interests of the people, and the protection which the meanest found against the oppression of the great. It was now generally affirmed that there was no occasion for tribunes, consuls, prætors, or any other magistrates. The wisdom, equity, moderation, and humanity of the new government, was admired and extolled. What peace, what tranquillity, what happiness were enjoyed by the public and by individuals! what a consolation! what glory to the decemvirs! Appius Claudius, especially, engrossed the whole glory of the administration in the minds of the people. He acquired so decided an ascendency over his colleagues, and so irresistible an influence with the people, that the whole authority seemed centred in him. He had the art to distinguish himself, peculiarly, in whatever he transacted, in concert with his colleagues. His mildness and affability, his kind condescension to the meanest and weakest of the citizens, and his polite attention in saluting them all by their names, gained him all hearts. Let it be remembered he had, till this year, been the open enemy of the plebeians. As his temper was naturally violent and cruel, his hatred to the people had arisen to ferocity. On a sudden he was become another man; humane, popular, obliging, wholly devoted to please the multitude and acquire their affections. Everybody delighted in the government of the decemvirs, and a perfect union prevailed among themselves. They completed their body of laws, and caused it to be engraved on ten tables. They were ratified by the senate, confirmed by the people in the comitia centuriata, engraven on pillars of brass, and placed in the forum.

The year was upon the point of expiring; and as the consuls and senators found themselves delivered by the new government from the persecutions of the tribunes, and the people from what they equally hated, the authority of the consuls, both parties agreed in the propriety of choosing ten successors. It was pretended that some further laws might be still wanting; that a year was too short to complete so great a work; and that to carry the whole into full effect, the independent authority of the same magistracy would be necessary. That which must happen upon all annual elections of such a government in one centre, happened in this case. The city was in a greater and more universal ferment than had ever been known. Senators, the most distinguished by age and merit, demanded the office; no doubt to prevent factious and turbulent spirits from obtaining it. Appius, who secretly intended to have himself continued, seeing those great persons, who had passed through all dignities, so eager in pursuit of this, was alarmed. The people, charmed with his past conduct while decemvir, openly clamored to continue him in preference to all others. He affected at first a reluctance, and even a repugnance, at the thought of accepting a second time an employment so laborious, and so capable of exciting jealousy and envy against him. To get rid of his colleagues, and to stimulate them to refuse the office, he declared upon all occasions that, as they had discharged their duty with fidelity, by their assiduity and anxious care for a whole year, it was but just to allow them repose and appoint them successors. The more aversion he discovered, the more he was solicited. The desires and wishes of the whole city, the unanimous and earnest solicitations of the multitude, were at length, with pain and reluctance, complied with. He exceeded all his competitors in artifice. He embraced one, took another by the hand, and walked publicly in the forum, in company with the Duilii and Icilii, the two families who were the principals of the people and the pillars of the tribunate. His colleagues, who had been hitherto his dupes, knowing these popular condescensions to be contrary to his character, which was naturally arrogant, began to open their eyes; but not daring to oppose him openly, they opposed their own address to his management. As he was the youngest among them, they chose him president, whose office it was to nominate the candidates to offices, relying upon his modesty not to name himself; a thing without example, except among the tribunes. But modesty and decency were found in him but feeble barriers against ambition. He not only caused himself to be elected, but excluded all his colleagues of the last year, and filled up the nine other places with his own tools, three of whom were plebeians. The senate and whole patrician body were astonished at this, as it was thought by them contrary to his own glory and that of his ancestors, as well as to his haughty character. This popular trait entirely gained him the multitude. It would be tedious to relate the manner in which they continued their power from year to year, with the most hardened impudence on their part, the most silly acquiescence of the people, and the fears of the senate and patricians. Their tyranny and cruelty became at length intolerable; and the blood of Virginia, on a father’s dagger, was alone sufficient to arouse a stupid people from their lethargy.

Is it not absurd in Nedham to adduce this example, in support of the government of the people by their successive representatives annually chosen? Were not the decemvirs the people’s representatives? and were not their elections annual? and would not the same consequences have happened, if the number had been one hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand, instead of ten? “O, but the people of Rome should not have continued them in power from year to year.” How will you hinder the people from continuing them in power? If the people have the choice, they may continue the same men; and we certainly know they will; no bonds can restrain them. Without the liberty of choice, the deputies would not be the people’s representatives. If the people make a law that the same man shall never serve two years, the people can and will repeal that law; if the people impose upon themselves an oath, they will soon say and believe they can dispense with that oath. In short, the people will have the men whom they love best for the moment, and the men whom they love best will make any law to gratify their present humor. Nay, more, the people ought to be represented by the men who have their hearts and confidence, for these alone can ever know their wants and desires. But these men ought to have some check to restrain them and the people too when those desires are for forbidden fruit—for injustice, cruelty, and the ruin of the minority. And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world.

We come next to the examples of continuing power in particular persons. The Romans were swallowed up, by continuing power too long in the hands of the triumvirates of emperors or generals. The first of these were Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus. But who continued the power of Cæsar? If the people continued it, the argument arising from the example is against a civil government of the people, or by their successive representative assemblies. Was it the senate, was it the standing permanent power in the constitution, that conferred this continuance of power on Cæsar? By no means. It is again necessary to recollect the story, that we may not be imposed on. No military station existed in Italy, lest some general might overawe the republic. Italy, however, was understood to extend only from Tarentum to the Arnus and the Rubicon. Cisalpine Gaul was not reputed to be in Italy, and might be held by a military officer and an army. Cæsar, from a deliberate and sagacious ambition, procured from the people an unprecedented prolongation of his appointments for five years; but the distribution of the provinces was still the prerogative of the senate, by the Sempronian law. Cæsar had ever been at variance with a majority of the senate. In the office of prætor he had been suspended by them. In his present office of consul, he had set them at open defiance. He had no hopes of obtaining from them the prolongation of his power and the command of a province. He knew that the very proposal of giving him the command of Cisalpine Gaul for a number of years would have shocked them. In order to carry his point, he must set aside the authority of the senate, and destroy the only check, the only appearance of a balance, remaining in the constitution. A tool of his, the tribune Vatinius, moved the people to set aside the law of Sempronius, and, by their own unlimited power, name Cæsar as pro-consul of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years, with an army of several legions. The senate were alarmed, and in vain opposed. The people voted it. The senate saw that all was lost; and Cato cried, “You have placed a king with his guards in your citadel.” Cæsar boasted, that he had prevailed both in obtaining the consulate and the command, not by the concession of the senate, but in direct opposition to their will. He was well aware of their malice, he said. Though he had a consummate command of his temper, and the profoundest dissimulation, while in pursuit of his point, his exuberant vanity braved the world when he had carried it. He now openly insulted the senate, and no longer concealed his connection with Pompey and Crassus, whom he had overreached to concur in his appointment. Thus, one of the clearest and strongest examples in history, to show the necessity of a balance between an independent senate and an independent people, is adduced by Nedham in favor of his indigested plan, which has no balance at all. The other example of Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus, is not worth considering particularly; for the trial between them was but a struggle of arms, by military policy alone, without any mixture of civil or political debates or negotiations.

The fourth reason is, “because a succession of supreme powers destroys faction;” which is defined to be “an adhering to an interest distinct from the true interest of the state.”

In this particular, one may venture to differ altogether from our author, and deny the fact, that a succession of sovereign authority in one assembly, by popular elections, destroys faction. We may affirm the contrary; that a standing authority in an absolute monarch, or an hereditary aristocracy, is less friendly to the monster than a simple popular government; and that it is only in a mixed government, of three independent orders, of the one, the few, and the many, and three separate powers, the legislative, executive, and judicial, that all sorts of factions, those of the poor and the rich, those of the gentlemen and common people, those of the one, the few, and the many, can at all times be quelled. The reason given by our author is enough to prove this. “Those who are factious, must have time to improve their sleights and projects, in disguising their designs, drawing in instruments, and worming out their opposites.” In order to judge of this, let us put two suppositions: 1. Either the succession must be by periodical elections, simply; or, 2, by periodical elections in rotation. And, in either case, the means and opportunities of improving address and systems, concealing or feigning designs, making friends and escaping enemies, are greater in a succession of popular elections, than in a standing aristocracy or simple monarchy, and infinitely greater than in a mixed government. When the monster Faction is watched and guarded by Cerberus with his three heads, and a sop is thrown to him to corrupt or appease him, one mouth alone will devour it, and the other two will give the alarm.

But to return to our first case, a succession in one assembly, by simple annual elections. Elections are the best possible schools of political art and address. One may appeal to any man who has equal experience in elections and in courts, whether address and art, and even real political knowledge, is not to be acquired more easily, and in a shorter time, in the former than in the latter. A king of France once asked his most able and honest ambassador, D’Ossat, where he had learned that wonderful dexterity with which he penetrated into the bosoms of men of all nations and characters, unravelled every plait in the human soul, and every intricacy of affairs and events? The cardinal answered, “Sire, I learned it all in my youth, at the election of a parish officer.” It is a common observation in England, that their greatest statesmen, and their favorite Chatham among the rest, were formed by attendance on elections. The human heart is nowhere so open and so close by turns. Every argument is there exhausted; every passion, prejudice, imagination, superstition, and caprice, is easily and surely learned among these scenes. One would suspect that Shakspeare had been an electioneering agent. When these elections are in a single city, like Rome, there will be always two sets of candidates. If one set succeeds one year, the other will endeavor to succeed the next. This will make the whole year a scene of faction and intrigue, and every citizen, except, perhaps, a very few, who will not meddle on either side, a partisan or factious man. If the elections are in a large country, like England, for example, or one of the United States of America, where various cities, towns, boroughs, and corporations, are to be represented, each scene of election will have two or more candidates, and two or more parties, each of which will study its sleights and projects, disguise its designs, draw in tools, and worm out enemies. We must remember, that every party, and every individual, is now struggling for a share in the executive and judicial power, as well as legislative, for a share in the distribution of all honors, offices, rewards, and profits. Every flattery and menace, every passion and prejudice of every voter will be applied to; every trick and bribe that can be bestowed, and will be accepted, will be used; and, what is horrible to think of, that candidate, or that agent, who has fewest scruples; who will propagate lies and slanders with most confidence and secrecy; who will wheedle, flatter, and cajole; who will debauch the people by treats, feasts, and diversions, with the least hesitation; and bribe with the most impudent front, which can consist with hypocritical concealment, will draw in tools and worm out enemies the fastest. Unsullied honor, sterling integrity, real virtue, will stand a very unequal chance. When vice, folly, impudence, and knavery have carried an election one year, they will acquire, in the course of it, fresh influence and power to succeed the next. In the course of the year, the delegate in an assembly that disposes of all commissions, contracts, and pensions, has many opportunities to reward his friends among his own constituents, and to punish his enemies. The son or other relation of one friend has a commission given him in the army, another in the navy, a third a benefice in the church, a fourth in the customs, a fifth in the excise; shares in loans and contracts are distributed among his friends, by which they are enabled to increase their own and his dependents and partisans, or, in other words, to draw in more instruments and parties, and worm out their opposites. All this is so easy to comprehend, so obvious to sight, and so certainly known in universal experience, that it is astonishing that our author should have ventured to assert, that such a government kills the cankerworm Faction.

But to consider the subject in one other point of view, let us introduce the idea of a rotation, by which is here meant, not merely vacating a seat, which the electors may fill again with the same subject, but a fundamental law, that no man shall serve in the sovereign assembly more than one year, or two or three years, or one in three, or three in six, &c.; for example, suppose England, or any one of the United States, governed by one sovereign assembly, annually elected, with a fundamental law, that no member should serve more than three years in six; what would be the consequence? In the first place, it is obvious that this is a violation of the rights of mankind; it is an abridgment of the rights both of electors and candidates. There is no right clearer, and few of more importance, than that the people should be at liberty to choose the ablest and best men, and that men of the greatest merit should exercise the most important employments; yet, upon the present supposition, the people voluntarily resign this right, and shackle their own choice. This year the people choose those members who are the ablest, wealthiest, best qualified, and have most of their confidence and affection. In the course of the three years they increase their number of friends, and consequently their influence and power, by their administration, yet at the end of three years they must all return to private life, and be succeeded by another set, who have less wisdom, wealth, and virtue, and less of the confidence and affection of the people. Will either they or the people bear this? Will they not repeal the fundamental law, and be applauded by the nation, at least by their own friends and constituents, who are the majority, for so doing? But supposing so unnatural and improbable a thing, as that they should yet respect the law, what will be the consequence? They will, in effect, nominate their successors, and govern still. Their friends are the majority, their successors will be all taken from their party, and the mortified minority will see themselves the dupes. Those men who have the most weight, influence, or power, whether by merit, wealth, or birth, will govern, whether they stay at home or go to parliament. Such a rotation, then, will only increase and multiply factions.

Our author’s examples must be again examined. “What made the Roman kings factious, but a continuation of power in their persons and families?” If it is admitted that they were factious, as Tarquin no doubt was, it is certain that the nobles about them were much more so; and their factious actions were chiefly occasioned by the eternal jealousy and envy, rivalry and ambition, of the great families that were nearest to them. But the effect was produced by their powers being undefined, unlimited by law, and unchecked by constitutional power, not by its prolongation. The power of the king, and the power of the senate, were continued; and neither was checked, for the people had not a power adequate to the purpose of checking either, much less both; both grew factious, but the senate most so, and drove away the king, that they might have the exclusive power of being factious, and without the least regard to the liberty of the people.

“After the Romans became a commonwealth, was it not for the same reason that the senate fell into such heats and fits among themselves?” It may be truly answered, that it was not the continuation of power in the senate, but the powers being unlimited, that made it factious. A power without a check is a faction. The senate itself was a faction from the first moment after the expulsion of the kings. But if the senate had been annually chosen by the people, and held the same unlimited power, their factions, heats, and fits, would have been much earlier, and more violent. “Did not Appius Claudius and his junto by the same means lord it over the senate?” It was, again, the illimitation of his power that enabled him to lord it. It was granted only for one year. And who continued it? The people. And who can hinder the people, when they have no check, from continuing power? Who ought to hinder them? But if Appius’s unchecked power had grown up from step to step, by a series of popular elections, he would not have lorded it less; he might have possessed Virginia, and have murdered her father with impunity. Continuation of power, in the same persons and families, will as certainly take place in a simple democracy, or a democracy by representation, as in an hereditary aristocracy or monarchy. This evil, if it be one, will not be avoided nor remedied, but increased and aggravated, by our author’s plan of government. The continuation will be certain; but it will be accomplished by corruption, which is worse than a continuation by birth; and if corruption cannot effect the continuation, sedition and rebellion will be recurred to; for a degraded, disappointed, rich and illustrious family would at any time annihilate heaven and earth, if it could, rather than fail of carrying its point.

It is our author’s peculiar misfortune, that all his examples prove his system to be wrong. “Whence was it that Sylla and Marius caused so many proscriptions, cruelties, and combustions, in Rome, but by an extraordinary continuation of power in themselves?” Continuation of power in Marius, &c. enabled him to commit cruelties, to be sure; but who continued him in power? was it the senate or the people? By the enthusiasm of the people for Marius, he had surrounded himself with assassins, who considered the patricians, nobles, and senate, as enemies to their cause, and enabled him and his faction to become masters of the commonwealth. The better sort of people, the really honest and virtuous republicans, were discouraged and deterred from frequenting the public assemblies. He had recourse to violence, in the elections of tribunes, that he might carry the choice of a prostituted tool of his own, Apuleius, against the senate and nobles; and because their candidate, Nonius, was chosen, though now vested with a sacred character, Marius’s creatures murdered him. No man had courage to propose an inquiry into the cause of his death. Apuleius, to gratify his party, proposed new laws, to distribute lands to the poor citizens and to the veteran soldiers, to purchase more lands for the same purpose, to remit the price of corn already distributed from the public granaries, and to distribute still more, gratis, at the public expense, to the people. In vain did the quæstor and the senate represent that there would be an end of industry, order, and government. Apuleius, to extend the power of the popular assemblies, and remove every check from his own and Marius’s designs, brought forward new laws;—1. That the acts of the tribes should have the force of laws; 2. That it should be treason to interrupt a tribune; 3. That the senate should be compelled to take an oath to confirm every act of the tribes in five days. The power of the senate was thus entirely suppressed; their branch of the legislature was reduced to a mere form, and even the form they were not at liberty to refuse. Marius, though he was at the bottom of this measure at first, by the most abandoned hypocrisy declared himself in senate against taking the oath, in order to ruin Metellus and all the other honest men; and, as soon as he had accomplished this, he took the oath, and compelled the rest to do the same. It was by flattery, bribery, artifice, and violence, that Marius and Apuleius prevailed with the people to continue their power, in opposition to all that the senate could do to prevent it. What would have been the consequence, then, if there had been no senate? Would not the majority of the people in the tribes have continued their power, against all that could have been done by the minority? Would not still more of the public lands, money, and grain, have been lavished upon proper instruments among the majority, and the minority have been compelled to pay the expense?

Our author affects to say, that the “senate and people continued the powers of Pompey and Cæsar.” But Cæsar himself knew it was the people, and not the senate; and if the senate continued Pompey, it was because Cæsar and the people laid them under the necessity of doing it in their own defence. Would Cæsar have had less “command in Gallia,” if the people, or their successive assemblies, had been possessed of all power? It is most obvious, that a majority of the people, in that case, would have continued Cæsar as long as he desired, and have given him as much power as he wished; so that every step of our author’s progress demonstrates his system to be false. It is idle to say, that a continuation of power increases influence, and spreads corruption, unless you point out a way to prevent such a continuance of power. To give all power to the people’s successive single representative assemblies, is to make the continuance of power, with all its increasing influence and corruption, certain and inevitable. You may as wisely preach to the winds, as gravely exhort a triumphant majority to lay down their power.

It is undoubtedly honorable in any man, who has acquired a great influence, unbounded confidence, and unlimited power, to resign it voluntarily; and odious to take advantage of such an opportunity to destroy a free government. But it would be madness in a legislator to frame his policy upon a supposition that such magnanimity would often appear. It is his business to contrive his plan in such a manner, that such unlimited influence, confidence, and power, shall never be obtained by any man. The laws alone can be trusted with unlimited confidence; those laws, which alone can secure equity between all and every one;* which are the bond of that dignity which we enjoy in the commonwealth; the foundation of liberty, and the fountain of equity; the mind, the soul, the counsel, and judgment of the city; whose ministers are the magistrates, whose interpreters the judges, whose servants are all men who mean to be free.† Those laws, which are right reason, derived from the Divinity, commanding honesty, and forbidding iniquity; which are silent magistrates, where the magistrates are only speaking laws; which, as they are founded on eternal morals, are emanations of the Divine mind.‡

If “the life of liberty, and the only remedy against self-interest lies in succession of powers and persons,” the United States of America have taken the most effectual measures to secure that life and that remedy, in establishing annual elections of their governors, senators, and representatives. This will probably be allowed to be as perfect an establishment of a succession of powers and persons as human laws can make; but in what manner annual elections of governors and senators will operate, remains to be ascertained. It should always be remembered, that this is not the first experiment that was ever made in the world of elections to great offices of state; how they have hitherto operated in every great nation, and what has been their end, is very well known. Mankind have universally discovered that chance was preferable to a corrupt choice, and have trusted Providence rather than themselves. First magistrates and senators had better be made hereditary at once, than that the people should be universally debauched and bribed, go to loggerheads, and fly to arms regularly every year. Thank Heaven! Americans understand calling conventions; and if the time should come, as it is very possible it may, when hereditary descent shall become a less evil than annual fraud and violence, such a convention may still prevent the first magistrate from becoming absolute as well as hereditary. But if this argument of our author is considered as he intended it, as a proof that a succession of powers and persons in one assembly is the most perfect commonwealth, it is totally fallacious.

Though we allow benevolence and generous affections to exist in the human breast, yet every moral theorist will admit the selfish passions in the generality of men to be the strongest. There are few who love the public better than themselves, though all may have some affection for the public. We are not, indeed, commanded to love our neighbor better than ourselves. Self-interest, private avidity, ambition, and avarice, will exist in every state of society, and under every form of government. A succession of powers and persons, by frequent elections, will not lessen these passions in any case, in a governor, senator, or representative; nor will the apprehension of an approaching election restrain them from indulgence if they have the power. The only remedy is to take away the power, by controlling the selfish avidity of the governor, by the senate and house; of the senate, by the governor and house; and of the house, by the governor and senate. Of all possible forms of government, a sovereignty in one assembly, successively chosen by the people, is perhaps the best calculated to facilitate the gratification of self-love, and the pursuit of the private interest of a few individuals; a few eminent conspicuous characters will be continued in their seats in the sovereign assembly, from one election to another, whatever changes are made in the seats around them; by superior art, address, and opulence, by more splendid birth, reputations, and connections, they will be able to intrigue with the people and their leaders, out of doors, until they worm out most of their opposers, and introduce their friends; to this end, they will bestow all offices, contracts, privileges in commerce, and other emoluments, on the latter and their connections, and throw every vexation and disappointment in the way of the former, until they establish such a system of hopes and fears throughout the state, as shall enable them to carry a majority in every fresh election of the house. The judges will be appointed by them and their party, and of consequence, will be obsequious enough to their inclinations. The whole judicial authority, as well as the executive, will be employed, perverted and prostituted to the purposes of electioneering. No justice will be attainable, nor will innocence or virtue be safe, in the judicial courts, but for the friends of the prevailing leaders; legal prosecutions will be instituted and carried on against opposers, to their vexation and ruin; and as they have the public purse at command, as well as the executive and judicial power, the public money will be expended in the same way. No favors will be attainable but by those who will court the ruling demagogues in the house, by voting for their friends and instruments; and pensions and pecuniary rewards and gratifications, as well as honors and offices of every kind, will be voted to friends and partisans. The leading minds and most influential characters among the clergy will be courted, and the views of the youth in this department will be turned upon those men, and the road to promotion and employment in the church will be obstructed against such as will not worship the general idol. Capital characters among the physicians will not be forgotten, and the means of acquiring reputation and practice in the healing art will be to get the state trumpeters on the side of youth. The bar, too, will be made so subservient, that a young gentleman will have no chance to obtain a character or clients, but by falling in with the views of the judges and their creators. Even the theatres, and actors and actresses, must become politicians, and convert the public pleasures into engines of popularity for the governing members of the house. The press, that great barrier and bulwark of the rights of mankind, when it is protected in its freedom by law, can now no longer be free; if the authors, writers, and printers, will not accept of the hire that will be offered them, they must submit to the ruin that will be denounced against them. The presses, with much secrecy and concealment, will be made the vehicles of calumny against the minority, and of panegyric and empirical applauses of the leaders of the majority, and no remedy can possibly be obtained. In one word, the whole system of affairs, and every conceivable motive of hope and fear, will be employed to promote the private interests of a few, and their obsequious majority; and there is no remedy but in arms. Accordingly we find in all the Italian republics the minority always were driven to arms in despair.

“The attaining of particular ends requires length of time; designs must lie long in fermentation to gain the opportunity to bring matters to perfection.” It is true; but less time will be necessary in this case, in general, than even in a simple hereditary monarchy or aristocracy.

An aristocracy, like the Roman senate, between the abolition of royalty and the institution of the tribunate, is of itself a faction, a private partial interest. Yet it was less so than an assembly annually chosen by the people, and vested with all authority, would be; for such an assembly runs faster and easier into an oligarchy than an hereditary aristocratical assembly. The leading members having, as has been before shown in detail, the appointment of judges, and the nomination to all lucrative and honorable offices, they have thus the power to bend the whole executive and judicial authority to their own private interest, and by these means to increase their own reputations, wealth, and influence, and those of their party, at every new election; whereas, in a simple hereditary aristocracy, it is the interest of the members in general to preserve an equality among themselves as long as they can; and as they are smaller in number, and have more knowledge, they can more easily unite for that purpose, and there is no opportunity for any one to increase his power by any annual elections. An aspiring aristocrat, therefore, must take more time, and use more address, to augment his influence; yet we find in experience, that even hereditary aristocracies have never been able to prevent oligarchies rising up among them, but by the most rigorous, severe, and tyrannical regulations, such as the institution of inquisitions, &c.

It may sound oddly to say that the majority is a faction; but it is, nevertheless, literally just. If the majority are partial in their own favor, if they refuse or deny a perfect equality to every member of the minority, they are a faction; and as a popular assembly, collective or representative, cannot act, or will, but by a vote, the first step they take, if they are not unanimous, occasions a division into majority and minority, that is, into two parties, and the moment the former is unjust it is a faction. The Roman decemvirs themselves, were set up by the people, not by the senate; much longer time would have been required for an oligarchy to have grown up among the patricians and in the senate, if the people had not interposed and demanded a body of laws, that is, a constitution. The senate opposed the requisition as long as they could, but at last appointed the decemvirs, much against their own inclinations, and merely in compliance with the urgent clamors of the people. Nedham thinks, that “as the first founders of the Roman liberty did well in driving out their kings; so, on the other side, they did very ill in settling a standing authority within themselves.” It is really very injudicious, and very ridiculous, to call those Roman nobles, who expelled their kings, founders of the Roman liberty; nothing was farther from their heads or their hearts than national liberty; it was merely a struggle for power between a king and a body of haughty envious nobles; the interests of the people and of liberty had no share in it. The Romans might do well in driving out their king; he might be a bad and incorrigible character; and in such a case any people may do well in expelling or deposing a king. But they did not well in demolishing the single executive magistracy; they should have then demanded a body of laws, a definite constitution, and an integral share in the legislature for the people, with a precise delineation of the powers of the first magistrate and senate. In this case they would have been entitled to the praise of founders of Roman liberty; but as it was, they only substituted one system of tyranny for another, and the new one was worse than the old.

They certainly “did very ill in settling a standing ‘sovereign’ supreme authority within themselves.” Thus far our author is perfectly in the right, and the reason he gives for this opinion is very well founded; it is the same that was given thousands of years before him, by Plato, Socrates, and others, and has been constantly given by all succeeding writers in favor of mixed governments, and against simple ones, “because, lying open to the temptations of honor and profit,” or, in other words, having their ambition and vanity, avarice and lust, hatred and resentment, malice and revenge, in short, their self-love, and all their passions (“which are sails too big for any human bulk”) unrestrained by any controlling power, they were at once transported by them, and made use of their public power not for the good of the commonwealth, but for the gratification of their private passions, whereby they put the commonwealth into frequent flames of discontent and sedition.

Thus far is very well; but when our author goes on to say, “which might all have been prevented, could they have settled the state free, indeed, by placing an orderly succession of supreme authority in the hands of the people,” he can be followed by no one who knows what is in man, and in society; because that supreme authority falls out of the whole body into a majority at the first vote. To expect self-denial from men, when they have a majority in their favor, and consequently power to gratify themselves, is to disbelieve all history and universal experience; it is to disbelieve Revelation and the Word of God, which informs us, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. There have been examples of self-denial, and will be again; but such exalted virtue never yet existed in any large body of men, and lasted long; and our author’s argument requires it to be proved, not only that individuals, but that nations and majorities of nations, are capable, not only of a single act, or a few acts, of disinterested justice and exalted self-denial, but of a course of such heroic virtue for ages and generations; and not only that they are capable of this, but that it is probable they will practise it. There is no man so blind as not to see, that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodies of men, left to themselves, will practise a course of self-denial, is either to babble like a new-born infant, or to deceive like an unprincipled impostor.

Nedham has himself acknowledged, in several parts of this work, the depravity of men in very strong terms. In this fifth reason he avers “temptations of honor and profit” to be “sails too big for any human bulk.” Why then does he build a system on a foundation which he owns to be so unstable? If his mind had been at liberty to follow his own ideas and principles, he must have seen that a succession of supreme authority in the hands of the people, by their house of representatives, is at first an aristocracy as despotical as a Roman senate, and becomes an oligarchy even sooner than that assembly fell into the decemvirate. There is this infallible disadvantage in such a government, even in comparison with an hereditary aristocracy, that it lets in vice, profligacy, and corruption, like a torrent, with tyranny; whereas the latter often guards the morals of the people with the utmost severity. Even the despotism of aristocracy preserves the morals of the people.

It is pretended by some, that a sovereignty in a single assembly, annually elected, is the only one in which there is any responsibility for the exercise of power. In the mixed government we contend for, the ministers, at least of the executive power, are responsible for every instance of the exercise of it; and if they dispose of a single commission by corruption, they are responsible to a house of representatives, who may, by impeachment, make them responsible before a senate, where they may be accused, tried, condemned, and punished by independent judges. But in a single sovereign assembly, each member, at the end of his year, is only responsible to his constituents; and the majority of members who have been of one party, and carried all before them, are to be responsible only to their constituents, not to the constituents of the minority who have been overborne, injured, and plundered. And who are these constituents to whom the majority are accountable? Those very persons, to gratify whom they have prostituted the honors, rewards, wealth, and justice of the state. These, instead of punishing, will applaud; instead of discarding, will reëlect, with still greater eclat, and a more numerous majority; for the losing cause will be deserted by numbers. And this will be done in hopes of having still more injustice done, still more honors and profits divided among themselves, to the exclusion and mortification of the minority. It is then astonishing that such a simple government should be preferred to a mixed one, by any rational creature, on the score of responsibility.

There is, in short, no possible way of defending the minority, in such a government, from the tyranny of the majority, but by giving the former a negative on the latter,—the most absurd institution that ever took place among men. As the major may bear all possible relations of proportion to the minor part, it may be fifty-one against forty-nine in an assembly of a hundred, or it may be ninety-nine against one only. It becomes therefore necessary to give the negative to the minority, in all cases, though it be ever so small. Every member must possess it, or he can never be secure that himself and his constituents shall not be sacrificed by all the rest. This is the true ground and original of the liberum veto in Poland; but the consequence has been ruin to that noble but ill-constituted republic. One fool, or one knave, one member of the diet, which is a single sovereign assembly, bribed by an intriguing ambassador of some foreign power, has prevented measures the most essential to the defence, safety, and existence of the nation. Hence humiliations and partitions! This also is the reason on which is founded the law of the United Netherlands, that all the seven provinces must be unanimous in the assembly of the states-general; and all the cities and other voting bodies in the assemblies of the separate states. Having no sufficient checks in their uncouth constitution, nor any mediating power possessed of the whole executive, they have been driven to demand unanimity instead of a balance. And this must be done in every government of a single assembly, or the majority will instantly oppress the minority. But what kind of government would that be in the United States of America, or any one of them, that should require unanimity, or allow of the liberum veto? It is sufficient to ask the question, for every man will answer it alike.

No controversy will be maintained with our author, that “a free state is more excellent than simple monarchy or simple aristocracy.” But the question is, What is a free state? It is plain our author means a single assembly of representatives of the people, periodically elected, and vested with the supreme power. This is denied to be a free state. It is at first a government of grandees, and will soon degenerate into a government of a junto or oligarchy of a few of the most eminent of them, or into an absolute monarchy of one of them. The government of these grandees, while they are numerous, as well as when they become few, will be so oppressive to the people, that the people, from hatred or fear of the gentlemen, will set up one of them to rule the rest, and make him absolute.

Will it be asked how this can be proved? It is proved, as has been often already said, by the constitution of human nature, by the experience of the world, and the concurrent testimony of all history. The passions and desires of the majority of the representatives in an assembly being in their nature insatiable and unlimited by any thing within their own breasts, and having nothing to control them without, will crave more and more indulgence, and, as they have the power, they will have the gratification; and Nedham’s government will have no security for continuing free, but the presumption of self-denial and self-government in the members of the assembly, virtues and qualities that never existed in great bodies of men, by the acknowledgment of all the greatest judges of human nature, as well as by his own, when he says that “temptations of honor and profit are sails too big for any human bulk.” It would be as reasonable to say, that all government is altogether unnecessary, because it is the duty of all men to deny themselves, and obey the laws of nature and the laws of God. However clear the duty, we know it will not be performed; and, therefore, it is our duty to enter into associations, and compel one another to do some of it.

It is agreed that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties, and the only keepers who can be always trusted; and, therefore, the people’s fair, full, and honest consent, to every law, by their representatives, must be made an essential part of the constitution; but it is denied that they are the best keepers, or any keepers at all, of their own liberties, when they hold collectively, or by representation, the executive and judicial power, or the whole and uncontrolled legislative; on the contrary, the experience of all ages has proved, that they instantly give away their liberties into the hand of grandees, or kings, idols of their own creation. The management of the executive and judicial powers together always corrupts them, and throws the whole power into the hands of the most profligate and abandoned among themselves. The honest men are generally nearly equally divided in sentiment, and, therefore, the vicious and unprincipled, by joining one party, carry the majority; and the vicious and unprincipled always follow the most profligate leader, him who bribes the highest, and sets all decency and shame at defiance. It becomes more profitable, and reputable too, except with a very few, to be a party man than a public-spirited one.

It is agreed that “the end of all government is the good and ease of the people, in a secure enjoyment of their rights, without oppression;” but it must be remembered, that the rich are people as well as the poor; that they have rights as well as others; that they have as clear and as sacred a right to their large property as others have to theirs which is smaller; that oppression to them is as possible and as wicked as to others; that stealing, robbing, cheating, are the same crimes and sins, whether committed against them or others. The rich, therefore, ought to have an effectual barrier in the constitution against being robbed, plundered, and murdered, as well as the poor; and this can never be without an independent senate. The poor should have a bulwark against the same dangers and oppressions; and this can never be without a house of representatives of the people. But neither the rich nor the poor can be defended by their respective guardians in the constitution, without an executive power, vested with a negative, equal to either, to hold the balance even between them, and decide when they cannot agree. If it is asked, When will this negative be used? it may be answered, Perhaps never. The known existence of it will prevent all occasion to exercise it; but if it has not a being, the want of it will be felt every day. If it has not been used in England for a long time past, it by no means follows that there have not been occasions when it might have been employed with propriety. But one thing is very certain, that there have been many occasions since the Revolution, when the constitution would have been overturned if the negative had not been an indubitable prerogative of the crown.

It is agreed that the people are “most sensible of their own burdens; and being once put into a capacity and freedom of acting, are the most likely to provide remedies for their own relief.” For this reason they are an essential branch of the legislature, and have a negative on all laws, an absolute control over every grant of money, and an unlimited right to accuse their enemies before an impartial tribunal. Thus far they are most sensible of their burdens, and are most likely to provide remedies. But it is affirmed that they are not only incapable of managing the executive power, but would be instantly corrupted by it in such numbers, as would destroy the integrity of all elections. It is denied that the legislative power can be wholly intrusted in their hands with a moment’s safety. The poor and the vicious would instantly rob the rich and virtuous, spend their plunder in debauchery, or confer it upon some idol, who would become the despot; or, to speak more intelligibly, if not more accurately, some of the rich, by debauching the vicious to their corrupt interest, would plunder the virtuous, and become more rich, until they acquired all the property, or a balance of property and of power, in their own hands, and domineered as despots in an oligarchy.

It is agreed that the “people know where the shoe wrings, what grievances are most heavy,” and, therefore, they should always hold an independent and essential part in the legislature, and be always able to prevent the shoe from wringing more, and the grievances from being made more heavy; they should have a full hearing of all their arguments, and a full share of all consultations, for easing the foot where it is in pain, and for lessening the weight of grievances or annihilating them. But it is denied that they have right, or that they should have power to take from one man his property to make another easy, and that they only know “what fences they stand in need of to shelter them from the injurious assaults of those powers that are above them;” meaning, by the powers above them, senators and magistrates, though, properly speaking, there are no powers above them but the law, which is above all men, governors and senators, kings, and nobles, as well as commons.

The Americans have agreed with this writer in the sentiment, that “it is but reason that the people should see that none be interested in the supreme authority but persons of their own election, and such as must, in a short time, return again into the same condition with themselves.” This hazardous experiment they have tried, and, if elections are soberly made, it may answer very well; but if parties, factions, drunkenness, bribes, armies, and delirium come in, as they always have done sooner or later, to embroil and decide every thing, the people must again have recourse to conventions and find a remedy. Neither philosophy nor policy has yet discovered any other cure, than by prolonging the duration of the first magistrate and senators. The evil may be lessened and postponed, by elections for longer periods of years, till they become for life; and if this is not found an adequate remedy, there will remain no other but to make them hereditary. The delicacy or the dread of unpopularity that should induce any man to conceal this important truth from the full view and contemplation of the people, would be a weakness, if not a vice. As to “reaping the same benefit or burden, by the laws enacted, that befalls the rest of the people,” this will be secured, whether the first magistrate and senate be elective or hereditary, so long as the people are an integral branch of the legislature, can be bound by no laws to which they have not consented, and can be subjected to no tax which they have not agreed to lay. It is agreed that the “issue of such a constitution,” whether the governor and senate be hereditary or elective, must be this, “that no load be laid upon any, but what is common to all, and that always by common consent; not to serve the lusts of any, but only to supply the necessities of their country.”

The next paragraph is a figurative flourish, calculated to amuse a populace without informing their understandings. Poetry and mystics will answer no good end in discussing questions of this nature. The simplest style, the most mathematical precision of words and ideas, is best adapted to discover truth, and to convey it to others, in reasoning on this subject. There is here a confusion that is more than accidental—it is artful. The author purposely states the question, and makes the comparison only between simple forms of government, and carefully keeps out of sight the idea of a judicious mixture of them all. He seems to suppose, that the supreme power must be wholly in the hands of a simple monarch, or of a single senate, or of the people, and studiously avoids considering the sovereignty lodged in a composition of all three. “When a supreme power long continues in the hands of any person or persons, they, by greatness of place, being seated above the middle region of the people, sit secure from all winds and weathers, and from those storms of violence that nip and terrify the inferior part of the world.” If this is popular poetry, it is not philosophical reasoning. It may be made a question, whether it is true in fact, that persons in the higher ranks of life are more exempted from dangers and evils that threaten the commonwealth than those in the middle or lower rank? But if it were true, the United States of America have established their governments upon a principle to guard against it; and, “by a successive revolution of authority, they come to be degraded of their earthly godheads, and return into the same condition with other mortals;” and, therefore, “they must needs be the more sensible and tender of what is laid upon them.”

Our author is not explicit. If he meant that a fundamental law should be made, that no man should be chosen more than one year, he has nowhere said so. He knew the nation would not have borne it. Cromwell and his creatures would all have detested it; nor would the members of the Long Parliament, or their constituents, have approved it. The idea would have been universally unpopular. No people in the world will bear to be deprived, at the end of one year, of the service of their best men, and be obliged to confer their suffrages, from year to year, on the next best, until the rotation brings them to the worst. The men of greatest interest and influence, moreover, will govern; and if they cannot be chosen themselves, they will generally influence the choice of others so decidedly, that they may be said to have the appointment. If it is true that “the strongest obligation that can be laid upon a man in public matters, is to see that he engage in nothing but what must either offensively or beneficially reflect upon himself,” it is equally true at least in a mixed government as in a simple democracy. It is, indeed, more clearly and universally true, because in the first the representatives of the people being the special guardians of equality, equity, and liberty, for the people, will not consent to unequal laws; but in the second, where the great and rich will have the greatest influence in the public councils, they will continually make unequal laws in their own favor, unless the poorer majority unite, which they rarely do, set up an opposition to them, and run them down by making unequal laws against them. In every society where property exists, there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected. They will either be made by numbers, to plunder the few who are rich, or by influence, to fleece the many who are poor. Both rich and poor, then, must be made independent, that equal justice may be done, and equal liberty enjoyed by all. To expect that in a single sovereign assembly no load shall be laid upon any but what is common to all, nor to gratify the passions of any, but only to supply the necessities of their country, is altogether chimerical. Such an assembly, under an awkward, unwieldy form, becomes at once a simple monarchy in effect. Some one overgrown genius, fortune, or reputation, becomes a despot, who rules the state at his pleasure, while the deluded nation, or rather a deluded majority, thinks itself free; and in every resolve, law, and act of government, you see the interest, fame, and power of that single individual attended to more than the general good.

It is agreed, that “if any be never so good a patriot,” (whether his power be prolonged or not,) “he will find it hard to keep self from creeping in upon him, and prompting him to some extravagances for his own private benefit.” But it is asserted, that power will be prolonged in the hands of the same patriot, the same rich, able, powerful, and well-descended citizen, &c. as much as if he had a seat for life, or a hereditary seat in a senate, and, what is more destructive, his power and influence is constantly increasing, so that self is more certainly and rapidly growing upon him; whereas, in the other case, it is defined, limited, and never materially varies. If, in the first case, “he be shortly to return to a condition common with the rest of his brethren,” it is only for a moment, or a day, or a week, in order to be reëlected with fresh eclat, redoubled popularity, increased reputation, influence, and power. Self-interest, therefore, binds him to propagate a false report and opinion, that he “does nothing but what is just and equal,” while, in fact, he is every day doing what is unjust and unequal; while he is applying all the offices of the state, great and small, the revenues of the public, and even the judicial power, to the augmentation of his own wealth and honors, and those of his friends, and to the punishment, depression, and destruction of his enemies, with the acclamations and hosannas of the majority of the people.

“This, without controversy, must needs be the most noble, the most just, and the most excellent way of government in free states,” provided our author meant only a mixed state, in which the people have an essential share, and the command of the public purse, with the judgment of causes and accusations as jurors, while their power is tempered and controlled by the aristocratical part of the community in another house, and the executive in a distinct branch. But as it is plain his meaning was to jumble all these powers in one centre, a single assembly of representatives, it must be pronounced the most ignoble, unjust, and detestable form of government; worse than even a well-digested simple monarchy or aristocracy. The greatest excellency of it is, that it cannot last, but hastens rapidly to a revolution.

For a further illustration of this subject, let a supposition be made, that in the year 1656, when this book was printed, the system of it had been reduced to practice. A fair, full, and just representation of the people of England appears in the house of commons in Westminster Hall,—My Lord-General Cromwell is returned for Westminster or London; Ireton, Lambert, &c., for other principal cities or counties; Monk, Sir Harry Vane, &c., for others; and even Hugh Peters for some borough;—all eyes profoundly bow to my Lord-General as the first member of the house; the other principal characters are but his primary planets, and the multitude but secondary; altogether making a great majority in the interest of his Highness. If the majority is clear, and able to excite a strong current of popular rumors, ardor, and enthusiasm in their favor, their power will increase with every annual election, until Cromwell governs the nation more absolutely than any simple monarch in Europe. If there are in the house any members so daring as to differ in opinion, they will lose their seats, and more submissive characters be returned in their places; but if the great men in the house should fall into pretty equal divisions, then would begin a warfare of envy, rancor, hatred, and abuse of each other, until they divided the nation into two parties, and both must take the field.

Suppose, for a further illustration, the monarchical and aristocratical branches in England suspended, and all authority lodged in the present house of commons;—suppose that, in addition to all the great national questions of legislation, were added the promotion of all offices in the church, the law, the army, navy, excise, customs, and all questions of foreign alliance; let all the foreign ambassadors, as well as candidates for offices, solicit there. The contemplation must be amusing! but there is not a member of the house could seriously wish it, after thinking a moment on the consequence. The objects are smaller, and the present temptations less, in our American houses; but the impropriety would be equally obvious, though, perhaps, not so instantaneously destructive.

Our author proceeds to prove his doctrine by examples out of Roman history. “What more noble patriots were there ever in the world than the Roman senators were, whilst they were kept under by their kings, and felt the same burdens of their fury as did the rest of the people?”

If by the patriots are meant men who were brave and active in war to defend the commonwealth against its enemies, the Roman senators and patricians were, under the kings, as good patriots as the plebeians were, and no better. Whether they were ever kept under by their kings, or whether their kings were kept under by them, I submit to Livy and Dionysius. The whole line of their kings, Romulus, Numa, Tullus, Ancus, Lucius Tarquinius, Servius Tullius, were meritorious princes; yet the patricians and senators maintained a continual series of cabals against them, constantly conspiring to set up one and pull down another. Romulus was put to death by the patricians; Tullus Hostilius was murdered by the patricians; Lucius Tarquinius was assassinated by the patricians; and Servius Tullius too was murdered by the patricians, to make way for Tarquin. Some of these excellent princes were destroyed for being too friendly to the people, and others for not being servile enough to the senate. If it is patriotism to persecute to death every prince who had an equitable desire of doing justice and easing the burdens of the plebeians; to intrigue in continual factions to set up one king and butcher another; to consider friendship and humanity and equity to the plebeians as treason against the state, and the highest crime that could be committed either by a king or patrician; then the Roman senators under the kings were noble patriots. But the utmost degrees of jealousy, envy, arrogance, ambition, rancor, rage, and cruelty, that ever constituted the aristocratical or oligarchical character in Sparta, Venice, Poland, or wherever unbalanced aristocratics have existed and been most enormous, existed in the Roman patricians under their kings.

What can our author mean by the senate and people’s “feeling the burdens of the fury of their kings?” Surely he had read the Roman history! Did he mean to represent it? The whole line of Roman kings, until we come to Tarquin the Proud, were mild, moderate princes, and their greatest fault, in the eyes of the senators, was an endeavor now and then to protect the people against the tyranny of the senate. Their greatest fault, in the judgment of truth, was too much complaisance to the senate, by making the constitution more aristocratical. Witness the assemblies by centuries instituted by Servius Tullius.

But Nedham should have considered what would have been the fruits in Rome, from the time of Romulus, of annual elections of senators to be vested with supreme power, with all the authority of the king, senate, and people. All those persons whose names we now read as kings, and all those who are mentioned as senators, would have caballed with the people as well as one another. Their passions would not have been extinguished; the same jealousy and envy, ambition and avarice, revenge and cruelty, would have been displayed in assemblies of the people. Sometimes one junto would have been popular, sometimes another; one set of principles would have prevailed one year, and another the next; now one law, then another; at this time one rule of property, at that another; riots, tumults, and battles, would have been fought continually; the law would have been a perfect Proteus. But as this confusion could not last long, either a simple monarchy or an aristocracy must have arisen; these might not have lasted long, and all the revolutions described by Plato and Aristotle as growing out of one another, and that we see in the Greek, Roman, and Italian republics, did grow out of one another, must have taken place, until the people, weary of changes, would have settled under a single tyranny and standing army, unless they had been wise enough to establish a well-ordered government of three branches.

It is easy to misrepresent and confound things, in order to make them answer a purpose, but it was not because the authority was permanent, or standing, or hereditary, that the behavior of the senate was worse after the expulsion of the kings than it had been under them; for the dignity of patricians and the authority of senators was equally standing, permanent, and hereditary, under the kings, from the institution of Romulus to the expulsion of Tarquin, as it was afterwards, from the expulsion of Tarquin to the institution of tribunes, and indeed to the subversion of the commonwealth. It was not its permanency, but its omnipotence, its being unlimited, unbalanced, uncontrolled, that occasioned the abuse; and this is precisely what we contend for, that power is always abused when unlimited and unbalanced, whether it be permanent or temporary, a distinction that makes little difference in effect. The temporary has often been the worst of the two, because it has often been sooner abused, and more grossly, in order to obtain its revival at the stated period. It is agreed that patricians, nobles, senators, the aristocratical part of the community, call it by what name you please, are noble patriots when they are kept under; they are really then the best men and the best citizens. But there is no possibility of keeping them under but by giving them a master in a monarchy, and two masters in a free government. One of the masters I mean is the executive power in the first magistrate, and the other is the people in their house of representatives. Under these two masters they are, in general, the best men, citizens, magistrates, generals, or other officers; they are the guardians, ornaments, and glory of the community.

Nedham talks of “senate and people’s feeling the burdens of the fury of the kings.” But as we cannot accuse this writer of ignorance, this must have been either artifice or inadvertence. There is not in the whole Roman history so happy a period as this under their kings. The whole line were excellent characters, and fathers of their people, notwithstanding the continual cabals of the nobles against them. The nation was formed, their morality, their religion, the maxims of their government, were all established under these kings. The nation was defended against innumerable and warlike nations of enemies; in short, Rome was never so well governed or so happy. As soon as the monarchy was abolished, and an ambitious republic of haughty, aspiring aristocratics was erected, they were seized with the ambition of conquest, and became a torment to themselves and the world. Our author confesses, that “being freed from the kingly yoke, and having secured all power within the hands of themselves and their posterity, they fell into the same absurdities that had been before committed by their kings, so that this new yoke became more intolerable than the former.” It would be more conformable to the truth of history to say, that they continued to behave exactly as they had done; but having no kings to murder, they had only people to destroy. The sovereign power was in them under the kings, and the cause of their greatest animosity against their kings, next to the ambitious desire of getting into their places, was their too frequent patronage of the people. The only change made by the revolution was to take off a little awe which the name of king inspired. The office, with all its dignities, authorities, and powers, was in fact continued under the title of consul; it was made annually elective it is true, and became accordingly a mere tool of the senate, wholly destitute of any power or will to protect plebeians, a disposition which the hereditary kings always discovered more or less, and thereby became odious to the senate; for there is no sin or crime so heinous, in the judgment of patricians, as for any one of their own rank to court plebeians, or become their patron, protector or friend.

It is very true that “the new yoke was more intolerable than the old, nor could the people find any remedy until they procured that necessary office of the tribunes.” This was some remedy, but a very feeble and ineffectual one. Nor, if the people had instituted an annual assembly of five hundred representatives, would that have been an effectual remedy, without a plenary executive power in the consul; the senate and assembly would have been soon at war, and the leader of the victorious army master of the state. If “the tribunes, by being invested with a temporary authority by the people’s election, remained the more sensible of their condition,” the American governors and senators, vested as they are with a temporary authority by the people’s election, will remain sensible of their condition too. If they do not become too sensible of it, and discover that flattery and bribery and partiality are better calculated to procure renovations of their authority, than honesty, liberty, and equality, happy indeed shall we all be!

“What more excellent patriot could there be than Manlius, till he became corrupted by time and power?” Is it a clear case that Manlius was corrupted? To me he appears the best patriot in Roman history; the most humane, the most equitable; the greatest friend of liberty, and the most desirous of a constitution truly free; the real friend of the people, and the enemy of tyranny in every shape, as well as the greatest hero and warrior of his age; a much greater character than Camillus. Our author’s expression implies, that there was no greater patriot, until he saw the necessity of new-modelling the constitution, and was concerting measures upon the true principle of liberty, the authority of the people, to place checks upon the senate. But Manlius is an unfortunate instance for our author. It was not time and power that inspired him with his designs; the jealousy and envy of the senate had removed him from power. He was neither consul, dictator, nor general. Aristocratical envy had set up Camillus, and continued him in power, both as consul and dictator, on purpose to rival and mortify Manlius. It was discontinuance of power, then, that corrupted him, if he was corrupted; and this generally happens; disappointed candidates for popular elections are as often corrupted by their fall from power, as hereditary aristocratics by their continuance in it.

“Who more noble, courteous, and well affected to the common good, than was Appius Claudius, at first? But, afterwards, having obtained a continuation of the government in his own hands, he soon lost his primitive innocency and integrity, and devoted himself to all the practices of an absolute tyrant.” This is very true; but it was not barely continuation of power, it was absolute power that did the mischief. If the power had been properly limited in degree, it might have been continued without limitation of time, without corrupting him; though it might be better to limit it both in degree and in time; and it must never be forgotten, that it was the people, not the senate, that continued him in power.

The senate acted an arbitrary and reprehensible part, when they thought to continue Lucius Quinctius in the consulship longer than the time limited by law. By violating the law, they became tyrants, and their act was void. That gallant man acted only the part of a good citizen, in refusing to set a precedent so prejudicial to the Roman constitution. His magnanimity merits praise; but, perhaps, he was the only senator who would have refused, and we cannot safely reckon upon such self-denial in forming any constitution of government. But it may be depended on, that, when the whole power is in one assembly, whether of patricians or plebeians, or any mixture of both, a favorite will be continued in power whenever the majority wishes it, and every conceivable fundamental law, or even oath, against it will be dispensed with.

“A seventh reason, why a people qualified with a due and orderly succession of their supreme assemblies are the best keepers of their own liberties, is, because, as in other forms, those persons only have access to government who are apt to serve the lust and will of the prince, or else are parties or compliers with some popular faction; so, in this form of government by the people, the door of dignity stands open to all (without exception) that ascend thither by the steps of worth and virtue; the consideration whereof hath this noble effect in free states, that it edges men’s spirits with an active emulation, and raiseth them to a lofty pitch of design and action.”

This is a mass of popular assertions, either hazarded at random, or, if aimed at a point, very little guarded by the love of truth. It is no more true that, in other forms, those persons only have access to government who are apt to serve the lust and will of a prince or a faction, than it is that, in our author’s form, those only would obtain elections who will serve the lusts and wills of the most idle, vicious, and abandoned of the people, at the expense of the labor, wealth, and reputation of the most industrious, virtuous, and pious. The door of dignity in such a government is so far from standing open to all of worth and virtue, that, if the executive and judicial powers are managed in it, virtue and worth will soon be excluded. In an absolute monarchy, the road to preferment may lie open to all. In an aristocracy, the way of promotion may be open to all; and all offices in the executive department, as in the army, navy, courts of justice, foreign embassies, revenues, &c. may be filled from any class of the people. In a mixed government, consisting of three branches, all offices ever will be open; for, when the popular branch is destined expressly to defend the rights of the people, it is not probable they will ever consent to a law that shall exclude any class of their constituents. In this kind of government, indeed, the chance for merit to prevail is greater than in any other. The executive having the appointment to all offices, and the ministers of that executive being responsible for every exercise of their power, they are more cautious; they are responsible to their master for the recommendation they give, and to the nation and its representatives for the appointments that are made. Whereas, a single representative assembly is accountable to nobody. If it is admitted that each member is accountable to his constituents for the vote he gives, what is the penalty? No other than not to vote for him at the next election. And what punishment is that? His constituents know or care nothing about any offices or officers, but such as lie within the limits of their parish; and let him vote right or wrong about all others, he has equally their thanks and future votes. What can the people of the cities, countries, boroughs, and corporations, in England, know of the characters of all the generals, admirals, ambassadors, judges, and bishops, whom they never saw, nor perhaps heard of?

But was there never a Sully, Colbert, Malesherbes, Turgot, or Necker called to power in France? nor a Burleigh nor a Pitt, in England? Was there never a Camillus appointed by a senate? nor a De Ruyter, Van Tromp, or De Witt, by an aristocratical body? When a writer is not careful to confine himself to truth, but allows himself a latitude of affirmation and denial, merely addressed to an ignorant populace, there is no end of ingenuity in invention. In this case, his object was to run down an exiled king and a depressed nobility; and it must be confessed he is not very delicate in his means. There are, in truth, examples innumerable of excellent generals, admirals, judges, ambassadors, bishops, and of all other officers and magistrates, appointed by monarchs, absolute as well as limited, and by hereditary senates. Excellent appointments have been also made by popular assemblies; but candor must allow, that very weak, injudicious, and unfortunate choices have been sometimes made by such assemblies too. But the best appointments for a course of time have invariably been made in mixed governments. The “active emulation” in free states is readily allowed; but it is not less active, less general, or less lofty, in design or action, in mixed governments than in simple ones, even simple democracies, or those which approach nearest to that description; and the instances alleged from the Roman history are full proofs of this.

“During the vassalage of the Romans under kings, we read not of any notable exploits, but find them confined within a narrow compass, oppressed at home, and ever and anon ready to be swallowed up by their enemies.” It is really impossible to guess where this author learnt his history. The reigns of the kings are a complete confutation of his assertions. The vassalage was to the nobles, if to anybody, under the kings. The kings were friends and fathers of the people in general. If the people were oppressed at home, it was by the patricians; but they appear to have been much less oppressed than they were under the aristocracy which succeeded the abolition of monarchy, as our author himself confesses.

“But when the state was made free indeed, and the people admitted into a share and interest in the government, as well as the great ones, then it was that their power began to exceed the bounds of Italy, and aspire towards that prodigious empire.” Was Rome ever a free state, according to our author’s idea of a free state? Were the people ever governed by a succession of sovereign power in their assemblies? Was not the senate the real sovereign, through all the changes, from Romulus to Julius Cæsar? When the tribunes were instituted, the people obtained a check upon the senate, but not a balance. The utmost that can with truth be said is, that it was a mixed government, composed of three powers; the monarchical in the kings or consuls, the aristocratical in the senate, and the democratical in the people and their tribunes, with the principal share and real sovereignty in the senate. The mixture was unequal, and the balance inadequate; but it was this mixture, with all its imperfections, that “edged men’s spirits with an active emulation, and raised them to a lofty pitch of design and action.” It was in consequence of this composition, that “their thoughts and power began to exceed the bounds of Italy, and aspire towards that prodigious empire.” In such a mixture, where the people have a share, and “the road to preferment lies plain to every man, no public work is done, nor any conquest made, but every man thinks he does and conquers for himself,” in some degree. But this sentiment is as vivid and active, surely, where the people have an equal share with the senate, as where they have only an imperfect check by their tribunes.

When our author advances, “that it was not alliance, nor friendship, nor faction, nor riches, that could advance men,” he affirms more than can be proved from any period of the Roman or any other history. If he had contented himself with saying, that these were not exclusive or principal causes of advancement, it would have been as great a panegyric as any nation at any period has deserved. Knowledge, valor, and virtue, were often preferred above them all; and, if we add, generally, it is as much as the truth will bear. Our author talks of a preference of virtuous poverty; but there was no moment in the Roman, or any other history, when poverty, however virtuous, was preferred for its own sake. There have been times and countries, when poverty was not an insuperable objection to the employment of a man in the highest stations; but an absolute love of poverty, and a preference of a man for that attribute alone, never existed out of the imaginations of enthusiastic writers.

In the Roman story, some few of their brave patriots and conquerors were men of small fortune, and of so rare a temper of spirit, that they little cared to improve them, or enrich themselves by their public employment. Some, indeed, were buried at the public charge. And perhaps this race is not quite extinct; but the examples are so rare, that he who shall build his frame of government upon a presumption that characters of this stamp will arise in succession, in sufficient numbers to preserve the honor and liberty, and promote the prosperity of his people, will find himself mistaken. “The time will come,” said a Roman senator, “when Horatii and Valerii will not be found to forego their private fortunes for the sake of plebeian liberty.” His prediction was fulfilled; and a similar prophecy will be accomplished in every nation under heaven. The instances, too, of this kind in the Roman history, are all of patricians and senators. We do not find one example of a popular tribune who was so in love with poverty. Cincinnatus was a patrician, a senator of a splendid family and no mean fortune, until his son Cæso was prosecuted, and obliged to fly from his bail. The father had too noble and sublime a spirit to let the bail be ruined, and sold his fortune to pay the forfeiture. When this was done, he had only four or six acres left. But who was it that made him dictator? Not the people, nor the tribunes, but the senate, that very standing power against which our author’s whole book is written; by no means by a successive sovereignty of the people’s representatives, which our author all along contends for. Had the appointment of a dictator at that time lain with the people, most probably a richer man would have had the preference. He behaved with so much magnanimity, integrity, and wisdom, that he subdued the enemy, and quitted his authority with all willingness, and returned to painful private life. This example is a good argument for a mixed government, and for a senate as an essential part of it; but no argument for a successive sovereignty in the people’s representatives. Gracchus, Marius, Sylla, and Cæsar, whose elevation to power was by the people, in opposition to the senate, did not exhibit such moderation and contentment.

Our author’s other examples of Lucius Tarquin, and Atilius Regulus, by no means prove such disinterested and magnanimous virtue to be ordinary in that state, nor does Lucius Paulus Æmilius. Lucius Tarquin, or Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, was not only a patrician and a senator, but of the royal family, and therefore by no means an example to show what the conduct of a general, or other officer or magistrate, will be, who shall be appointed by a majority of the people’s successive annual representatives. He was the husband of Lucretia, whose blood had expelled the king. It was in an assembly of the centuries, where the senate were all powerful, that he was appointed consul with Brutus. Valerius was the favorite of the plebeians. Collatia had been given by the king to Ancus Tarquin, because he had no estate; and from thence the family were called Collatini. At the siege of Ardea the frolic commenced between Collatinus and the other young Tarquins, over wine, which ended in the visit to their wives, which proved at first so honorable to the domestic virtues of Lucretia, and afterwards so fatal to her life; it occasioned, also, the expulsion of kings, and institution of consuls. Brutus and Collatinus were created consuls, but by whom? By the people, it is true, but it was in their assembly by centuries; so that it was the senate and patricians who decided the vote. If the people in their tribes, or by their successive representatives, had made the election, Collatinus would not have been chosen, but Valerius, who expected it, and had most contributed, next to Brutus, to the revolution.

And, by the way, we may observe here, that an aversion to public honors and offices by no means appears in the behavior of the virtuous and popular Valerius. His desire of the office of consul was so ardent, that his disappointment and chagrin induced him in a sullen ill-humor, to withdraw from the senate and the forum, and renounce public affairs; which so alarmed the people, that they dreaded his reconciliation and coalition with the exiled family. He soon removed this jealousy, by taking the oath by which Brutus wanted to bind the senate against kings and kingly government. All the art of the patricians, with Brutus at their head, was now exerted, to intoxicate the people with superstition. Sacrifices and ceremonies were introduced, and the consuls approaching the altar, swore, for themselves, their children, and all posterity, never to recall Tarquin or his sons, or any of his family; that the Romans should never more be governed by kings; that those who should attempt to restore monarchy should be devoted to the infernal gods, and condemned to the most cruel torments; and an abhorrence of royalty became the predominant character of the Romans, to such a degree, that they could never bear the name of king, even when, under the emperors, they admitted much more than the thing, in an unlimited despotism. But is the cause of liberty, are the rights of mankind, to stand for ever on no better a foundation than a blind superstition, and a popular prejudice against a word, a mere name? It was really no more in this case; for even Brutus himself intended that the consuls should have all the power of the kings; and it was only against a family and a name that he declared war. If nations and peoples cannot be brought to a more rational way of thinking, and to judge of things, instead of being intoxicated with prejudice and superstition against words, it cannot be expected that truth, virtue, or liberty, will have much chance in the establishment of governments. The monarchical and aristocratical portions of society will for ever understand better how to operate upon the superstition, the prejudices, passions, fancies, and senses of the people, than the democratical, and therefore, will forever worm out liberty, if she has no other resource.

Tarquin, by his ambassadors, solicited at least the restoration of his property. Brutus opposed it. Collatinus, the other consul, advocated the demand of his royal banished cousin. The senate was divided. The question was referred to the people assembled by centuries. The two consuls zealously supported their different opinions. Collatinus prevailed by one vote. Tarquin’s ambassadors rejoice and intrigue. A conspiracy was formed, in which a great part of the young nobility was concerned. Two of the Vitellii, sons of Collatinus’s sister, and brothers of Brutus’s wife; two of the Aquilii, sons of another sister of Collatinus, as well as two of Brutus’s sons, were engaged in it. When the conspiracy was discovered, Brutus alone was inexorable. Collatinus endeavored to save his nephews. Collatinus, as the husband of Lucretia, appears to have been actuated by resentment against the person of Tarquin, but not to have been very hearty in the expulsion of the family, or the abolition of monarchy. His warmly contending for the restitution of Tarquin’s effects, and his aversion to the condemnation of the conspirators, completed his ruin with Brutus. He assembled the people, and was very sorry that the Roman people did not think their liberties safe while they saw the name and blood of Tarquin not only safe in Rome, but vested with sovereign power, and a dangerous obstacle to liberty. Collatinus was amazed at such a speech, and prepared to defend himself from this attack; but finding his father-in-law, Spurius Lucretius, join Brutus, and other principal men, in persuading him, and fearing that he should be forced into banishment, with the confiscation of his estate, he abdicated the consulship, and retired to Lavinium; but he carried all his effects with him, and twenty talents, or £3,875 sterling, to which Brutus added five talents more, a most enormous sum, if we consider the universal poverty of that age, and the high value of money. Is it possible to find, in this character and conduct of Collatinus, such disinterested and magnanimous virtue as our author speaks of? Is this an example to prove that disinterested virtue was frequent in that state? He must have been dead to every manly feeling, if he had not resented the rape and death of his wife. He did not retire but to avoid banishment; nor was he contented without his whole estate, and a splendid addition to it; so that there is scarcely a character or anecdote in history less to our author’s purpose in any point of view.

There is an extravagance in many popular writers in favor of republican governments, which injures much oftener than it serves the cause of liberty. Such is that of our author, when he cites the example of Regulus. Let us first remember, however, that Regulus was a patrician and a senator, and that he was appointed to his command, and continued in it, by the senate; and therefore, instead of being an example in honor of a simple or a representative democracy, it operates in favor of an aristocracy, or at most, in favor of a mixed government, in which an aristocracy has one full third part. Regulus had been in a course of victory, which the senate would not interrupt, and therefore continued him in the command of the army. He wrote to the senate to complain of it. The glory of it to himself, the advantage to the public, was not reward enough for him. He demanded a successor; and what was his reason? A thief had stolen his tools of husbandry, used in manuring; his tenant was dead, and his presence was absolutely necessary to prevent his wife and children from starving. Is it possible to read this without laughter and indignation; laughter at the folly of that government which made so poor a provision for its generals, and indignation at the sordid avarice of that senate and people, who could require a threat of resignation from the conqueror of Carthage to induce them to provide for his wife and children? The senate decreed that his field should be cultivated at the public expense, that his working tools should be replaced, and his wife and children provided for. Then, indeed, Regulus’s aversion to the service was removed; to such sordid condescensions to the prejudices and the meanness of the stingy and envious parts of the community are such exalted souls, as that of Regulus, obliged sometimes to submit; but the eternal panegyrics of republican writers, as they call themselves, will never reconcile mankind to any thing so ridiculous and contemptible. The laborer is worthy of his hire. He who labors for the public should live by the public, as much as he who preaches the gospel should live by the gospel; and these maxims of equity are approved by all the generous part of mankind. And the people whose heads are turned with contracted notions of a contrary nature, will forever be the dupes of the designing; for where you will find a single Regulus, you will find ten thousand Cæsars.

The example of Paulus Æmilius is equally hostile to our author’s system, and equally friendly to that which we contend for. The first consul of that name, the conqueror of Illyricum, in 533, although he returned to Rome in triumph, yet, at the expiration of his office, he was cited before the people in their tribes, and accused of having converted part of the spoils to his own use. Æmilius had great difficulty to escape the condemnation which his colleague suffered. This great patrician and consul commanded and was killed at the battle of Cannæ. His son, of the same name, whose sister Æmilius was married to the great Scipio, distinguished himself by avoiding those intrigues, solicitations, caresses, and other artifices, practised by most candidates, even at this time, 562. His pains were employed to make himself esteemed by valor, justice, and ardor in his duty, in which he surpassed all the young men of his age. He carried the ædileship against ten competitors, every one of whom was so distinguished by birth and merit as afterwards to obtain the consulship. By his wife Papiria he had two sons, whom he procured to be adopted into the most illustrious houses in Rome; the eldest, by Fabius Maximus, five times consul and dictator; the younger by a son of Scipio Africanus. His two daughters he married, one to a son of Cato the Censor, and the other to Tubero. In 563 he gained a complete victory over the Lusitanians, in which he killed them eighteen thousand men, and took their camp, with thirteen hundred prisoners. In the offices of ædile, and of augur, he excelled all his contemporaries in the knowledge and practice of his duty; and military discipline he carried to greater perfection than had ever been known; nevertheless, when he stood for any office, even in these virtuous times, there was always an opposition; and he could not obtain the consulship till after he had suffered several repulses. Why? Because his virtue was too severe; not for the senate, but the people; and because he would not flatter and bribe the people. Before the end of the year of his first consulate he fought the Ligurians, and gained a complete victory over them, killing more than fifteen thousand men, and making near three thousand prisoners, and returned to Rome in triumph; yet with all this merit, when he stood candidate, some years after, for the consulate, the people rejected him; upon this he retired to educate his children. He was frugal in every thing of private luxury, but magnificent in expenses of public duty. Grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, sculptors, painters, equerries, hunters, were procured for the instruction of his children. While he was thus employed in private life, in 583, fourteen years after his first consulship, the affairs of the republic were ignorantly conducted, and the Macedonians, with Perseus at their head, gained great advantages against them. People were not satisfied with the conduct of the consuls of late years, and began to say, that the Roman name was not supported. The cry was, that the command of armies must no longer be given to faction and favor. The singular merit of Æmilius, his splendid services, the confidence which the troops had in his capacity, and the urgent necessity of the times for his wisdom and firmness, turned all eyes upon him. All his relations, and the senators in general, urged him to stand candidate. He had already experienced so much ingratitude, injustice, and caprice, that he shunned the present ardor, and chose to continue in private life. That very people who had so often ill used him, and rejected him, now crowded before his door, and insisted on his going to the forum; and his presence there was universally considered as a sure presage of victory, and he was unanimously elected consul, and appointed commander in Macedonia. He conquered Perseus and his Macedonian phalanx, and in the battle he formed Fabiuses and Scipios to be the glory and triumph of his country after him. He plundered the immense wealth of Macedonia and Epirus; he plundered seventy cities, and demolished their walls. The spoils were sold, and each soldier had two hundred denarii, and each of the horse four. The soldiers and common people, it seems, had little of that disinterestedness for which Æmilius was remarkable. They were so offended at their general for giving so little of the booty to them, and reserving so much to the public treasury, that they raised a great cry and opposition against his triumph; and Galba, the soldiers, and their friends among the plebeians, were determined to teach the great men, the consuls, generals, &c. to be less public-spirited—to defraud the treasury of its wealth, and bestow it upon them; they accordingly opposed the triumph of this great and disinterested general, and the first tribes absolutely rejected it.

Who, upon this occasion, saved the honor, justice, and dignity of the republic? Not the plebeians, but the senators. The senators were highly enraged at this infamous injustice and ingratitude, and this daring effort of popular licentiousness and avarice, and were obliged to make a noise, and excite a tumult. Servilius, too, who had been consul, and had killed three-and-twenty enemies who had challenged him in single combat, made a long speech, in which he showed the baseness of their conduct in so striking a light, that he made the people ashamed of themselves; and at length they consented to the triumph, but to all appearance more from a desire to see the show of Perseus laden with chains, led through the city before the chariot of the victor, than from any honest and public-spirited design to reward merit. The sum which he caused to be carried into the public treasury on the day of the triumph was one million three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and caused the taxes of the Roman people to be abolished. At his death, after the sale of part of his slaves, movables, and some farms, to pay his wife’s dower, the remainder of his fortune was but nine thousand three hundred and seventy-five pounds sterling. As he was descended from one of the most noble and ancient houses of Rome, illustrious by the highest dignities, the smallness of his fortune reflects honor on his ancestors as well as on himself. The love of simplicity was still supported in some of the great families, by extreme care not to ally themselves with luxurious ones; and Æmilius chose Tubero, of the family of Ælii, whose first piece of plate was a silver cup of five pounds weight, given him by his father-in-law. These few families stemmed the torrent of popular avarice and extravagance.

Let us now consider what would have been the fate of Æmilius, if Rome had been governed at this time by Nedham’s succession of the people’s representatives, unchecked by a senate. It is plain he must have given into the common practice of flattering, caressing, soothing, bribing, and cajoling the people, or never have been consul, never commanded armies, never triumphed. An example more destructive of our author’s system can scarcely be found, and yet he has the inadvertence at least to adduce it in support of his Right Constitution of a Commonwealth. It has been necessary to quote these anecdotes at some length, that we may not be deceived by a specious show, which is destitute of substance, truth, and fact, to support it.

But how come all these examples to be patricians and senators, and not one instance to be found of a plebeian commander who did not make a different use of his power?

There is a strange confusion or perversion in what follows: “Rome never thrived until it was settled in a freedom of the people.” Rome never was settled in a freedom of the people; meaning in a free state, according to our author’s definition of it, “a succession of the supreme authority in the people’s representatives.” Such an idea never existed in the Roman commonwealth, not even when or before the people made Cæsar a perpetual dictator. Rome never greatly prospered until the people obtained a small mixture of authority, a slight check upon the senate, by their tribunes. This, therefore, is proof in favor of the mixture, and against the system of our author.

“Freedom was preserved, and that interest best advanced, when all places of honor and trust were exposed to men of merit, without distinction.”

True, but this never happened till the mixture took place.

“This happiness could never be obtained, until the people were instated in a capacity of preferring whom they thought worthy, by a freedom of electing men successively into their supreme offices and assemblies.” What is meant here by supreme offices? There were none in Rome but the dictators, and they were appointed by the senate, at least until Marius annihilated the senate, by making the tribes omnipotent. Consuls could not be called supreme officers in any sense. What is meant by supreme assemblies? There were none but the senate. The Roman people never had the power of electing a representative assembly. “So long as this custom continued, and merit took place, the people made shift to keep and increase their liberties.” This custom never took place, and, strictly speaking, the Roman people never enjoyed liberty. The senate was sovereign till the people set up a perpetual dictator.

“When this custom lay neglected, and the stream of preferment began to run along with the favor and pleasure of particular powerful men, then vice and compliance making way for advancement, the people could keep their liberties no longer; but both their liberties and themselves were made the price of every man’s ambition and luxury.”

But when was this? Precisely when the people began, and in proportion as they approached to, an equality of power with the senate, and to that state of things which our author contends for; so that the whole force of his reasoning and examples, when they come to be analyzed, conclude against him.

The eighth reason, why the people in their assemblies are the best keepers of their liberty, is, “because it is they only that are concerned in the point of liberty.” It is agreed that the people in their assemblies, tempered by another coequal assembly and an executive coequal with either, are the best keepers of their liberties. But it is denied that in one assembly, collective or representative, they are the best keepers. It may be reasonably questioned, whether they are not the worst; because they are as sure to throw away their liberties, as a monarch or a senate untempered are to take them; with this additional evil, that they throw away their morals at the same time; whereas monarchs and senates sometimes by severity preserve them in some degree. In a simple democracy, the first citizen and the better sort of citizens are part of the people, and are equally “concerned” with any others “in the point of liberty.” But is it clear that in other forms of government “the main interest and concernment, both of kings and grandees, lies either in keeping the people in utter ignorance what liberty is, or else in allowing and pleasing them only with the name and shadow of liberty instead of the substance?” It is very true that knowledge is very apt to make people uneasy under an arbitrary and oppressive government. But a simple monarch or a sovereign senate which is not arbitrary and oppressive, though absolute, if such cases can exist, would be interested to promote the knowledge of the nation. It must, however, be admitted, that simple governments will rarely if ever favor the dispersion of knowledge among the middle and lower ranks of people. But this is equally true of simple democracy. The people themselves, if uncontrolled, will never long tolerate a freedom of inquiry, debate, or writing; their idols must not be reflected on, nor their schemes and actions scanned, upon pain of popular vengeance, which is not less terrible than that of despots or sovereign senators.

“In free states, the people being sensible of their past condition in former times under the power of great ones, and comparing it with the possibilities and enjoyments of the present, become immediately instructed that their main interest and concernment consists in liberty; and are taught by common sense, that the only way to secure it from the reach of great ones, is to place it in the people’s hands, adorned with all the prerogatives and rights of supremacy.” It is very true that the main interest and concernment of the people is liberty. If their liberties are well secured they may be happy if they will; and they generally, perhaps always, are so. The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them a power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice. But to give the people, uncontrolled, all the prerogatives and rights of supremacy, meaning the whole executive and judicial power, or even the whole undivided legislative, is not the way to preserve liberty. In such a government it is often as great a crime to oppose or decry a popular demagogue, or any of his principal friends, as in a simple monarchy to oppose a king, or in a simple aristocracy the senators. The people will not bear a contemptuous look or disrespectful word; nay, if the style of your homage, flattery, and adoration, is not as hyperbolical as the popular enthusiasm dictates, it is construed into disaffection; the popular cry of envy, jealousy, suspicious temper, vanity, arrogance, pride, ambition, impatience of a superior, is set up against a man, and the rage and fury of an ungoverned rabble, stimulated underhand by the demagogic despots, breaks out into every kind of insult, obloquy, and outrage, often ending in murders and massacres, like those of the De Witts, more horrible than any that the annals of despotism can produce.

It is indeed true, that “the interest of freedom is a virgin that every one seeks to deflour; and like a virgin it must be kept, or else (so great is the lust of mankind after dominion) there follows a rape upon the first opportunity.” From this it follows, that liberty in the legislature is “more secure in the people’s than in any other hands, because they are most concerned in it:” provided you keep the executive power out of their hands entirely, and give the property and liberty of the rich a security in a senate, against the encroachments of the poor in a popular assembly. Without this the rich will never enjoy any liberty, property, reputation, or life, in security. The rich have as clear a right to their liberty and property as the poor. It is essential to liberty that the rights of the rich be secured; if they are not, they will soon be robbed and become poor, and in their turn rob their robbers, and thus neither the liberty or property of any will be regarded.

The careful attention to liberty “makes the people both jealous and zealous, keeping a constant guard against the attempts and encroachments of any powerful or crafty underminers.”

But this is true only while they are made a distinct body from the executive power, and the most conspicuous citizens mingle all together, and a scramble instantly commences for the loaves and fishes, abolition of debts, shutting up courts of justice, divisions of property, &c. Is it not an insult to common sense, for a people with the same breath to cry liberty, an abolition of debts, and division of goods? If debts are once abolished, and goods are divided, there will be the same reason for a fresh abolition and division every month and every day. And thus the idle, vicious, and abandoned, will live in constant riot on the spoils of the industrious, virtuous, and deserving. “Powerful and crafty underminers” have nowhere such rare sport as in a simple democracy or single popular assembly. Nowhere, not in the completest despotisms, does human nature show itself so completely depraved, so nearly approaching an equal mixture of brutality and devilism, as in the last stages of such a democracy, and in the beginning of that despotism that always succeeds it.

“A people having once tasted the sweets of freedom, are so affected with it, that if they discover or do but suspect the least design to encroach upon it, they count it a crime never to be forgiven.”

Strange perversion of truth and fact! This is so far from the truth, that our author himself is not able to produce a single instance of it as a proof or illustration. Instead of adducing an example of it from a simple democracy, he is obliged to have recourse to an example that operates strongly against him, because taken from an aristocracy. In the Roman state, one gave up his children, another his brother, to death, to revenge an attempt against common liberty. Was Brutus a man of the people? Was Brutus for a government of the people in their sovereign assemblies? Was not Brutus a patrician? Did he not think patricians a different order of beings from plebeians? Did he not erect a simple aristocracy? Did he not sacrifice his sons to preserve that aristocracy? Is it not equally probable that he would have sacrificed them to preserve his aristocracy from any attempt to set up such a government as our author contends for, or even against any attempt to have given the plebeians a share in the government; nay, against any attempt to erect the office of tribunes at that time?

“Divers sacrificed their lives to preserve it.”

To preserve what? The standing government of grandees, against which our author’s whole book is written.

“Some sacrificed their best friends to vindicate it, upon bare suspicion, as in the case of Mælius and Manlius.”

To vindicate what? Liberty? popular liberty? plebeian liberty? Precisely the contrary. These characters were murdered for daring to be friends to popular liberty; for daring to think of limiting the power of the grandees, by introducing a share of popular authority and a mixed constitution; and the people themselves were so far from the zeal, jealousy, and love of liberty that our author ascribes to them, that they suffered their own authority to be prostituted before their eyes, to the destruction of the only friends they had, and to the establishment of their enemies, and a form of government by grandees, under which they had no liberty, and in which they had no share.

Our author then cites examples of revenge in Greece. The year 1656 was a late age in the history of philosophy, as well as morality and religion, for any writer to preach revenge as a duty and a virtue. Reason and philanthropy, as well as religion, pronounce it a weakness and a vice in all possible cases. Examples enough of it, however, may be found in all revolutions. But monarchies and aristocracies have practised it, and, therefore, the virtue of revenge is not peculiar to our author’s plan. In Corcyra itself, the people were massacred by the grandees as often as they massacred the grandees. And of all kinds of spirits that we read of, out of hell, this is the last that an enlightened friend of liberty would philosophically inculcate. Let legal liberty vindicate itself by legal punishments and moral measures; but mobs and massacres are the disgrace of her sacred cause still more than that of humanity.

Florence, too, and Cosmus* are quoted, and the alternatives of treachery, revenge, and cruelty; all arising, as they did in Greece, from the want of a proper division of authority and an equal balance. Let any one read the history of the first Cosimo, his wisdom, virtues, and unbounded popularity, and then consider what would have been the consequence if Florence, at that period, had been governed by our author’s plan of successive single assemblies, chosen by the people annually. It is plain that the people would have chosen such, and such only, for representatives as Cosimo and his friends would have recommended; at least a vast majority of them would have been his followers, and he would have been absolute. It was the aristocracy and the forms of the old constitution that alone served as a check upon him. The speech of Uzzano must convince one, that the people were more ready to make him absolute, than ever the Romans were to make Cæsar a perpetual dictator. He confesses that Cosimo was followed by the whole body of the plebeians, and by one half of the nobles; that if Cosimo was not made master of the commonwealth, Rinaldo would be, whom he dreaded much more. In truth the government, at this time, was in reality become monarchical, and that ill-digested aristocracy, which they called a popular state, existed only in form; and the persecution of Cosimo only served to explain the secret.

Will it be denied that a nation has a right to choose a government for themselves? The question was really no more than this, whether Rinaldo or Cosimo should be master. The nation declared for Cosimo, reversed that banishment into which he had been very unjustly sent by Rinaldo, demanded his return, and voted him the father of his country. This, alone, is full proof, that if the people had been the keepers of their own liberties, in their successive assemblies, they would have given them all to Cosimo; whereas, had there been an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, in that constitution, the nobles and commons would have united against Cosimo, the moment he attempted to overleap the boundaries of his legal authority. Uzzano confesses that, unless charity, liberality, and beneficence were crimes, Cosimo was guilty of no offence; and that there was as much to apprehend from his own party as from the other, in the point of liberty. All the subsequent attempts of Rinaldo, to put Cosimo to death and to banish him, were unqualified tyranny. He saved his life, it is true, by a bribe; but what kind of patrons of liberty were these who would betray it for a bribe? His recall and return from banishment seem to have been the general voice of the nation, expressed according to the forms and spirit of the present constitution, without any appearance of such treachery, as our author suggests.*

Whether Nedham knew the real history of Florence is very problematical; all his examples from it, are so unfortunate as to be conclusive against his project of a government. The real essence of the government in Florence had been, for the greatest part of fifty years, a monarchy, in the hands of Uzzano and Maso, according to Machiavel’s own account; its form an aristocracy, and its name a popular state. Nothing of the essence was changed by the restoration of Cosimo; the form and name only underwent an alteration.

Holstein, too, is introduced, merely to make a story for the amusement of a drunken mob. “Here is a health to the remembrance of our liberty,” said the “boorish, poor, silly generation,” seventy years after they were made a duchy. Many hogsheads of ale and porter, I doubt not, were drank in England in consequence of this Holstein story; and that was all the effect it could have towards supporting our author’s argument.

How deep soever the impression may be, that is made by “the love of freedom in the minds of the people,” it will not follow that they alone are “the best keepers of their own liberties, being more tender and more concerned in their security than any powerful pretenders whatsoever.”

Are not the senators, whether they be hereditary or elective, under the influence of powerful motives to be tender and concerned for the security of liberty? Every senator who consults his reason, knows that his own liberty and that of his posterity must depend upon the constitution which preserves it to others. What greater refuge can a nation have, than in a council in which the national maxims and the spirit and genius of the state, are preserved by a living tradition? What stronger motive to virtue, and to the preservation of liberty, can the human mind perceive, next to those of rewards and punishments in a future life, than the recollection of a long line of ancestors, who have sat within the walls of the senate, and guided the councils, led the armies, commanded the fleets, and fought the battles of the people, by which the nation has been sustained in its infant years, defended from dangers, and carried, through calamities, to wealth, grandeur, prosperity, and glory? What institution more useful can possibly exist, than a living repertory of all the history, knowledge, interests, and wisdom of the commonwealth, and a living representative of all the great characters, whose prudence, wisdom, and valor are registered in the history and recorded in the archives of the country? If the people have the periodical choice of these, we may hope they will generally select those, among the most conspicuous for fortune, family, and wealth, who are most signalized for virtue and wisdom, which is more advantageous than to be confined to the eldest son, however defective, to the exclusion of younger sons, though excellent, and to one family, though decayed and depraved, to another more deserving, as in hereditary senates. But that a senate, guarded from ambition, should be objected to by a friend of liberty and republican government, is very extraordinary. Let the people have a full share, and a decisive negative; and, with this impregnable barrier against the ambition of the senate on one side, and the executive power, with an equal negative, on the other, such a council will be found the patron and guardian of liberty on many occasions, when the giddy, thoughtless multitude, and even their representatives, would neglect, forget, or even despise and insult it; instances of all which are not difficult to find.

The ninth reason is, “because the people are less luxurious than kings or grandees.”

That may well be denied. Kings, nobles, and people are all alike in this respect, and, in general, know no other bounds of indulgence than the capacity of enjoyment, and the power to gratify it. The problem ought to be, to find a form of government best calculated to prevent the bad effects and corruption of luxury, when, in the ordinary course of things, it must be expected to come in. Kings and nobles, if they are confessed to enjoy or indulge in luxury more than the commons, it is merely because they have more means and opportunities, not because they have stronger appetites, passions, and fancies, or, in other words, a stronger propensity to luxury, than the plebeians. If it should be conceded, that the passions and appetites strengthen by indulgence, it must be confessed, too, that they have more motives to restrain them; but in regard to mere animal gratification, it may well be denied that they indulge or enjoy more than the common people on an average. Eating and drinking, surely, is practised with as much satisfaction by the footman as his lord; and as much pleasure may be tasted in gin, brandy, ale, and porter, as in Burgundy or Tokay; in beef and pudding, as in ortolans and jellies. If we consider nations together, we shall find that intemperance and excess are more indulged in the lowest ranks than in the highest. The luxury of dress, beyond the defence from the weather, is a mere matter of politics and etiquette throughout all the ranks of life; and, in the higher ranks, rises only in proportion as it rises in the middle and the lowest. The same is true of furniture and equipage, after the ordinary conveniences and accommodations of life. Those who claim or aspire to the highest ranks of life, will eternally go to a certain degree above those below them in these particulars, if their incomes will allow it. Consideration is attainable by appearance, and ever will be; and it may be depended on, that rich men, in general, will not suffer others to be considered more than themselves, or as much, if they can prevent it by their riches. The poor and the middle ranks, then, have it in their power to diminish luxury as much as the great and rich have. Let the middle and lower ranks lessen their style of living, and they may depend upon it the higher ranks will lessen theirs.

It is commonly said, every thing is regis ad exemplum; that the lower ranks imitate the higher; and it is true. But it is equally true that the higher imitate the lower. The higher ranks will never exceed their inferiors but in a certain proportion; but the distinction they are absolutely obliged to keep up, or fall into contempt and ridicule. It may gratify vulgar malignity and popular envy, to declaim eternally against the rich and the great, the noble and the high; but, generally and philosophically speaking, the manners and characters of a nation are all alike. The lowest and the middling people, in general, grow vicious, vain, and luxurious, exactly in proportion. As to appearance, the higher sort are obliged to raise theirs in proportion as the stories below ascend. A free people are the most addicted to luxury of any. That equality which they enjoy, and in which they glory, inspires them with sentiments which hurry them into luxury. A citizen perceives his fellow-citizen, whom he holds his equal, have a better coat or hat, a better house or horse, than himself, and sees his neighbors are struck with it, talk of it, and respect him for it. He cannot bear it; he must and will be upon a level with him. Such an emulation as this takes place in every neighborhood, in every family; among artisans, husbandmen, laborers, as much as between dukes and marquises, and more—these are all nearly equal in dress, and are now distinguished by other marks. Declamations, oratory, poetry, sermons, against luxury, riches, and commerce will never have much effect. The most rigorous sumptuary laws will have little more. “Discordia, et avaritia, atque ambitio, et cetera secundis rebus oriri sueta mala, post Carthaginis excidium maxumè aucta sunt. Ex quo tempore majorum mores, non paulatim, ut antea, sed torrentis modo præcipitati.”*

In the late war, the Americans found an unusual quantity of money flow in upon them, and, without the least degree of prudence, foresight, consideration, or measure, rushed headlong into a greater degree of luxury than ought to have crept in for a hundred years. The Romans charged the ruin of their commonwealth to luxury; they might have charged it to the want of a balance in their constitution. In a country like America, where the means and opportunities for luxury are so easy and so plenty, it would be madness not to expect it, be prepared for it, and provide against the dangers of it in the constitution. The balance, in a triple-headed legislature, is the best and the only remedy. If we will not adopt that, we must suffer the punishment of our temerity. The supereminence of a threefold balance above all the imperfect balances that were attempted in the ancient republics of Greece and Italy, and the modern ones of Switzerland and Holland, whether aristocratical or mixed, lies in this, that as it is capable of governing a great nation and large territory, whereas the others can only exist in small ones, so it is capable of preserving liberty among great degrees of wealth, luxury, dissipation, and even profligacy of manners; whereas the others require the utmost frugality, simplicity, and moderation, to make human life tolerable under them.

“Where luxury takes place, there is a natural tendency to tyranny.”

There is a natural tendency to tyranny every where, in the simplest manners as well as the most luxurious, which nothing but force can stop. And why should this tendency be taken from human nature, where it grows as in its native soil, and attributed to luxury?

“The nature of luxury lies altogether in excess. It is a universal deprivation of manners, without reason, without moderation; it is the canine appetite of a corrupt will and phantasy, which nothing can satisfy; but in every action, in every imagination, it flies beyond the bounds of honesty, just and good, into all extremity.”

This is declamation and rant that it is not easy to comprehend. There are all possible degrees of luxury which appear in society, with every degree of virtue, from the first dawnings of civilization to the last stage of improvement and refinement; and civility, humanity, and benevolence, increase commonly as fast as ambition of conquest, the pride of war, cruelty, and bloody rage, diminish. Luxury, to certain degrees of excess, is an evil; but it is not at all times, and in all circumstances, an absolute evil. It should be restrained by morality and by law, by prohibitions and discouragements. But the evil does not lie here only; it lies in human nature; and that must be restrained by a mixed form of government, which is the best in the world to manage luxury. Our author’s government would never make, or, if it made, it never would execute laws to restrain luxury.

“That form of government,” says our author, “must needs be the most excellent, and the people’s liberty most secured, where governors are least exposed to the baits and snares of luxury.”

That is to say, that form of government is the best, and the people’s liberty most secure, where the people are poorest; this will never recommend a government to mankind. But what has poverty or riches to do with the form of government? If mankind must be voluntarily poor in order to be free, it is too late in the age of the world to preach liberty. Whatever Nedham might think, mankind in general had rather be rich under a simple monarchy, than poor under a democracy. But if that is the best form of government, where governors are least exposed to the baits and snares of luxury, the government our author contends for is the worst of all possible forms. There is, there can be no form in which the governors are so much exposed to the baits and snares of luxury as in a simple democracy. In proportion as a government is democratical, in a degree beyond a proportional prevalence of monarchy and aristocracy, the wealth, means, and opportunities being the same, does luxury prevail. Its progress is instantaneous. There can be no subordination. One citizen cannot bear that another should live better than himself; a universal emulation in luxury instantly commences; and the governors, that is, those who aspire at elections, are obliged to take the lead in this silly contention; they must not be behind the foremost in dress, equipage, furniture, entertainments, games, races, spectacles; they must feast and gratify the luxury of electors to obtain their votes; and the whole executive authority must be prostituted, and the legislative too, to encourage luxury. The Athenians made it death for any one to propose the appropriation of money devoted to the support of the theatre to any the most necessary purposes of the state. In monarchies and aristocracies much may be done, both by precept and example, by laws and manners, to diminish luxury and restrain its growth; in a mixed government more still may be done for this salutary end; but in a simple democracy, nothing. Every man will do as he pleases, no sumptuary law will be obeyed; every prohibition or impost will be eluded; no man will dare to propose a law by which the pleasures or the liberty of the citizen shall be restrained. A more unfortunate argument for a simple democracy could not have been thought of; it is, however, a very good one in favor of a mixed government.

Our author is nowhere so weak as in this reason, or under this head. He attempts to prove his point by reason and examples, but is equally unfortunate in both. First, by reason. “The people,” says he, “must needs be less luxurious than kings, or the great ones, because they are bounded within a more lowly pitch of desire and imagination; give them but panem et circenses, bread, sport, and ease, and they are abundantly satisfied.” It is to be feared that this is too good a character for any people living, or that have lived. The disposition to luxury is the same, though the habit is not, both in plebeians, patricians, and kings. When we say their desires are bounded, we admit the desires to exist. Imagination is as quick in one as in the other. It is demanding a great deal, to demand “bread, and sports, and ease.” No one can tell how far these terms may extend. If by bread is meant a subsistence, a maintenance in food and clothing, it will mount up very high; if by sports be meant cock-fighting, horse-racing, theatrical representations, and all the species of cards, dice, and gambling, no mortal philosopher can fathom the depth of this article; and if with “bread” and “sport” they are to have “ease” too, and by ease be meant idleness, an exemption from care and labor, all three together will amount to as much as ever was demanded for nobles or kings, and more than ought ever to be granted to either. But let us grant all this for a moment; we should be disappointed; the promised “abundant satisfaction” would not be found. The bread must soon be of the finest wheat; poultry and gibier must be added to beef and mutton; the entertainments would not be elegant enough after a time; more expense must be added; in short, contentment is not in human nature; there is no passion, appetite, or affection for contentment. To amuse and flatter the people with compliments of qualities that never existed in them, is not the duty nor the right of a philosopher or legislator; he must form a true idea and judgment of mankind, and adapt his institutions to facts, not compliments.

“The people have less means and opportunities for luxury than those pompous standing powers, whether in the hands of one or many.”

But if the sovereignty were exercised wholly by one popular assembly, they would then have the means and opportunities in their hands as much as the king has in a monarchy, or the senate in an aristocracy or oligarchy; and much more than either king or nobles have in the tripartite composition we contend for; because in this the king and nobles have really no means or opportunities of luxury but what are freely given them by the people, whose representatives hold the purse. Accordingly, in the simple democracy, or representative democracy, which our author contends for, it would be found, that the great leaders in the assembly would soon be as luxurious as ever kings or hereditary nobles were, and they would make partisans by admitting associates in a luxury, which they would support at the expense of the minority; and every particle of the executive power would be prostituted, new lucrative offices daily created, and larger appointments annexed to support it; nay, the power of judging would be prostituted to determine causes in favor of friends and against enemies, and the plunder devoted to the luxury. The people would be found as much inclined to vice and vanity as kings or grandees, and would run on to still greater excess and riot; for kings and nobles are always restrained, in some degree, by fear of the people, and their censures; whereas the people themselves, in the case we put, are not restrained by fear or shame, having all honor and applause at their disposal, as well as force. It does not appear, then, that they are less luxurious; on the contrary, they are more luxurious, and necessarily become so, in a simple democracy.

Our author triumphantly concludes, “it is clear the people, that is, their successive representatives,” (all authority in one centre, and that centre the nation,) “must be the best governors, because the current of succession keeps them the less corrupt and presumptuous.”

He must have forgot that these successive representatives have all the executive power, and will use it at once for the express purpose of corruption among their constituents, to obtain votes at the next election. Every commission will be given, and new offices created, and fresh fees, salaries, perquisites, and emoluments added, on purpose to corrupt more voters. He must have forgot that the judicial power is in the hands of these representatives, by his own suppositions, and that false accusations of crimes will be sustained to ruin enemies; disputes in civil causes will be decided in favor of friends; in short, the whole criminal law, and the whole civil law concerning lands, houses, goods, and money, will be made subservient to the covetousness, pride, ambition, and ostentation of the dominant party and their chiefs. “The current of succession,” instead of keeping them “less corrupt and presumptuous,” is the very thing that annually makes them more corrupt and shameless. Instead of being more “free from luxurious courses,” they are more irresistibly drawn into them; instead of being “free from oppressive and injurious practices,” their parties at elections will force them into them; and all these things they must do to hold up the port and splendor of their tyranny; and if any of them hesitate at any imprudence that his party demands, he alone will be rejected, and another found whose conscience and whose shame are sufficiently subdued.

Unfortunate in his arguments from reason, to show that the people, qualified with the supreme authority, are less devoted to luxury than the grandee or kingly powers, our author is still more unhappy in those drawn from example.

The first example is Athens. “While Athens remained free, in the people’s hands, it was adorned with such governors as gave themselves up to a serious, abstemious, and severe course of life.”

Sobriety, abstinence, and severity, were never remarkable characteristics of democracy, or the democratical branch or mixture, in any constitution; they have oftener been the attributes of aristocracy and oligarchy. Athens, in particular, was never conspicuous for these qualities; but, on the contrary, from the first to the last moment of her democratical constitution, levity, gayety, inconstancy, dissipation, intemperance, debauchery, and a dissolution of manners, were the prevailing character of the whole nation. At what period will it be pretended that they were adorned with these serious, abstemious, and severe governors? and what were their names? Was Pisistratus so serious, when he drove his chariot into the Agora, wounded by himself, and duped the people to give him his guard? or when he dressed the girl like Minerva? Was Hipparchus or Hippias, Cleisthenes or Isagoras, so abstemious? Was there so much abstinence and severity of public virtue in applying first to Sparta, and then to Persia, against their country, as the leaders alternately did? Miltiades indeed was serious, abstemious, and severe; but Xanthippus, who was more popular, and who conducted a capital accusation against him, and got him fined fifty talents, was not. Themistocles! was he the severe character? A great statesman and soldier, to be sure; but very ambitious, and not very honest. Pericles sacrificed all things to his ambition; Cleon and Alcibiades were the very reverse of sobriety, moderation, and modesty. Miltiades, Aristides, Socrates, and Phocion, are all the characters in the Athenian story who had this kind of merit; and to show how little the Athenians themselves deserved this praise, or esteemed it in others, the first was condemned by the people in an immense fine, the second to banishment, and the third and fourth to death. Aristides had Themistocles, a more popular man, constantly to oppose him. He was, indeed, made financier of all Greece; but what other arbitration had Athens? And Aristides himself, though a professed imitator of Lycurgus, and a favorer of aristocracy, was obliged to overturn the constitution, by giving way to the furious ambition of the people, and by letting every citizen into the competition for the archonship.*

“Being at the height, they began to decline;” that is, almost in the instant when they had expelled the Pisistratidæ, and acquired a democratical ascendency, though checked by the areopagus and many other institutions of Solon, they declined. The good conduct of the democracy began and ended with Aristides.

“Permitting some men to greaten themselves by continuing long in power and authority, they soon lost their pure principles of severity and liberty.”

In truth, nobody yet had such principles but Miltiades and Aristides. As soon as the people got unlimited power, they did, as the people always do, give it to their flatterers, like Themistocles, and continued it in him. To what purpose is it to talk of the rules of a free state, when you are sure those rules will be violated? The people unbalanced never will observe them.

“The thirty” were appointed by Lysander, after the conquest of Athens by Sparta; yet it was not the continuance, but the illimitation, of their power that corrupted them. These, indeed, behaved like all other unchecked assemblies. The majority destroyed Theramenes and the few virtuous members, who happened to be among them and were a reproach to them, and then ruled with a rod of iron. Nothing was heard of but murders and imprisonments. Riches were a crime that never failed to be punished with confiscation and death. More people were put to death in eight months of peace than had been slain by the enemy in a war of thirty years. In short, every body of men, every unchecked assembly in Athens, had invariably behaved in this manner: the four hundred formerly chosen; now the thirty; and afterwards the ten. Such universal, tenacious, and uniform conspiracies against liberty, justice, and the public good; such a never-failing passion for tyranny, possessing republicans born in the air of liberty, nurtured in her bosom, accustomed to that equality on which it is founded, and principled by their education, from their earliest infancy, in an abhorrence of all servitude, have astonished the generality of historians. There must be in power, say they, some violent impulse to actuate so many persons in this manner, who had no doubt sentiments of virtue and honor, and make them forget all laws of nature and religion. But there is really no room for all this surprise. It is the form of government that naturally and necessarily produces the effect. The astonishment really is, and ought only to be, that there is one sensible man left in the world who can still entertain an esteem, or any other sentiment than abhorrence, for a government in a single assembly.

“Such, also was the condition of Athens when Pisistratus usurped the tyranny.” But who was it that continued the power of Pisistratus and his sons? The people. And if this example shows, like all others, that the people are always disposed to continue and increase the power of their favorites, against all maxims and rules of freedom, this, also, is an argument for placing balances in the constitution, even against the power of the people.

From Athens, our author comes to Rome. Under Tarquin, it was “dissolved in debauchery. Upon the change of government, their manners were somewhat mended.”

This difference does not appear. On the contrary, the Roman manners were under the kings as pure as under the aristocracy that followed.

“The senate, being a standing power, soon grew corrupt, and first let in luxury, then tyranny; till the people, being interested in the government, established a good discipline and freedom both together; which was upheld with all severity till the ten grandees came in play.”

When an author writes from imagination only, he may say what he pleases; but it would be trifling to adduce proofs in detail of what every one knows. The whole history of Rome shows that corruption began with the people sooner than in the senate; that it increased faster; that it produced the characters he calls grandees,—as the Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, and Cæsar; and that the senate was for centuries the check that preserved any degree of virtue, moderation, or modesty.

Our author’s conclusion is, that “grandee and kingly powers are ever more luxurious than the popular are, or can be; that luxury ever brings on tyranny as the bane of liberty; and, therefore, that the rights of the people, in a due and orderly succession of their supreme assemblies, are more secure in their own hands than any others.”

But if the fact is otherwise, and the people are equally luxurious in a simple democracy as in a simple aristocracy or monarchy; but more especially if it be true, as it undoubtedly is, that they are more so; then the contrary conclusion will follow, that their rights are more secure when their own power is tempered by a separate executive and an aristocratical senate.

The truth relating to this subject is very obvious, and lies in a narrow compass. The disposition to luxury is so strong in all men, and in all nations, that it can be restrained, where it has the means of gratification, only by education, discipline, or law. Education and discipline soon lose their force when unsupported by law. Simple democracies, therefore, have occasion for the strictest laws to preserve the force of education, discipline, and severity of manners. This is the reason why examples of the most rigorous, the most tyrannical, sumptuary laws are found in governments the most popular. But such sumptuary laws are found always ineffectual; they are always hated by the people, and violated continually; and those who approve them neither dare repeal them, nor attempt to carry them into execution. In a simple aristocracy, the disposition to luxury shows itself in the utmost extravagance, as in Poland. But it is confined to the gentlemen; the common people are forbidden it; and such sumptuary laws are executed severely enough. In simple monarchies, sumptuary laws are made under the guise of prohibitions or imposts; and luxury is generally no otherwise restrained than by the ability to gratify it; but as the difference of ranks is established by laws and customs universally known, there is no temptation for people in the lower ranks to imitate the splendor of those in the higher. But in the mixed government we contend for, the distinction of ranks is also generally known, or ought to be. It has, therefore, all the advantage against general luxury which arises from subordination; and it has the further advantage of being able to execute prudent and reasonable sumptuary laws, whenever the circumstances of affairs require them. It is, therefore, safe to affirm, that luxury is less dangerous in such a mixed government than any other; has less tendency to prevail; and is much more easily restrained to such persons and objects as will be least detrimental to the public good.

The tenth reason is, “because, under this government, the people are ever endued with a more magnanimous, active, and noble temper of spirit, than under the grandeur of any standing power. And this arises from that apprehension which every particular man hath of his own immediate share in the public interest, as well as of that security which he possesses in the enjoyment of his private fortune, free from the reach of any arbitrary power.”

This is a good argument in favor of a government in which the people have an essential part of the sovereign power; but none at all for one in which they exercise the whole. When they have a part, balanced by a senate and a distinct executive power, it is true they have more magnanimity, activity, and spirit; they have a regard to their own immediate share in the public interest; they have an apprehension of that security they possess in the enjoyment of their private fortunes, free from the reach of any arbitrary power. Whenever success betides the public, and the commonwealth conquers, thrives in dominion, wealth, or honor, the citizen reckons all his own. If he sees honors, offices, rewards, distributed to valiant, virtuous, or learned men, he esteems them his own, as long as the door is left open to succeed in the same dignities and enjoyments, if he can attain to the same measure of desert. Men aspire to great actions when rewards depend on merit; and merit is more certain of reward in a mixed government than in any simple one. Rewards depend on the will and pleasure of particular persons, in standing powers of monarchy or aristocracy. But they depend equally on the will and pleasure of the principes populi, the reigning demagogues, in simple democracies, and for obvious reasons are oftener distributed in an arbitrary manner. In a mixed government, the ministers of the executive power are always responsible, and gross corruption in the distribution of offices is always subject to inquiry and to punishment; but in simple governments, the reigning characters are accountable to nobody. In a simple democracy, each leader thinks himself accountable only to his party, and obliged to bestow honors, rewards, and offices, not upon merit and for the good of the whole state, but merely to increase his votes and partisans in future elections. But it is by no means just, politic, or true, to say, that offices, &c. are always conferred in free states, meaning single assemblies, according to merit, without any consideration of birth or fortune. Birth and fortune are as much considered in simple democracies as in monarchies, and ought to be considered in some degree in all states. Merit, it is true, ought to be preferred to both; but, merit being equal, birth will generally determine the question in all popular governments; and fortune, which is a worse criterion, oftener still.

But what apprehension of their share in the public interest, or of their security in the enjoyment of their private fortune, can the minor party have in a simple democracy, when they see that successes, conquests, wealth, and honor, only tend to increase the power of their antagonists, and to lessen their own; when all honors, offices, and rewards, are bestowed to lessen their importance, and increase that of their opponents; when every door is shut against them to succeed to dignities and enjoyments, be their merit what it will; when they see that neither birth, fortune, nor merit can avail them, and that their adversaries, whom they will call their enemies, succeed continually, without either birth, fortune, or merit? This is surely the course in a simple democracy, even more than in a simple aristocracy or monarchy. Abilities, no doubt, will be sought and purchased into the service of fortune and family in the predominant party, but left to perish in opposition.

A mixed government is the only one where merit can be expected to have fair play. There it has three resources, one in each branch of the legislature, and a fourth in the courts of justice; whereas in all simple governments it has but one.

Our author proceeds again to Roman history, and repeats examples he had used before, with equal ill success. The examples prove the contrary of what he cites them to prove. “The Romans, under their kings, remained inconsiderable in reputation, and could never enlarge the dominion very far beyond the walls of their city. Afterwards, under the standing power of the senate, they began to thrive a little better, and for a little time. But when the people began to know, claim, and possess their liberties, in being governed by a succession of their supreme officers and assemblies, then it was, and never till then, that they laid the foundation and built the structure of that wondrous empire that overshadowed the whole world.”

In support of all this, no doubt, will be cited the splendid authority of Sallust. “Nam regibus, boni quam mali suspectiores sunt, semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est. Sed civitas, incredibile memoratu est, adepta libertate, quantum brevi creverit; tanta cupido gloriæ incesserat. Jam primum juventus, simul laboris ac belli patiens erat, in castris per usum militiam discebat; magisque in decoris armis et militaribus equis, quam in scortis atque conviviis lubidinem habebat.” The condition and happiness of Rome under their kings, till the time of Tarquin, have been before related. It has been shown that the introduction of laws and formation of the manners of a barbarous rabble, assembled from all nations, engaged the attention both of the kings and the senate during this period. Their wars have been enumerated, and it has been shown that the nation was not in a condition to struggle with hostile neighbors, nor to contend among themselves. It has been shown that, in proportion as they became easy and safe, the nobles began to envy the kings, and to form continual conspiracies against their authority, thrones, and lives, until it became a question only whether monarchy or aristocracy should be abolished. In this manner kings were necessitated either to give up all their authority into the hands of a haughty and aspiring senate, or assert a more decisive and arbitrary power than the constitution allowed them. In the contest the nobles prevailed, and in the wars with Tarquin and his successors and their allies, soldiers and officers were formed, who became capable and desirous of conquest and glory. Sallust himself confesses this in the former chapter. “Post, ubi regium imperium, quod initio conservandæ libertatis, atque augendæ reipublicæ fuerat, in superbiam, dominationemque convertit; immutato more, annua imperia, binosque imperatores sibi fecere.”

In addition to this it should be remembered, that Sallust was an aristocratical historian, and attached to the sovereignty in the senate, or at least desirous of appearing so in his history, and an enemy to the government of a single person, of which the republic was at that time in the near prospect and the utmost danger. The question, in the mind of this writer, was not between an aristocracy and a mixed sovereignty, but between aristocracy and simple monarchy, or the empire of one. Yet all that can be inferred from the fact, as stated by our author and by Sallust, is, that aristocracy at first is better calculated for conquest than simple monarchy. It by no means follows, that aristocracy is more friendly to liberty or commerce, the two blessings now most esteemed by mankind, than even simple monarchy. But the most exceptionable sentiment of all is this,—“When the people began to possess their liberties, in being governed by a succession of their supreme officers and assemblies, then they laid the foundation of empire, and built the structure.” By this one would think that the Romans were governed by a single representative assembly, periodically chosen, which is our author’s idea of a perfect commonwealth; whereas nothing can be further from the truth. There is scarcely any constitution farther removed from a simple democracy or a representative democracy than the Roman. As has been before observed, from Romulus to Cæsar, aristocracy was the predominant feature of the sovereignty. The mixture of monarchical power in the kings and consuls, and the mixture of democratical power in the tribunes and popular assemblies, though unequal to the aristocratical ingredient, were checks to it and strong stimulants to exertions, though not complete balances. But the periods of greatest liberty, virtue, glory, and prosperity, were those in which the mixture of all three was nearest equality. Our author’s argument and example are clear and strong in favor of the triple combination, and decisive against the democracy he contends for.

“In those days the world abounded with free states more than any other form, as all over Italy, Gallia, Spain, and Africa.”

It may be questioned, whether there was then in the world one free state, according to our author’s definition of it. All that were called free states in those days, were either aristocracies, oligarchies, or mixtures of monarchy and aristocracy, of aristocracy and democracy, or of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But not one do we read of which was governed by a democracy, simple or by representation. The Achaian league, and others like it, were confederated cities, each city being independent, and itself a mixed government.

Carthage is the next example; and an excellent one it is to prove that a mixed government, in which the people have a share, gives them magnanimity, courage, and activity; but it proves nothing to our author’s purpose. The suffetes, the senate, and the people, the monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical powers, nicely balanced, as Aristotle says, were the constitution of Carthage, and secured its liberty and prosperity. But when the balance was weakened, and began to incline to a dominatio plebis, the precise form of government our author contends for, they hastened to ruin. The next example quoted by our author is the Swiss; another example which proves nothing for him, and much against him. All the cantons of any extent, numbers, or wealth, are aristocratical or mixed. The little spots that are called democratical are more or less mixtures. The Hollanders, his last example, had no democratical mixture in their constitution; are entirely aristocratical; and preserved from tyranny and destruction, partly by a stadtholder, partly by the people in mobs, but more especially by the number of independent cities and sovereignties associated together, and the great multitude of persons concerned in the government and composing the sovereignty, four or five thousand; and, finally, by the unanimity that is required in all transactions. Thus, every one of these examples, ancient and modern, is a clear demonstration against our author’s system instead of being an argument for it. There is not even a color in his favor in the democratical cantons of Switzerland, narrow spots or barren mountains, where the people live on milk; nor in St. Marino or Ragusa. No precedents, surely, for England or American States, where the people are numerous and rich, the territory capacious, and commerce extensive.

Freedom produces magnanimity and courage; but there is no freedom nor justice in a simple democracy for any but the majority. The ruling party, no doubt, will be active and bold; but the ruled will be discouraged, browbeaten, and insulted, without a possibility of redress but by civil war. It is a mixed government, then, well balanced, that makes all the nation of a noble temper. Our author confesses, “we feel a loss of courage and magnanimity follow the loss of freedom;” and it is very true. This loss is nowhere so keenly felt as when we are enslaved by those whom the constitution makes our equals. This is the case of the minority always in a simple democracy.

The eleventh reason is, “because no determinations being carried but by consent of the people, therefore they must needs remain secure out of the reach of tyranny and free from the arbitrary disposition of any commanding power.”

No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple or representative democracy, but by consent of the majority of the people or their representatives. If our author had required unanimity in every vote, resolve, and law, in that case no determination could be carried but by consent of the people. But no good government was ever yet founded upon the principle of unanimity; and it need not be attempted to be proved that none such ever can exist. If the majority, then, must govern, and consequently often near half, and almost always a party, must be governed against their consent, it is the majority only who will remain secure out of the reach of tyranny, and free from the arbitrary disposition of any commanding power. The minority, on the contrary, will be constantly within the reach of tyranny, and under the arbitrary disposition of the commanding power of the majority. Nor do the minority, under such a government, “know what laws they are to obey, or what penalties they are to undergo, in case of transgression; nor have they any share or interest in making of laws, with the penalties annexed; nor do they become the more inexcusable if they offend;” nor ought they “the more willingly to submit to punishment, when they suffer for any offence,” for the minority have no laws but what the majority please to give, any more than “when government is managed in the hands of a particular person,” or “continued in the hands of a certain number of great men;” nor do the minority “know how to walk by those laws” of the majority, “or how to understand them, because the sense is oftentimes left at uncertainty;” and it will be “reckoned a great mystery of state, in such a form of government, that no laws shall be of any sense or force, but as the great ones” among the majority “please to expound them;” so as “the people of the minority” will be “left, as it were, without law, because they bear no other construction and meaning but what suits with the interests and fancies of particular men” in the majority; “not with right reason or the public liberty.”

To be convinced of this, we should recollect that the majority have the appointment of the judges, who will be generally the great leaders in the house, or their friends and partisans, and even great exertions will be made to pack juries; but without packing, the probability is, that a majority at least of the juries will be of the ruling party in the nation and its sovereign assembly. We may go farther, and say, that as the passions and interests of the majority have no check, they will frequently make ex post facto laws; laws with a retrospect, to take in cases which at the time were not foreseen, for the mortification of the minority and the support and encouragement of their adversaries. The judges will not be less “reputed the oracles of the law” under such a government, than under kings or standing senates; and the “power of creating judges” will not indeed be “usurped,” but will be legally and constitutionally in the hands of the majority, or rather of their leader or leaders, “who will ever have a care to create such as will make the law speak in favor of them upon any occasion.” These principes populi may say, with as much arrogance and as much truth as it was ever said by Charles or James, “As long as we have the power of making what judges and bishops we please, we are sure to have no law nor gospel but what shall please us.”

The example of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., those of James and Charles, are no doubt pertinent to prove, that “the usurpation of a prerogative of expounding the laws after their own pleasure, made them rather snares than instruments of relief, like a grand catchpole, to pill, poll, and geld the purses of the people; to deprive many gallant men of their lives and fortunes.” But if we had the history of any simple democracy, or democracy by simple representation, such as our author contends for, we should find that such a prerogative was usurped by the majority and their chiefs, and applied to as bad purposes. But the truth is, no such government, that we know of, ever existed. The universal sense of mankind has deemed it so destructive or impracticable, that no nation has ventured on it. The Italian republics of the middle age approach the nearest to it. Their history is an answer. But if we consider those passions in human nature which cause despots, oligarchies, and standing senates, to make such an abuse of power, we must see that the same passions will ever exist in the majority and their leaders in a democracy, and produce the same fatal effects.

It is really astonishing, that the institution of Lycurgus should be adduced as a precedent in favor of our author’s project of the right constitution of a commonwealth; there is scarcely a form of government in the world more essentially different from it in all its parts. It is very true that the provision made by that legislator for an equality of laws, rights, duties, and burdens, among all the citizens, however imperfect it was, however inferior to the provision in the English and American constitutions, was the principal commendation of his plan; but instead of giving all power to the people or their representatives, he gave the real sovereignty to his standing senate. Our author himself is so sensible of this, that he allows the “Lacedæmonian commonwealth to be cut out after the grandee fashion, confirming the supremacy within the walls of the senate.” The senate was in some measure “restrained by laws, walking in the same even pace of subjection with the people; having very few offices of dignity or profit allowed, which might make them swell with state and ambition; but were prescribed also the same rules of frugality, plainness, and moderation, as were the common people; by which means immoderate lusts and desires being prevented in the great ones, they were the less inclined to pride and oppression; and no great profit or pleasure being to be gotten by authority, very few desired it; and such as were in it sat free from envy, by which means they avoided that odium and emulation which uses to rage betwixt the great ones and the people in that form of government.”

But how was this done? by collecting all authority into one centre? No; but by prohibiting travel and communication with strangers, which no people on earth are now barbarous and stupid enough to bear; by prohibiting commerce, which no people who have sense and feeling will now renounce; and by prohibiting money, which all people now desire, and which makes the essential instrument for guiding the world. But all this would not have succeeded, if his constitution had been only one popular assembly. This was effected by reciprocal checks and a real balance, approaching nearly to an absolute control of the senate, by a marriage between the king and people. The king, so far from being a cipher, had great authority; he was the standing and hereditary head of the commonwealth, and this alone must give him a dominion over the hearts and understandings both of senate and people, that must have amounted to a great authority. Our author is generally so sensible of the influence gained over high and low by standing authority, that it is wonderful he should forget it in this case. He was, besides, always commander-in-chief of the armies, and generally led in person; and this, in all governments, gives a general an influence bordering on royal supremacy. But, besides, there were two assemblies of the people, one for the city and one for the country, and those popular representatives, the Ephori.

But the indissoluble bond that united the king and people for ever, was the oath taken by the kings and ephori every month; the former never to violate the privileges of the people, and the latter forever to be loyal to the kings, the descendants of Hercules. This was not equivalent to an absolute negative in the king and the people both, upon the laws of the senate, but it amounted to one complete negative upon the senate; because the kings and people were both sworn to oppose all encroachments of the senate; and if these had made unequal laws, and scrambled for more power, the people would have instantly taken arms, under the command of their ephori and their kings, against the senate. This balance, this mixture, was the real cause of that equality which was preserved in Sparta. But if all authority had been in the popular assemblies, without kings or senate, the right constitution of a commonwealth which our author is an advocate for, that equality could not have existed twenty years; a majority would necessarily have risen up to carry all before them, and to depress the minority more and more, until the first man among the majority would have been king, his principal supporters nobles, and the rest not only plebeians, but slaves.

The question between us and our author, is not whether the people shall be excluded from all interest in government or not. In this point we are perfectly agreed, namely,—that there can be no constitutional liberty, no free state, no right constitution of a commonwealth, where the people are excluded from the government; where, indeed, the people have not an independent equal share with the two other orders of the state, and an absolute control over all laws and grants of money. We agree, therefore, in his next example, the commonwealth of Venice, “where the people being excluded from all interest in government, the power of making and executing of laws, and bearing offices, with all other immunities, lies only in the hands of a standing senate and their kindred, which they call the patrician or noble order. Their duke is indeed restrained.” But far from being “made just such another officer as were the Lacedæmonian kings,” he is reduced in dignity and authority much below them, “differing from the rest of the senate only in a corner of his cap, besides a little outward ceremony and splendor. The senators themselves have, indeed, liberty at random arbitrarily to ramble and do what they please with the people, who, excepting the city itself, are so extremely oppressed in all their territories, living by no law but the arbitrary dictates of the senate, that it seems rather a junta than a commonwealth; and the subjects take so little content in it, that seeing more to be enjoyed under the Turk, they that are his borderers take all opportunities to revolt, and submit rather to the mercy of a Pagan tyranny. Which disposition if you consider, together with the little courage in their subjects, by reason they press them so hard, and how that they are forced for this cause to rely upon foreign mercenaries in all warlike expeditions, you might wonder how this state hath held up so long, but that we know the interest of Christendom being concerned in her security, she hath been chiefly supported by the supplies and arms of others.”

All this is readily allowed. We concur also most sincerely in our author’s conclusion, in part, namely,—“That since kings and all standing powers are so inclinable to act according to their own wills and interests, in making, expounding, and executing of laws, to the prejudice of the people’s liberty and security, no laws whatsoever should be made but by the people’s consent, as the only means to prevent arbitrariness.” But we must carry the conclusion farther, namely,—that since all men are so inclinable to act according to their own wills and interests, in making, expounding, and executing laws, to the prejudice of the people’s liberty and security, the sovereign authority, the legislative, executive, and judicial power, can never be safely lodged in one assembly, though chosen annually by the people; because the majority and their leaders, the principes populi, will as certainly oppress the minority, and make, expound, and execute laws for their own wealth, power, grandeur, and glory, to the prejudice of the liberty and security of the minority, as hereditary kings or standing senates.

The conclusion, therefore, that “the people, in a succession of their supreme single assemblies, are the best keepers of their liberties,” must be wholly reprobated.

The twelfth reason is, “because this form is most suitable to the nature and reason of mankind.”

If Socrates and Plato, Cicero and Seneca, Hutcheson and Butler are to be credited, reason is rightfully supreme in man, and, therefore, it would be most suitable to the reason of mankind to have no civil or political government at all. The moral government of God, and his vicegerent, Conscience, ought to be sufficient to restrain men to obedience, to justice, and benevolence, at all times and in all places; we must therefore descend from the dignity of our nature, when we think of civil government at all. But the nature of mankind is one thing, and the reason of mankind another; and the first has the same relation to the last as the whole to a part. The passions and appetites are parts of human nature, as well as reason and the moral sense. In the institution of government, it must be remembered that, although reason ought always to govern individuals, it certainly never did since the Fall, and never will, till the Millennium; and human nature must be taken as it is, as it has been, and will be. If, as Cicero says, “man is a noble creature, born with affections to rule rather than obey, there being in every man a natural desire of principality,” it is yet certain that every man ought to obey as well as to rule, ἄϱχειν ϰαι ἄϱχεσθαι, and that every man cannot rule alone. Each man must be content with his share of empire; and if the nature and reason of mankind, the nobleness of his qualities and affections, and his natural desires, prove his right to a share in the government, they cannot surely prove more than the constitutions of the United States have allowed,—an annual election of the whole legislative and executive, the governor, senate, and house. If we admit them to prove more, they would prove that every man has every year a right to be governor, senator, and representative; which, being impossible, is absurd.

Even in our author’s “Right Constitution,” every man would have an equal right to be representative, chosen or not. The reason why one man is content to submit to the government of another, as assigned by our author, namely,—“not because he conceives himself to have less right than another to govern, but either because he finds himself less able, or else because he judgeth it will be more convenient for himself and the community, if he submits to another’s government,” is a proof of this; because, the moment it is allowed that some are more able than others, and that the community are judges who the most able are, you take away the right to rule, derived from the nobleness of each man’s individual nature, from his affections to rule rather than obey, or from his natural appetite or desire of principality, and give the right of conferring the power to rule to the community. As a share in the appointment of deputies is all that our author can with any color infer from this noble nature of man, his nature will be gratified and his dignity supported as well, if you divide his deputies into three orders,—of governor for the executive and an integral share in the legislative, of senators for another independent part of the legislative, and of representatives for a third;—and if you introduce a judicious balance between them, as if you huddle them into one assembly, where they will soon disgrace their own nature and that of their constituents, by ambition, avarice, jealousy, envy, faction, division, sedition, and rebellion. Nay, if it should be found that annual elections of governors and senators cannot be supported without introducing venality and convulsions, as is very possible, the people will consult the dignity of their nature better by appointing a standing executive and senate, than by insisting on elections, or at least by prolonging the duration of those high trusts, and making elections less frequent.

It is indeed a “most excellent maxim, that the original and fountain of all just power and government is in the people;” and if ever this maxim was fully demonstrated and exemplified among men, it was in the late American Revolution, where thirteen governments were taken down from the foundation, and new ones elected wholly by the people, as an architect would pull down an old building and erect a new one. There will be no dispute, then, with Cicero, when he says, “A mind well instructed by the light of nature, will pay obedience,” willingly “to none but such as command, direct, or govern for its good or benefit;” nor will our author’s inferences from these passages from that oracle of human wisdom be denied:

“1. That by the light of nature people are taught to be their own carvers and contrivers in the framing of that government under which they mean to live.

“2. That none are to preside in government, or sit at the helm, but such as shall be judged fit, and chosen by the people.

“3. That the people are the only proper judges of the convenience or inconvenience of a government when it is erected, and of the behavior of governors after they are chosen.”

But then it is insisted, that rational and regular means shall be used that the whole people may be their own carvers, that they may judge and choose who shall preside, and that they may determine on the convenience or inconvenience of government, and the behavior of governors. But then it is insisted, that the town of Berwick upon Tweed shall not carve, judge, choose, and determine for the whole kingdom of Great Britain, nor the county of Berkshire for the Massachusetts; much less that a lawless tyrannical rabble shall do all this for the state, or even for the county of Berkshire.

It may be, and is admitted, that a free government is most natural, and only suitable to the reason of mankind; but it by no means follows “that the other forms, as of a standing power in the hands of a particular person, as a king; or of a set number of great ones, as in a senate,” much less that a mixture of the three simple forms “are beside the dictates of nature, and mere artificial devices of great men, squared out only to serve the ends and interests of avarice, pride, and ambition of a few, to a vassalizing of the community.” If the original and fountain of all power and government is in the people, as undoubtedly it is, the people have as clear a right to erect a simple monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, or an equal mixture, or any other mixture of all three, if they judge it for their liberty, happiness, and prosperity, as they have to erect a democracy; and infinitely greater and better men than Marchamont Nedham, and the wisest nations that ever lived, have preferred such mixtures, and even with such standing powers as ingredients in their compositions. But even those nations who choose to reserve in their own hands the periodical choice of the first magistrate, senate, and assembly, at certain stated periods, have as clear a right to appoint a first magistrate for life as for years, and for perpetuity in his descendants as for life.

When I say for perpetuity or for life, it is always meant to imply, that the same people have at all times a right to interpose, and to depose for maladministration—to appoint anew. No appointment of a king or senate, or any standing power, can be, in the nature of things, for a longer period than quam diu se bene gesserit, the whole nation being judge. An appointment for life or perpetuity can be no more than an appointment until further order; but further order can only be given by the nation. And, until the nation shall have given the order, an estate for life or in fee is held in the office. It must be a great occasion which can induce a nation to take such a subject into consideration, and make a change. Until a change is made, an hereditary limited monarch is the representative of the whole nation, for the management of the executive power, as much as a house of representatives is, as one branch of the legislature, and as guardian of the public purse; and a house of lords, too, or a standing senate, represents the nation for other purposes, namely, as a watch set upon both the representative and the executive power. The people are the fountain and original of the power of kings and lords, governors and senates, as well as the house of commons, or assembly of representatives. And if the people are sufficiently enlightened to see all the dangers that surround them, they will always be represented by a distinct personage to manage the whole executive power; a distinct senate, to be guardians of property against levellers for the purposes of plunder, to be a repository of the national tradition of public maxims, customs, and manners, and to be controllers, in turn, both of kings and their ministers on one side, and the representatives of the people on the other, when either discover a disposition to do wrong; and a distinct house of representatives, to be the guardians of the public purse, and to protect the people, in their turn, against both kings and nobles.

A science certainly comprehends all the principles in nature which belong to the subject. The principles in nature which relate to government cannot all be known, without a knowledge of the history of mankind. The English constitution is the only one which has considered and provided for all cases that are known to have generally, indeed to have always, happened in the progress of every nation; it is, therefore, the only scientifical government. To say, then, that standing powers have been erected, as “mere artificial devices of great men, to serve the ends of avarice, pride, and ambition of a few, to the vassalizing of the community,” is to declaim and abuse. Standing powers have been instituted to avoid greater evils,—corruption, sedition, war, and bloodshed, in elections; it is the people’s business, therefore, to find out some method of avoiding them, without standing powers. The Americans flatter themselves they have hit upon it; and no doubt they have for a time, perhaps a long one; but this remains to be proved by experience.

Our author proceeds: “A consent and free election of the people, which is the most natural way and form of governing, hath no real effect in the other forms; but is either supplanted by craft and custom, or swallowed up by a pernicious pretence of right, in one or many, to govern only by virtue of a hereditary succession.”

If the people are so unenlightened, and so corrupt, that they cannot manage one third part of a legislature, and their own purses by their representatives, how much worse would it be if they had the whole, and all the executive and judicial powers, to manage? But the assertion is not true. The consent and free election of the people have a great and decided effect in the English constitution, and would have had much more if it had been more equal. But if the present inequalities cannot be altered, nor a vote obtained to alter them in the house of commons, nor any general application of the people to have them altered, what would be the effect of the whole executive and judicial powers, were they in the hands of the house? The leading members would employ both these resources, not only to prevent the representation from being rendered more equal, but to make it still more unequal. Our author, alluding to the times of Charles and James, had some color for representing the power of the commons as of little effect; but he saw that an attempt, or suspicion of one, to grasp all power into the hands of the crown, had proved the destruction both of king and lords; this, surely, was a real and great effect. If nations will entangle their constitutions with spiritual lords, and elective lords, and with decayed boroughs, how can it be avoided? But would not the nation send bishops and elective lords into a single house as their deputies? and would not the utmost artifices of bigotry, superstition, and enthusiasm, be set at work among the people, as well as bribery and corruption at elections? If the people cannot be sufficiently enlightened, by education and the press, to despise and resent, as insults and impositions on human nature, all pretences of right drawn from uninterrupted successions, or divine missions, they will be duped by them in one assembly more than in three.

Our author has no right to call his project “the people’s form,” any more than Montesquieu, Blackstone, and De Lolme, have to call their admired system by that endearing appellation. Both are the people’s form, if the people adopt, choose, and prefer them; and neither is, if they do not. The people have liberty to make use of that reason and understanding God hath given them, in choosing governors, and providing for their safety in government, where they annually choose all; nay, they have it even where the king and senate are hereditary, so long as they have the choice of an essential branch. No law can be made, no money raised, not one step can be taken, without their concurrence; nay, there is no one act can be done by the ministers of the executive, but the people, by their representatives, can inquire into, and prosecute to judgment and to punishment if it is wrong. Our author will not consider the case of a mixed government; all governments must be simple with him; the people must exercise all power, or none. He had his reasons for this artifice at that time, which do not exist at this; his reasons, however, were not sufficient; and if the nation had been dealt with more candidly, openly, and boldly, by him, and Milton, and others, a better settlement might have been obtained. But it is plain that Milton, Nedham, and even Harrington, wrote in shackles; but had Nedham and Milton understood the science of government as well as Harrington, Charles had never been restored.

Our author, instead of considering the project of two assemblies, as Harrington did, flies from the idea, and will allow no mixtures.

“In the other forms of a standing power, all authority being entailed to certain persons and families, in a course of inheritance, men are always deprived of the use of their reason about choice of governors.” In mixed governments, even such as Sparta, Athens, Rome, Carthage, imperfect as those mixtures were, our author very well knew, that although some authority was entailed, all was not. In America none at all is entailed, or held for more than a term of years; their course, therefore, is not “destructive to the reason, common interest, and majesty, of that noble creature called man,” and has avoided “that most irrational and brutish principle, fit only to be hissed out of the world, which has transformed men into beasts, and mortified mankind with misery through all generations.”

This violent declamation, however, does not remove the danger of venality, faction, sedition, and civil war, in the choice of governors and senators, principles more brutish and irrational, more fit to be hissed out of the world, than hereditary kings and senates—evils, indeed, if you will, but the least of the two. Hereditary senators, it is certain, have not been the advocates, abettors, or erectors, in general, of absolute monarchies; no such government ever was, or will be, erected or supported but against their wills. It is the people, who, wearied and irritated with the solicitations, bribes, intrigues, and tyranny of the nobles, and their eternal squabbles with kings, have always set up monarchy, and fortified it with an army.

Our author proceeds to search for examples all over the world; and fixes first upon monarchy, absolute hereditary monarchy; but as Americans have no thoughts of introducing this form of government, it is none of their concern to vindicate the honor of such kings or kingdoms. Two quarters of the globe, Asia and Africa, are governed wholly by despotisms. There are in Europe near two hundred simple monarchs, and in the course of the two last centuries, allowing twenty years to each reign, two thousand absolute princes.* If these have been generally of such a character as our author describes, what are we to think of the pride and dignity of that rational, noble animal, man, who has submitted so quietly to their tyranny? Mr. Hume thinks more favorably of them; and he has the judgment of the species in his favor. The species, not having yet attended to the balance and tried its virtues, have almost universally determined monarchy preferable to aristocracies, or mixtures of monarchy and aristocracy; because they find the people have more liberty under the first than under the two last. They may possibly one day try the experiment of mixtures and balances; when they do, a greater improvement in society will take place than ever yet has happened.

Nations, too, have tried the experiment of elective monarchies, in Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, &c., instances which our author adduces; but after long miseries, wars, and carnage, they have always determined chance to be better than choice, and hereditary princes preferable to elective ones. These elections, it is true, have been made by nobles, and by very inadequate methods of collecting the votes of the people; and when elected, there has been no good balance between them and the nobles, nor between the nobles and the people. The Americans have hoped that these circumstances might be arranged so as to justify one more experiment of elective executives, as well as senates and representatives. They have not adopted our author’s idea, that if any kingly form be tolerable, it must be that which is by election, chosen by the people’s representatives. They were well aware, that “present greatness would give their governors an opportunity to practise such sleights, that in a short time the government, that they received only for their own lives, will become entailed upon their families; whereby the people’s election will be made of no effect further than for fashion, to mock the poor people, and adorn the triumphs of an aspiring tyranny.” A hereditary first magistrate at once would, perhaps, be preferable to elections by legislative representatives; it is impossible to say, until it is fairly tried, whether it would not be better than annual elections by the people; or whether elections for more years, or for life, would not be better still.

Our author concludes by a very curious definition of the people.

“To take off all misconstructions, when we mention the people, observe all along, that we do not mean the confused promiscuous body of the people, nor any part of the people who have forfeited their rights by delinquency, neutrality, or apostacy, &c. in relation to the divided state of any nation; for they are not to be reckoned within the lists of the people.”

This wise precaution to exclude all royalists, prelatists, and malignants, according to the style of those times, was very sagacious; and all majorities will ever be equally penetrating in such a Right Constitution of a Commonwealth as our author contends for; the minority will seldom be accounted people.

The thirteenth reason is, “because in free states there are fewer opportunities of oppression and tyranny than in the other forms.”

This is very true, and most cordially admitted; but then the question occurs, What is a free state? In the aristocracy of Venice and Poland there are opportunities of oppression and tyranny; and although our author’s Right Constitution of a Commonwealth has never been tried, the unanimous determination of all nations having been against it, and almost the universal voice of individuals; yet the instantaneous effects of it upon human nature are so obvious, that it is easy to foresee it would afford more opportunities for tyranny and oppression, and would multiply such opportunities more than aristocracy, or even monarchy; because the leaders of the majority in the house would be supported and stimulated by their parties continually to tyrannize and oppress the minority. The reason given by our author in support of his position is directly against it: “It is ever the care of free commonwealths to preserve not an equality, (which were irrational and odious) but an equability of condition among all the members.” Equality, it seems, was not his favorite; this would not do in England, to be sure, any more than America. What his distinction is between equality and equability is not known; he defines it, “that no man be permitted to grow over-great in power.” But how much is over-great? this is reduced to no standard. “Nor any rank above the ordinary standard.” What is this? Excellencies, honorables, gentlemen, yeomen and laborers, are really as distinct ranks, and confer as different degrees of consideration, respect, and influence, among a people who have no other distinctions, as dukes, marquises, earls, and barons, in nations that have adopted these titles; and the higher are as eagerly coveted by the lower. But at last the secret comes out,—“to assume the state and title of nobility.” The house of lords had been voted useless, and it was our author’s system to keep it down; without considering that the thing would still exist, call it by what name you will.

Preserving the equability “secures the people’s liberty from the reach of their own officers, in camp or council.” But no people ever yet were provident enough to preserve either equality or equability. Their eternal fault is too much gratitude to those who study their humors, flatter their passions, and become their favorites. They never know any bounds in their praises, honors, or rewards, to those who possess their confidence, and have excited their enthusiasm. The reputation of their idol becomes as complete a tyranny as can be erected among men; it is a crime that is not to be borne, to speak a word, to betray a look, in opposition to him; nay, not to pronounce their most inflamed hyperboles in his praise, with as ardent a tone as theirs, is envy, disaffection, ambition. “Down with him! the Tarpeian rock!” as soon as Manlius dares to think a little higher of his own services, and a little lower of Camillus, than the fashion. Aristocracies are anxious and eager to prevent any one of the nobility from overtopping the rest; monarchies are jealous of any very great near the throne; but an unmixed, unbalanced people, are never satisfied till they make their idol a tyrant. An equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, is the only free government which has been able to manage the greatest heroes and statesmen, the greatest individuals and families, or combination of them, so as to keep them always obedient to the laws. A Marlborough, a Pulteney, or a Pitt, are here harmless beings. But in Rome a Marlborough would have been worse than Marius, Sylla, or Cæsar; in Athens, worse than Themistocles, Pericles, or Alcibiades; because, with all their ambition, he had more avarice and less sense.

Not allowing any rank above the common standard, “secures the people from the pressures and ambition of such petty tyrants, as would usurp and claim a prerogative, power, and greatness above others, by birth and inheritance.”

These expressions have all the keenness and bitterness of party rancor; and although they were, at that time, no doubt, music to his friends and death to his enemies, they are so difficult to avoid in such times, that on the one hand, candid philosophy will extenuate their ferocity, but on the other, political wisdom will forever be on its guard against their seductions.

“These,” that is a nobility, “are a sort of men not to be endured in any well ordered commonwealth.”

If these words are true, no well ordered commonwealth ever existed; for we read of none without a nobility, no, not one, that I can recollect, without a hereditary nobility;—Sparta, Athens, Rome, Venice, Bern, Holland, even Geneva and San Marino, &c., where shall we look for one without? It would be an improvement in the affairs of society, probably, if the hereditary legal descent could be avoided; and this experiment the Americans have tried. But in this case a nobility must and will exist, though without the name, as really as in countries where it is hereditary; for the people, by their elections, will continue the government generally in the same families from generation to generation. Descent from certain parents, and inheritance of certain houses, lands, and other visible objects, will eternally have such an influence over the affections and imaginations of the people, as no arts or institutions of policy will control. Time will come, if it is now or ever was otherwise, that these circumstances will have more influence over great numbers of minds than any consideration of virtues or talents; and whatever influences numbers is of great moment in popular governments, and in all elections.

“They always bear a natural and implacable hate towards the people.”

This is too strong and universal. The Romans observed certain families, as the Valerii, &c., who were constant friends and lovers of the people, as well as others, the Claudii, &c., who as constantly hated them. It has been before admitted, that such a body naturally encroaches both ways, on the people on one side, and on the king on the other. The people hate and envy them as much, and endeavor equally to encroach. But the same sentiments, passions, and enterprises, take place between the democratical body and the aristocratical, where the last is not hereditary, but annually elective.

Our author’s next argument is still more grossly erroneous.

“If any great man arrive to so much power and confidence as to think of usurping, these are the first that will set him on, mingle interests with him, and become the prime instruments in heaving them up into the seat of tyranny.”

It is true, that some few individuals of a nobility may join such a man in his conspiracy, in hopes of enjoying high stations and great emoluments under him; but such an usurpation was never set on foot by a body of nobility. It has ever been the people who have set up single despots in opposition to the body of the nobility; and it is the people who have furnished the men and money to support the standing army by which he is defended. If any one example of the contrary is to be found, it has escaped a diligent inquiry.

It is very unnecessary to produce “examples, to show that states have lost their liberties by permitting one or a few to be over great.” Every monarchy, oligarchy, and aristocracy, is an instance and a proof of it. The very notion of a free people’s losing their liberties, implies the setting up one or a few with too much power. This will be readily admitted; but it is contended that the people in a simple democracy, collectively or by representation, are necessarily the most addicted to setting up individuals with too much power. To say that it is their duty not to do it; that their happiness forbids it; that their interest is against it; that their liberty will be ruined by it, is to exhort and to preach, to be sure. The clergy exhort and preach in favor of religion and morality, and against profaneness and vice; but there are numbers,—multitudes, we find,—who will not regard them; and laws, checks, power, are the only security against these. The thirty tyrants of Athens, Pisistratus, Hiero of Syracuse, Dionysius, and Agathocles of Sicily, are very oddly introduced here, when every despotism, empire, monarchy, oligarchy, and aristocracy that ever had a being, is as much to the purpose. Mælius and Manlius are cited very improperly. The Decemviri, Sylla, Cæsar, are no more to the purpose than all tyrannies or absolute governments;—all of which are proofs of the people’s indiscretion and constant disposition to set up idols, as much as they are of the danger of permitting individuals to be too powerful.

Florence and Cosmus, Milan and Switzerland, and Holland and the family of Orange, are all proofs against our author. There is not a stronger instance to be found than the house of Orange, which has been supported by the people, I mean the plebeians, against the aristocracy, and who in their course have sacrificed to their deified protectors, Barnevelt, Grotius, and De Witts, patriots that one need not scruple to compare to Aristides, Phocion, and Camillus; and, horrid as the sacrifice has been, one need not scruple to say, that all the liberty there has been in Holland for the common people, has been preserved by this alliance between the house of Orange and them, against the encroaching disposition of the aristocracy, as much as the liberties of Sparta were preserved by the oath of the kings and ephori. It would, nevertheless, be an infinite improvement, if the power of the prince and common people were defined, limited, and made constitutional and legal.

The author’s principle is excellent and eternal, “to keep any man, though he have deserved never so well by success or service, from being too great or popular; it is” indeed “a notable means (and so esteemed by all free states) to keep and preserve a commonwealth from the rapes of usurpation.” But the question between us still is, how it is to be done? In a simple aristocracy it is impossible; with all their pride, jealousy, and envy, some one, and some few of the nobles, obtain more influence than the rest, and would soon obtain all power, if ballots and rotations, and innumerable intricate contrivances were not used to prevent it. In a simple democracy no ballots or rotations can prevent it; one single tyrant will rule the whole commonwealth at his pleasure, respecting forms and appearances a little at first, but presently throwing off all restraint. How can you prevent a man in such a government from being too popular? There can be nothing to prevent him from making himself as popular as his abilities, fortune, or birth, will enable him to be; nothing to prevent him from employing the whole executive and judicial power, nothing to prevent him from applying the public purse, to the augmentation of his own popularity and power. In short, nothing but the mixture we contend for can prevent it. The king and lords are interested to prevent any commoner from being too popular and powerful; the king and commons are interested to keep any lord from being too popular and powerful; and the lords and commons are interested to prevent the king from being too popular and powerful, and they always have the means. There is not a stronger argument against our author’s form, nor in favor of the triple composition.

The fourteenth and last reason is, “because in this form all powers are accountable for misdemeanors in government, in regard of the nimble returns and periods of the people’s election; by which means he that erewhile was a governor, being reduced to the condition of a subject, lies open to the force of the laws, and may with ease be brought to punishment for his offence.”

In a free government, whose legislature consists of three independent branches, one of which has the whole executive, this is true. Every member of the two houses is as amenable to the laws as his poorest fellow-citizen. The king can do nothing but by ministers, who are accountable for every act they do or advise; and this responsibility is efficacious to protect the laws from being trampled on by any person or persons, however exalted in office, reputation, or popularity. But in our author’s “Right Constitution,” no member can be responsible to any but his constituents; and by means of the influence of the executive power and the offices it bestows, by means of perversions of the judicial power, and even of the public treasure, which his party will assist him in applying to his purpose, he will be able to procure a pardon among his constituents in a single city or borough, and a reëlection; nay, he will be able to procure applause and rewards for that very criminal conduct which deserved punishment. There is no form of government, not even an absolute monarchy, where a minister will find it so easy to elude inquiry; recollect the instance in Poland.

“He that was once a governor, will generally continue always a governor, because he will apply all the executive and judicial authority, and even the public money, as well as his personal and family influence, to increase that party in the legislature;” that is, the single assembly upon whose support he depends.

By a governor here is no doubt intended a person appointed by the assembly to manage the executive power. Such a governor will generally be continued; but if he is not, he will be succeeded by another of the same party, who will screen and support him, while he again takes his station in the house, and supports or rules his successor. But if opposition prevails in the house and nation, and the minority becomes the majority, they will be so weak as not to dare to look back and punish; and if they do, this will again render them unpopular, and restore the reins to their antagonist. In this way, after a few vibrations of the pendulum, they must have recourse to arms to decide the contest. These consequences are so obvious and indisputable, that it is amazing to-read the triumphant assertions which follow: “Such a course as this cuts the very throat of tyranny, and doth not only root it up when at full growth, but crusheth the cockatrice in the egg, destroys in the seed, in the principle, and in the very possibilities of its being, forever after. The safety of the people is,” indeed, “the sovereign and supreme law!” and if “laws are dispensed by uncontrollable, unaccountable persons in power,” they will “never be interpreted but in their own sense, nor executed but after their own wills and pleasure.”

But it is unaccountable that our author did not see that it is precisely in his Right Constitution of a Commonwealth that we are to expect such uncontrollable and unaccountable persons, at least as certainly as in a simple monarchy or aristocracy. The only “establishment” then, in which we may depend upon the responsibility of men in power, and upon their being actually called to account and punished when they deserve it, is the tripartite balance, the political trinity in unity, trinity of legislative, and unity of executive power, which in politics is no mystery. This alone is “the impregnable bulwark of the people’s safety, because without it no certain benefit can be obtained by the ordinary laws.” This alone is the “bank against inundations of arbitrary power and tyranny.”

Our author asserts, very truly, “that all standing powers” (meaning unlimited, unbalanced, standing powers, as hereditary simple monarchies and aristocracies,) “have, and ever do assume unto themselves an arbitrary exercise of their own dictates at pleasure, and make it their only interest to settle themselves in an unaccountable state of dominion; so that, though they commit all the injustice in the world, their custom hath been still to persuade men, partly by strong pretence of argument, and partly by force, that they may do what they list; and that they are not bound to give an account of their actions to any but to God himself.” This is perfectly true, and very important. But our author did not consider, that the leading men in a single popular assembly will make it their interest to settle themselves in a state of dominion; that they will persuade men, by strong pretence of argument, by force, by the temptations of offices, civil, military, fiscal, and ecclesiastical, and by the allurements and terrors of judgments in the executive courts of justice, to connive at them, while they do what they list, and to believe them God’s vicegerents. Our author forgets, that he who makes bishops and judges, may have what gospel and law he pleases; and he who makes admirals and generals, may command their fleets and armies. He forgets that one overgrown sagamore in the house, with his circle of subordinate chieftains, each with his clan at his heels, will make bishops, judges, admirals, generals, governors of provinces, &c. in as great number, and with as much facility, as an absolute monarch. This inadvertence in our author is the more remarkable for what follows.

“This doctrine of tyranny hath taken the deeper root in men’s minds, because the greatest part” (that is, the greatest part of mankind) “was ever inclined to adore the golden idol of tyranny in every form; by which means, the rabble of mankind being prejudicated in this particular, and having placed their corrupt humor or interest in base fawning and the favor of the present great ones, therefore, if any resolute spirit happen to broach and maintain true principles of freedom, or do at any time arise to so much courage as to perform a noble act of justice, in calling tyrants to an account, presently he draws all the enmity and fury of the world about him.”

It is really astonishing that any man could write these words, and not see that they totally overthrow the whole system of government that he calls the Right Constitution of a Commonwealth. “The greatest part of men was ever inclined to adore the golden idol;” yet his constitution places the golden idol in the midst of the people, without any check or restraint, that they may fall down and worship, as soon as they will. He places all power in the hands of that very “rabble of mankind,” who have “prejudicated in favor of tyranny;” he places “great ones” in the midst of these, who “have placed their corrupt humor and interest in base fawning, and the favor of those present great ones.” Human nature is not honored by this account of it, nor has it justice done it. Without supposing the majority so bad, if we suppose one third or one quarter of this character, and another third or quarter indifferent, neutral, lukewarm, or even enough in love with private life and their own industry to stay at home at elections, this is enough to demonstrate the tyranny and ruin to which such a simple democracy would rush.

But our author’s device for extricating himself out of this difficulty is more curious still. Although the greatest part of men always incline to worship the golden calf Tyranny, yet “in commonwealths it is, and ought to be, otherwise.” The Greeks and Romans “were wont to heap all the honors they could invent, by public rewards, consecration of statues, and crowns of laurel, upon such worthy patriots” as had the courage to call tyrants to account. Here he can only mean the stories of Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius; so that all the security which freedom is to have is, that as soon as a great one arises in his assembly, and the majority begin to fawn, some Harmodius or Cassius will arise to assassinate him. But we know that the murder of Hipparchus only inflamed Hippias, and that of Cæsar entailed the empire in his family, and the murder of Alexander, by Lorenzo, completed the despotism of the Medici. The ill success of liberty, in those instances, ought to be a warning against such attempts in future, rather than precedents on which to build all the hopes of the cause of liberty.

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than that to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for a worse, unless the people have sense, spirit, and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against tyranny; against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many. Let it be the study, therefore, of lawgivers and philosophers, to enlighten the people’s understandings and improve their morals, by good and general education; to enable them to comprehend the scheme of government, and to know upon what points their liberties depend; to dissipate those vulgar prejudices and popular superstitions that oppose themselves to good government; and to teach them that obedience to the laws is as indispensable in them as in lords and kings.

Our author contends, that the honors decreed to tyrannicides, by the Greeks and Romans, were bestowed “out of a noble sense of commonweal interest; knowing that the life of liberty consists in a strict hand and zeal against tyrants and tyranny.” But he should have recollected, that in Rome these honors were decreed to senators, for supporting the standing authority of a hereditary senate against single men who aspired to popular favor, but never in any instance in support of such a government as he contends for. In Greece, too, there is no instance of any honors decreed for destroying tyrants in defence of any such government. The government of Athens was as different as possible from that of a single assembly of successive representatives of the people. It is agreed that “persons in power cannot be kept from all occasions of tyranny better than by leaving them liable to account;” but it is denied that persons in power can ever be brought to account, unless by assassination, (which is no account at all,) in a government by a single sovereign assembly. And it is asserted, that this “happiness was never seen yet under the sun, by any law or custom established, save only in those states where all men are brought to taste of subjection as well as rule,” ἄϱχειν ϰαι ἄϱχεσθαι, by a government of three branches, reciprocally dependent on each other.

“In Switzerland the people are free indeed, because all officers and governors in the cantons are questionable by the people in their successive assemblies.”

What does he mean? in the aristocratical assemblies? The people have no assemblies, and officers are called to account only in standing councils. In the democratical cantons, there is nothing to account for but milk and cheese. But why should England be forgotten, where all officers are questionable, and often have been questioned, by the people in their successive assemblies; and where the judicature in parliament is digested with infinitely more prudence than in any canton in Switzerland, or any other republic in the world?

It is agreed that “freedom is to be preserved no other way in a commonwealth, but by keeping officers and governors in an accountable state;” but it is insisted, that all “standing powers” in the English constitution, as the lords and ministers, who conduct the prerogative of the crown, may at any time be called to account without the least “difficulty, or involving the nation in blood and misery.” But it is denied that powerful men, in our author’s “Right Constitution,” can be called to account, without the utmost difficulty and danger of involving the nation in blood and misery; and, therefore, it is concluded, that the English constitution is infinitely preferable to any succession of the single supreme assemblies of the representatives of the people.

CHAPTER SECOND.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

Our author having established his building upon fourteen solid pillars, as he seems to think, proceeds to answer objections.

The first objection is, “that such a government would set on levelling and confusion.” By levelling, he understands “levelling all men in point of estates;” “making all things common to all;” “destroying propriety;” “introducing a community of enjoyments among men.” This he allows to be an odious thing, “a scandal fastened by the cunning of the common enemy upon this kind of government, which they hate above all others.”

We are not then put to the trouble of examining the whimsies of Plato or Xenophon, about a community of goods, wives, and children; nor those of Sir Thomas More, about a community of property only. He asserts that his project is, “so far from introducing a community, that it is the only preservative of propriety in every particular.” It is agreed that it would not introduce levelling, nor a community of goods, unless the poor should be more numerous than the rich, and rise for a division. But even this would produce but a temporary level; the new acquisitions would soon be spent, and the inequality become as great as ever; and there must be a perpetual succession of divisions and squanderings, until property became too precarious to be sought, and universal idleness and famine would end it. But the pennniless, though more numerous, would probably never unite; and the principals of the majority would make use of the most artful among them, in stripping, by degrees, the minority, and accumulating for themselves. So that, instead of levelling and community of goods, the inequalities both of power and property would be constantly increasing, until they became as great as in Poland, between the gentlemen and peasants. But it is denied that this would be a preservative of property; on the contrary, property must become insecure. The ruling party, disposing of all offices, and annexing what salaries and fees they will; laying on all taxes, and distributing them according to their ideas of justice and equality; appropriating the public money to what uses they will; and deciding all causes in the courts of justice by their own judgments; in all these ways, themselves and their partisans will be found continually growing in wealth, and their antagonists, the minor party, growing poorer. These last can have no security of property at all.

This will not be prevented nor alleviated by those handsome words of our author: “It is not in reason to be imagined, that so choice a body as the representatives of a nation should agree to destroy one another in their several rights and interests.” A majority would be found to agree to destroy the rights and interests of the minority; and a man’s property is equally insecure, whether it is plundered by an arbitrary, lawless minority, or by a domineering decemvirate, triumvirate, or single despot.

“All determinations being carried by common consent, every man’s particular interest must needs be fairly provided for against the arbitrary disposition of others.”

If common consent means unanimous consent, there might be some plausibility in this. But, as unanimity is impossible, and common consent means the vote of the majority, it is self-evident that the few are at the mercy of the many; and the government of the latter being unbalanced by any equal force, interest, passion, or power, is as real a tyranny as the sovereignty of a hereditary senate, or thirty tyrants, or a single despot. Our author himself confesses this in so many words, when he says, that whatever “placeth every man’s right under the will of another is no less than tyranny;” “seating itself in an unlimited, uncontrollable prerogative over others, without their consent,” and “is the very bane of property.” Are not the property, liberty, and life of every man in the minority under the will of the majority? and may not the majority seat themselves in an unlimited, uncontrollable prerogative over the minority, without their consent?

Our author then runs all over the world in search of examples, and affirms that “a free state, or successive government of the people,” &c., expressions which he always explains to mean his Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, “or supreme representative assembly,” the same with M. Turgot’s all authority collected into one centre, the nation, “is the only preservative of property, as appears by instances all the world over.” This is a species of sophistry, grossly calculated to deceive the most ignorant of the people, that is unworthy of so great and good a cause as that of liberty and republican government. This assertion is so wide from the truth, that there was not in the world, nor had been, one example of such a government, excepting the Long Parliament; for the Italian republics, which resembled it the most, were still better constituted. We know what became of the Long Parliament; Oliver soon found they were self-seekers, and turned them out of the house.

The reader is next led on, through a series of examples, in a very curious strain of popular rant, to show that monarchies, and all standing powers, have been levellers.

“Under monarchs, subjects had nothing that they could call their own; neither lives, nor fortunes, nor wives, nor any thing else that the monarch pleased to command; because the poor people knew no remedy against the levelling will of an unbounded sovereignty.” “In France,” it is asserted, “the people have nothing of propriety, but all depends upon the royal pleasure, as it did of late here in England.”

The truth now almost breaks out, and he almost confesses that he sees it.

“It is very observable, that in kingdoms where the people have enjoyed any thing of liberty and propriety, they have been such kingdoms only, where the frame of government hath been so well tempered, as that the best share of it hath been retained in the people’s hands.”

If he had said an equal share, instead of the best share, this sentence would have been perfect; but he spoils it in the next breath, by adding, “and by how much the greater influence the people have had therein, so much the more sure and certain they have been in the enjoyment of their propriety.”

This is by no means true; on the contrary, wherever the people have had any share in the executive, or more than one third part of the legislative, they have always abused it, and rendered property insecure.

The Arragonians are quoted, as “firm in their liberties and properties, so long as they held their hold over their kings in their supreme assemblies. And no sooner had Philip II. deprived them of their share in the government, but themselves and their properties became a prey to the will and pleasure of their kings.”

It is astonishing that Arragon should be quoted as an example of a government of the people in their supreme successive assemblies. If it is to be called a republic, it was such another as Poland; it was what is sometimes called a mixed monarchy, and sometimes a limited monarchy; but as no judgment of a government can be formed by the name that is given it, we may safely pronounce it an aristocracy. Much pains were taken to balance it, but so awkwardly and unskilfully, that its whole history is a scene of turbulence, anarchy, and civil war. The king was, among the twelve rich men, little more than primus inter pares, like the king among his twelve archons in Phæacia. Although the royal dignity was hereditary, and Arragon was never an elective kingdom, yet the confirmation of the states to the title of the next heir was held necessary; and it was highly resented if he assumed the royal title, or did any public act, before he had taken an oath to preserve the privileges of the states. When any dispute arose concerning the succession, the states took upon them to decide it.

One awkward attempt to balance the influence of the king, was the institution of a chief justice,* to whom appeals might be made from the king. This judicial authority was empowered to control the king if he acted illegally; and this high officer was accountable only to the states for whatever he did in the execution of his office. This was a very powerful check.

Another attempt to form a balance against the royal authority has been celebrated as one of the most sublime and sentimental institutions of liberty. If it had been an institution of the body of the people, it would have been the most manly and noble assertion of the rights and natural and moral equality of mankind to be found in history, and would have merited immortal praise; but, in fact and effect, it was no more than a brilliant expression of that aristocratical pride which we have seen to be so common in all the nations of the earth. At the inauguration of the monarch, the chief justice was seated in his robes, on an elevated tribunal, with his head covered. The king appeared before him bareheaded, fell down upon his knees, and swore to govern according to law, and to maintain the privileges of the states. Proclamation was then made, in the name of the assembly of the states: “We, who are as good as you are, have accepted you for king and lord, upon condition that you observe our laws and protect our liberties.”*

But who were these noble assertors of rights? Not the people. And whose liberties were asserted? Not those of the people, but of a few gentlemen. The men of property, who in general had acquired their estates by their swords, were called rich men,† or barons; for whatever titles were afterwards introduced by the grants of kings, the right to seats and votes in the states arose not from the rank or dignities of dukes, marquises, or counts, but was attached to the quality of landholders, rich men, or barons. There were not more than twelve old families who were the original barons, or ricos hombres, of Arragon. In a course of time, they were distinguished into the greater and lesser nobility; the former were such as were raised by the kings to superior titles; the latter were those who retained only their ancient character of landholders. The clergy were represented in the states by the prelates, and the great cities by deputies; but the farmers, the mechanics, the merchants, in one word the common people, were, according to the doctrine of Aristotle, not admitted to the rank or rights of citizens. They had no seat in the states, nor any vote in the choice of those who had. The third estate, as it was called, or the representatives of cities, was very unskilfully composed. In some cities, the mayor of course represented the city; in others, the king appointed the representative; in others, it was either by some grant of the king, or some senseless custom of the city, a hereditary right in a single family; and the best appointments of all were made by the aristocratical regencies of the cities. In such an assembly of the states, laws were made for the government of the nation; but it was a single assembly, and neither estate had a negative. If two estates agreed, it was a law; and, indeed, the most important questions, even donations of money, were decided by a majority, and the chief justice was the only balance against the oppression of any subject, or even of the king, and the only guardian of the laws, to see them carried into execution. The rich men and the clergy, as well as the king, were such standing powers as always excite our author’s invectives; and the third estate was as distant as possible from being an adequate and equitable representative of the people, annually elected. The clergy became generally humble servants of the king, and the deputies of cities were often corrupted; so that the contest was chiefly between the crown and the nobles. In progress of time, by gaining over more and more the prelates and deputies of the cities to the interest of the crown, it became an overmatch for the nobility, and made itself absolute. This example, therefore, is as ill chosen as all the others, and instead of supporting our author’s argument, is decisive against it.

France is the next example, where, “as long as the people’s interest bore sway in their supreme assemblies, they could call their lives and fortunes their own, and no longer. For all that have succeeded since Louis XI. followed his levelling pattern so far, that in a short time they destroyed the people’s property, and became the greatest levellers in Christendom.”

It would take up too much time to give in this place a sketch of the history of France, to show in detail how inapplicable this example is to the purpose of our author. Those who have leisure and curiosity, may consult Boulainvilliers, the Abbé de Mably, and Monsieur Moreau; and many most beautiful reflections may be found in Lord Bolingbroke’s Dissertation on Parties.* It is sufficient here to say, that the states-general were composed of nobles, clergy, and a third estate, all meeting in one assembly; that the third estate consisted of representatives of cities not chosen by the people, but appointed at least by the aristocratical regencies; that in some places the mayor, in others some particular family, held it as a hereditary right. But nothing can be conceived more unlike our author’s idea of the people’s successive sovereign assemblies than these states-general. The constitution in those times was an unskilful attempt to reconcile an ill-compounded aristocracy with simple monarchy; but the states-general conducted themselves like all other single assemblies, till they were laid aside.

England comes next, where, “as long as the people’s interest was preserved by frequent and successive parliaments, so long we were in some measure secure of our properties; but as kings began to worm the people out of their share in government, by discontinuing of parliaments, so they carried on their levelling design to the destroying of our properties; and the oracles of law and gospel at last spoke it out with a good levelling grace, ‘that all was the king’s, and that we had nothing we might call our own.’ ”

There is at least wit and burlesque humor in thus ascribing levelism to monarchy; and while it is considered only as rodomontade, there is no objection to it. Nor is there any thing to say against confounding levelism with insecurity of property; for though the ideas are distinct, the things must always exist together.

From monarchy he proceeds to other standing powers, which have all produced arrant levellers.

“In Athens, as long as the people kept free indeed, in an enjoyment of their successive assemblies, so long they were secure in their properties.”

But Athens never was free, according to our author’s plan of successive assemblies. Athens never had assemblies of representatives. The collective assemblies of the people were made sovereigns, in all cases whatsoever, by Solon. But they never practised it till Aristides began and Pericles completed the plan; and as soon as it existed, it began to render property, liberty, and life insecure. Yet the ordinary administration was never conducted in these assemblies; the senate and the Areopagus and the ten other courts conducted them. Yet with all these checks, ask Demosthenes and Phocion, and Miltiades and Aristides, how the sovereign people behaved.

“After kings were laid aside, they erected another form of standing power in a single person, called a governor (archon), for life, who was accountable for misdemeanors. But yet a trial being made of nine of them, the people saw so little security by them, that they pitched upon another standing form of decimal government; and being oppressed by them too, they were cashiered. The like miseries they tasted under the standing power of thirty, which were a sort of levellers more rank than all the rest; who put to death, banished, pill’d, and poll’d whom they pleased, without cause or exception; so that the poor people, having been tormented under all the forms of standing power, were in the end forced (as their last remedy) to take sanctuary, under the form of a free state, in their successive assemblies.”

It is droll enough thus to turn the strain of popular banter upon the royalists, by charging kings, perpetual archons, annual archons, the ten archons, the thirty tyrants, &c., as levellers. It was the levelling spirit of the nobles, to be sure, that abolished kings and single archons and set up ten. But the poor people had no hand in it, but as passive instruments. As to the people’s taking sanctuary under the form of a free state, in their successive assemblies, they never did it. They never set up any such government. They did assume the sovereignty, it is true; but Pericles led them to it, only that he might govern them, and he, and successive, unprincipled wretches after him, did govern till the commonwealth was ruined. But there was as much levelling at least, indeed much more, under Themistocles, Pericles, and Alcibiades, as under kings or archons.

Our author’s conscience was always uppermost. He always betrays something which shows that he knew very well what the truth was. He judges very rightly here.

“And though it may be objected,” says he, “that afterwards they fell into many divisions and miseries, even in that form, yet whoever observes the story shall find, it was not the fault of the government, but of themselves, in swerving from the rules of a free state, by permitting the continuance of power in particular hands; who having an opportunity thereby to create parties of their own among the people, did for their own ends inveigle, engage, and entangle them in popular tumults and divisions. This was the true reason of their miscarriages; and, if ever any government of the people did miscarry, it was upon that account.”

It is plain, from this passage, that our author was well read, and judged very well upon these subjects. He knew how it was; but he has not candidly told us what he knew. That they fell into divisions and miseries he owns; but denies that it was the fault of the government—it was the fault of themselves. Is it not the fault of themselves under all governments, despotisms, monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, as well as democracies? Was it not the fault of themselves under their kings, their perpetual archons, their archons for life, their ten archons, as well as under the Pisistratidæ, that they were tormented with divisions and miseries? The law of nature would be sufficient for the government of men, if they would consult their reason, and obey their consciences. It is not the fault of the law of nature, but of themselves, that it is not obeyed; it is not the fault of the law of nature that men are obliged to have recourse to civil government at all, but of themselves; it is not the fault of the ten commandments, but of themselves, that Jews or Christians are ever known to steal, murder, covet, or blaspheme. But the legislator who should say the law of nature is enough, if you do not obey it, it will be your own fault, therefore no other government is necessary, would be thought to trifle.

We certainly know, from the known constitution of the human mind and heart and from uniform experience, that the law of nature, the decalogue, and all the civil laws, will be violated, if men’s passions are not restrained; and, therefore, to presume that an unmixed democratical government will preserve the laws, is as mad as to presume that a king or senate will do it. If a king or senate do not observe the laws, we may say it is not the fault of the government, but of themselves. What then? We know that themselves will commit the fault, and so will a simple democracy, and, therefore, it is in all these cases the fault of the government as well as of themselves. The government should be so constituted, that themselves cannot commit the fault. Swerving from rules is no more the fault of standing kings and senates, than it is of standing or successive popular assemblies. Of the three, the last have the strongest disposition to swerve, and always do swerve the soonest when unbalanced. But the fault of permitting the continuance of power in particular hands, is incurable in the people, when they have the power. The people think you a fool, when you advise them to reject the man you acknowledge to be the ablest, wisest, and best, and whom you and they know they love best, and appoint another, who is but second in their confidence. They ever did, and ever will continue him, nay, and augment his power; for their love of him, like all their other passions, never stands still; it constantly grows, until it exceeds all bounds. These continual reelections, this continuance of power in particular men, gives them “an opportunity to create parties of their own among the people, and for their own ends to inveigle, engage, and entangle them in popular tumults and divisions.”

Let me now ask Marchamont Nedham, or any advocate for his system: Do you believe that the people, unbalanced, ever will avoid to confer a continuance of power on their favorites? Do you believe they ever did in any age or country? The answer must be in the negative. Do you believe it possible, from the constitution of human nature, that they ever will, any more than that they will universally obey the law of nature and the ten commandments? The answer must be in the negative. Why then is the world any longer amused with a speculative phantom, that all enlightened men know never did, and never can exist? My hand is impatient of the pen, and longs to throw it down, while I am laboring through a series of popular sophisms, which disgraces a work that abounds with sense and learning, with excellent principles, maxims, and rules of government, miserably perverted to answer a present purpose, to run down one party, and support another.1 But as this book is known in America, and ought to be perused by Englishmen, in whatever part of the globe, as a valuable monument of the early period in which the true principles of liberty began to be adopted and avowed in the nation, I shall pursue the subject to the end.

Lacedæmon is next introduced as an instance of levelism.

“After they had tried the government of one king, then of two, afterwards came in the Ephori, as supervisors of their kings. After they had tried themselves through all the forms of a standing power, and found them all to be levellers of the people’s interest and property, then necessity taught them to seek shelter in a free state, under which they lived happily, till, by the error of the Athenians, they were drawn into parties by powerful persons, and so made the instruments of division among themselves, for the bringing of new levellers into play, such as were Machanidas and Nabis.”

The Ephori were supervisors of the senate, rather than of kings. They swore, both for themselves and the people, to support the kings forever against the enterprises of the senate. But when did the Lacedæmonians take shelter in a free state? Never, according to our author’s definition of a free state, until the Ephori murdered the king, instead of supporting him, according to their oath, and until the people set up Machanidas and Nabis. And it is always thus. The first thing a people broke loose from all restraints of their power do, is to look out for a chief, whom they instantly make a despot in substance, and very soon in form. The government of Sparta was as different from a free state, during the six or seven centuries that Lycurgus’s institution lasted, as the English constitution is, and much more. The people had not half the weight in it. Standing powers, both of king and senate, stood like Mount Atlas while the republic existed, and when the free state succeeded, it was the tyranny of Machanidas and Nabis, not better than that of Nero. It is droll enough to call the Spartans levellers, to be sure; they who supported a haughty aristocracy at home, and in every other city of Greece where they could negotiate. When the institution of Lycurgus was worn out, and the people began to gain in power, they used it as the Athenians and all others have done when unbalanced; they set up idols, continued and increased their power, were drawn into parties and divisions, and made themselves instruments of division, until despotism became inevitable.

Rome, in her turn, comes round.

“After the standing form of kings was extinct, and a new one established, the people found as little safety and property as ever.”

Here the fact is truly stated, and the expressions are very just, “for the standing senate and the decemviri proved as great levellers as kings.” It is burlesque again to call the senate and decemviri levellers. They were the very antithesis. But if by levellers he means arbitrary men, it is very true.

“So that they were forced to settle the government of the people by a due and orderly succession of their supreme assemblies.”

I wonder when. To quote Athens, Sparta, and Rome, as examples of a government of one sovereign representative assembly, is dishonest; nothing can be further from the purpose. The standing power of the senate existed from Romulus to Cæsar, as our author very well knew, and the people never obtained even an effectual check. So far from settling the government of the people by a due and orderly succession of their supreme assemblies, if “they ever recovered their property, in having somewhat they might call their own,” they owed the blessing to the senate’s wisdom and equity; for the people were so far from being sovereign in their successive assemblies, that they had not an equal share of power with the senate, allowing for all the assistance they derived from the tribunes. But as soon as they began to arrogate a superior power, or even an equal share, they began to run into “the error of Lacedæmonians, Athenians,” and all other people that ever lived; “swerving from the rules of a free state;” or, in other words, trampling on the laws, “lengthening of power in particular hands, they were drawn and divided into parties, to serve the lusts of such powerful men as by craft became their leaders; so that by this means, through their own default, they were deprived of their liberty long before the days of imperial tyranny. Thus Cinna, Sylla, Marius, and the rest of that succeeding gang, down to Cæsar, used the people’s favor to obtain a continuation of power in their own hands; and then, having saddled the people with a new standing form of their own, they immediately rooted up the people’s liberty and property by arbitrary sentences of death, proscriptions, fines, and confiscations; which strain of levelling, (more intolerable than the former) was maintained by the same arts of devilish policy down to Cæsar, who, striking in a favorite of the people, and, making use of their affections to lengthen power in his own hands, at length, by this error of the people, gained opportunity to introduce a new levelling form of standing power in himself, to an utter and irrecoverable ruin of the Roman liberty and property.”

Thus it is that our author accumulates examples from history, which are demonstrations against his own system, and in favor of the English and American constitutions. A good Englishman, or a good American, with the most diligent search, could not find facts more precisely in vindication of those balances to the power of the people, a senate, and an executive first magistrate. Nothing else can ever prevent the people from running into the same error, and departing from the rules of a free state, and even the fundamental laws.

Florence is again introduced to the same purpose, and with the same success; so is Pisa; so is Mantua, and its sons, Passerino and Gonzaga. We have already seen enough of these Italian republics to convince us that every page in their history is against our author’s system. His conclusion is exactly the reverse of what it should be. It should be, that a commonwealth by the people in their successive assemblies, hath never, in any age, been a preservation of liberty or property, or any remedy against usurpations of standing powers, but had, in all ages, been, in his own sense, levellers of all things to the will of a standing despot.

The second objection is, “that such a form in the people’s hands would cause confusion in government.”

This objection seems to have been started by his own party, who were afraid of the influence of royalists; and the answer to it distinguishes two states of a commonwealth; one, while it is new after a revolution, when great numbers are disaffected. These he treats with great severity, and allows the danger of confusion from their intrigues; he therefore excludes them from voting, or being chosen, and justifies it by Greek and Roman examples.

The other is a quiet state, when all the people may, he thinks, be admitted to choose and be chosen without confusion. But as this whole objection and answer to it, relate to the time and circumstances in which he wrote, it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it; it is nevertheless amusing, or provoking, to observe with what facility he asserts the right of the majority to make slaves of the minority.

“Such as have commenced war, to serve the lusts of tyrants against the people’s interest, should not be received any longer a part of the people, but may be handled as slaves when subdued, if their subduers please so to use them; because, by their treasons against the majesty of the people, they have made forfeiture of all their rights and privileges.”

The majesty of the people is a very venerable, sublime, and affecting idea; but, in human theory, every government, despotism, monarchy, aristocracy, and every mixture, is created by the people, continued by their sovereign will, and represents their majesty, their august body. Resistance, therefore, to a despotism, or simple monarchy or aristocracy, or a mixed government, is as really treason against the majesty of the people, as when attempted against a simple or representative democracy; since the right of the people to confide their authority and majesty to one man, or a few men, can no more be doubted than to a larger number. In the divine theory, upon which most of the governments of Europe still rest, it is not only treason, but impiety and blasphemy, to resist any government whatever. If the sovereignty of a nation is a divine right, there is an end of all the rights of mankind at once; and resistance to the sovereignty, wherever placed, is rebellion against God.

It is worth while to observe also a contradiction to what our author had advanced in the former part of his work. “The old commonwealth of Greece,” he says here, “were wont to heap up all honors they could vent, upon such as did or suffered any thing for the maintenance of their liberty.” Under a former head he represented it as a commendable custom of commonwealths to make their service a burden.

The third objection is, “that the management of state affairs requires judgment and experience, which is not to be expected from new members coming into those assemblies upon every election.”

The answer to this objection is of great importance, because it in effect, though not in words, gives up his whole argument in favor of a single sovereign assembly. He distinguishes between acta imperii and arcana imperii, acts of state and secrets of state. By acts of state he means the laws and ordinances of the legislative power; things that have most influence upon a commonwealth, as to its ill or well being; and the only remedies for such bad customs, inconveniences, and encroachments as afflict and grieve it. Matters of grievance being matters of common sense, and such as are obvious to the people, who best know where the shoe pinches them, there is no need of any great skill or judgment in passing or applying a law for remedy.

“But as to secrets of state, or the executive part of government, during the intervals of their supreme assemblies;—these things being of a nature remote from ordinary apprehensions, and such as necessarily require prudence, time, and experience, to fit men for management, much in reason may be said, and must be granted, for the continuation of such trusts in the same hands, as relate to matter of council or administration of justice, more or less, according to their good or ill behavior. A prudential continuation of these may, (without question,) and ought to be, allowed upon discretion; because if they do amiss, they are easily accountable to the people’s assemblies.”

Here our author’s plan begins to develop itself. Hitherto we had heard nothing but of successive sovereign assemblies of the people’s representatives. Now, indeed, we learn that this assembly is to appoint judges, generals, and admirals, and a standing committee perhaps for the treasury, the admiralty, the customs, excise, and foreign affairs. Whether these judges and committees and commanders are to be members of the sovereign assembly, or whether their appointments are to vacate their seats, is not ascertained; but in either case it is obvious they will be the friends and confidants of the prevailing party in the house. They will be persons on whose friendship the major party in the assembly can rely to promote their views, by advancing their friends among their constituents, in order to procure a new election, or, in other words, a standing power, a thing which our author dreads so much in the representative assembly; and thus the whole executive and judicial power and all the public treasure is at once applied to corrupt the legislature and its electors.

And what is it “to be accountable to the people’s assemblies?” It is to be afraid to offend the strongest party in the house, by bestowing an office or deciding a cause, civil or criminal, against their inclinations. James’s boast comes in very pertinently here. The leaders in the house having the appointment, the impeachment, censure, condemnation, reward, and pay of all the bishops, judges, and commanders in their power, they will have what law, gospel, war, peace, and negotiation they please. Corruption is let in in such a torrent, as the virtue of no people that ever lived, or will live, is able to resist, even for a few years. The gangrene spreads immediately through the whole body.

Our author proceeds to his ordinary routine of examples.

“Athens upheld constant returns and periods of succession in their supreme assemblies for remedy of grievances; and they had a standing council, called the Areopagus, to whom all the secrets of state were committed, together with the administration of government during the intervals of those assemblies, at whose return they were accountable, and warily continued or excluded, as the people found cause.”

But our author nowhere recollects the checks to the popular government of Athens, which, however, was never at any one moment so popular as his project. He nowhere recollects, that there were ten slaves to one citizen; that the education of the citizens, therefore, was superior to that which is possible in any nation that has not slaves. He nowhere recollects, that the whole of religion was saved in the hands of the nobly born, which gave a few families such an influence as no part of Christendom now affords an example of, not even in Catholic countries. He nowhere recollects, that the whole people were divided into ranks, and all magistrates taken out of the higher ranks. He nowhere recollects the senate of one hundred, and afterwards of five hundred, appointed by lot, which formed the council of state, which had the constant charge of political affairs, and particularly the preparation of business for the assembly of the people. He nowhere pays a sufficient attention to the court of Areopagus and its important powers, and the persons of whom it was composed. All the archons out of office were members for life. He nowhere recollects that a single representative assembly, being necessarily few, are more liable to corruption than even a collective assembly, who are many. He nowhere recollects that Solon’s institution was at last ruined by allowing to the fourth class of citizens an equal vote in the assembly of the people; a terrible warning against all such projects of government. These important checks, which gave such vast weight to the aristocratical part of the community in the government of Athens, have no equivalent in our author’s plan.

In Sparta and Rome, says our author, they had the like. But it is really shocking to read these affirmations so entirely without foundation. The governments of Sparta and Rome were governments as different and as opposite to our author’s “right form” as can be imagined; and the moment they obtained the least resemblance of it, all authority was seen in one centre, in Nabis and Cæsar. Florence too was after the same mode, and Holland and Switzerland. In Holland the people never had the election of any regular assemblies; and they never speak but by petition, or in bodies unknown to any written constitution; I mean mobs. A more unlucky example could not have been thought of. Their regencies, too, are for life in general, and fill up their own vacancies. In all the aristocratical cantons of Switzerland, the same. How far some of the smallest democratical cantons in any particular resemble our author’s notions, may be seen in the former volume; no sufficient justification of them will be found there. But if a parallel could, in states so small and poor, be found, it would be no precedent for nations, large, opulent, and powerful, full of great objects of ambition, and constantly exposed to the hostile envy and resentment of great and dangerous neighbors.

The fourth objection is, “that such a government brings great damage to the public, by their frequent discontents, divisions, and tumults.”

In answer to this, he considers several cases:—1. When any citizens arrogate privileges to themselves or their families, beyond the ordinary standard of the people, then discontents, divisions, and tumults arise. In Rome, the senate retaining the power of the old government in the hands of themselves and their families, upon the expulsion of the Tarquins, occasioned the subsequent discontents and tumults. “Had Brutus made them free when he declared them so, or had the senate followed the advice and example of Publicola, all occasion of discontent had been taken away.”

2. “When the people felt themselves not fairly dealt withal” by their leaders and generals. In Syracuse, Dionysius being made general, under pretence of defending the people’s liberties, and then using his power to other purposes, became the firebrand of the state, and put the people all into flames for his expulsion.

“In Sparta, the people were peaceable until they found themselves overreached, and their credulity abused, for converting liberty into tyranny under Machanidas and Nabis. In old Rome, under the people’s government, it was a sad sight to see the people swarming in tumults, their shops shut up, all trade given over, and the city forsaken, as also in Athens; the occasion was the same; for though the people naturally love ease and peace, yet finding themselves outwitted by slights, and abused by feats of the senate, they grew out of all patience. When any one of their senators or of themselves arrived to any height of power, by insinuating into the people’s favor upon specious and popular pretences, and then made a forfeiture of those pretences, as Sylla and Marius, they were the causes of those tumults and slaughters among the Romans, the infamy whereof has been cast most injuriously upon the people’s government by the profane pens of court pensioners. Cæsar, too, was the cause of all those civil broils and tragedies among the people.”

An impartial writer would have brought every one of these examples in proof of the direct contrary; for they all show, that in proportion as the people gained an authority uncontrolled, or more than a balance for the senate, they grew more discontented, divided, and tumultuous, the more inclined to stir up factious leaders, as Pericles, Alcibiades, Cleon, the Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, and Catiline and Cæsar. The people were certainly peaceable under the kings, though the archons and nobles were not. The people were peaceable under the Grecian archons and Roman senate, so peaceable as to bear extreme oppression; but their turbulence began with their aspiring at power, and increased as it grew, and grew intolerable the moment they obtained the exercise of that authority which our author contends they ought always to exercise. These examples, therefore, all show the necessity of a balance to the people’s exercise of power in a mixed government.

3. The people are tumultuous when sensible of oppression, although naturally of a peaceable temper, minding nothing but a free enjoyment; but if circumvented, misled, or squeezed by such as they have trusted, they swell like the sea, overrun the bounds of justice and honesty, ruining all before them; but unhappily they very often mistake and swell against the most honest and faithful men, and insist upon being misled by the most artful and knavish. A great majority of the people, and those as honest as any, are too fond of ease and peace to trouble themselves with public affairs, which leaves an opportunity to the profligate and dissolute to have more influence than they ought, to set up such idols as will flatter and seduce them, by gifts, by offices, and by partiality in judgments; which shows, that although they are very competent to the choice of one branch of the legislative, they are altogether incapable of well managing the executive power. It is really unaccountable, but by that party spirit which destroys the understanding as well as the heart, that our author should conclude, “there is not one precedent of tumults or sedition, which can be cited out of all stories, where the people were in fault.” It was even their fault to be drawn in or provoked; it was their fault to set up idols, whose craft or injustice, and whose fair pretences had designs upon the public liberty. They ought to know that such pretenders will always arise, and that they never are to be trusted uncontrolled.

But he seems to be aware that all this would not be quite satisfactory. In order to extenuate the evil, he admits, for argument sake, that the people were tumultuous in their own nature; and he ought to have admitted, from regard to truth, that without laws, government, and force to restrain them, they really are so.

“Tumults, when they happen, are more easily to be borne than those inconveniences that arise from the tyranny of monarchs and great ones.”

It is a great question, whether anarchy or tyranny be the greater evil? No man who reads the third book of Thucydides, or Plato’s description of a democratical city, or who considers the nature of mankind, will hesitate to say that anarchy, while it lasts, is a greater evil than simple monarchy, even exercised by tyrants. But as anarchy can never last long, and tyranny may be perpetual, no man who loves his country, and is willing to submit to a present evil for a future public good, would hesitate to prefer anarchy, provided there was any hope that the fair order of liberty and a free constitution would arise out of it. A chance of this would be preferred by a patriot to the certainty in the other case. Some men too would prefer anarchy, conscious of more address with the people than with a monarch. But if anarchy and tyranny were to be alike permanent and durable, the generality of mankind would and ought to prefer tyranny; at least monarchy, upon the principle that a thousand tyrants are worse than one.

But our author extenuates the evils of tumults:—

1. “The injury of them never extends further than some few persons, and those for the most part guilty enough, as the thirty grandees in Athens, the ten in Rome, &c.” Such tumults, however, have often proceeded to greater lengths, and have had innocent and excellent men for their objects. Examples enough have been cited from Greece and Italy, as well as Holland.

2. “Tumults are not lasting. An eloquent oration of a grave man, as Menenius Agrippa, Virginius, or Cato, may pacify them.” True sometimes, but much oftener the grave man will fall a sacrifice to their fury.

3. “Tumults usually turn to the good of the public; the great are kept in awe, the spirits of the people kept warm with high thoughts of liberty.” This has some weight in monarchies and aristocracies, where they may be quelled; but in simple democracy, where they cannot, they would be fatal.

4. “In Rome they obtained the law of the twelve tables, procured the tribunes and supreme assemblies and frequent confirmation of them.” The supreme assemblies they obtained are very unluckily quoted, because these, having no control, destroyed the commonwealth.

All this “is far otherwise under the standing power of the great ones. They, in their counsels, projects, and designs, are fast and tenacious.”

As this is an acknowledgment that the people are not fast and tenacious, that is, steady, it should seem an argument in favor of a standing senate, at least of some senate appointed from the persons of most experience, best education, most respectable families and considerable property, who may be supposed thoroughly to understand the constitution, to have the largest views, and be “fast and tenacious” of the maxims, customs, and laws of the nation, to temper the unsteadiness of the people, and even of their representatives.

“The evils under these forms are more remediless and universal.” Not at all in mixed governments. They are, on the contrary, more easily “remedied,” for the house of commons is the grand inquest of the nation.

“Those tumults and quarrels that arise among them, never end but in further oppression of the people.” Quarrels among them have commonly given more weight to the people, and must always end in relieving the people, where the people have a full share.

Upon the whole, tumults arise in all governments; but they are certainly most remediless and certainly fatal in a simple democracy. Cheats and tricks of great men will as certainly take place in simple democracy as in simple aristocracy or monarchy, and will be less easily resisted or remedied; and, therefore, our author has not vindicated his project from the objection of its danger from tumults. A mixed government, of all others, is best calculated to prevent, to manage, and to remedy tumults, by doing justice to all men on all occasions, to the minority as well as majority; and by forcing all men, majority as well as minority, to be contented with it.

The fifth objection is, “that little security is to be had for the more wealthy and powerful sort of men, in regard of that liberty which the people assume to accuse or calumniate whom they please.”

In answer to this, our author acknowledges that calumniation (by which he means ambitious slandering of men, by whisperings, reports, or false accusations) has been more or less in all forms of government, but affirms that it was never allowed or approved in his form of government; that it has been most in use under standing powers of great ones, who make it their grand engine to remove or ruin all who stand in their way, and have always instruments ready at hand; that it is marked out by Aristotle inter flagitia dominationis.

But the true and impartial answer is this, that all simple governments are addicted to this vice, and make use of it as an instrument to destroy their adversaries. In our author’s “Right Constitution” it would be as prevalent as in any monarchy or aristocracy; and in each of the simple governments it is equally impossible to prevent, palliate, or remedy the evil. In a simple democracy it must be the worst of all upon the whole, because the whole nation must necessarily be slanderers. The majority calumniate of course for the same reason that unlimited monarchs and senates do, namely,—to support their power and annoy their enemies; and the minority are necessitated to slander in their turn in self-defence. The liberty of accusation, however, in every form of government, must in some degree be admitted; without it, neither will nor pleasure nor law can govern. In a simple democracy it would be unlimited; every body belonging to the majority would be informer and accuser, and always sure of supporting his accusation. The minority, therefore, in a simple democracy, are subjected to spies, informers, accusations, and slanders, without end and without redress.

In a mixed government, like the English and American, informers from private motives are justly odious; from public motives respected. Every crime, however high, may be prosecuted and punished. The grand inquest of the nation becomes accuser against those in high places; the grand inquest of the counties for ordinary offences. No crime can be concealed; no fictitious crime can be pretended or alleged. Calumny itself is punishable as an offence against the public, and the injured individual may obtain satisfaction. It is in such a government alone that calumny is or can be managed upon principles of public safety and private justice, neither of which can ever be generally regarded in any simple government, and most certainly least of all in our author’s “Right Constitution,” or authority in one centre.

For the proof of these observations any history would serve; but it will be sufficient to attend to those anecdotes quoted by our author.

In Rome “the ten grandees, and all that succeeded them in that domineering humor over the people, ever kept a retinue, well stocked with calumniators and informers (such as we call ‘Knights of the Post’) to snap those that in any wise appeared for the people’s liberties. This was their constant trade, as it was afterwards also of their emperors. But while the people kept their power entire in the supreme assemblies, we read not of its being brought into any constant practice.”

This continued chicanery, in holding out to the people of England an idea that the Romans were ever governed by his “Right Constitution,” is really unpardonable; nothing can be more unfair. But to pass this over: Are the examples of Cassius, Mælius, Manlius, Coriolanus, the Gracchi, so soon forgot? The Scipios, indeed, he recollects. These calumnies were promoted by the senate, in some instances, it is true; but by the people, too, in all; at least the people were made the dupes and tools; which is sufficient to make the examples strong proofs against our author.

The same profligacy of a party spirit appears in his example of Athens. “By their lofty and unwary carriage, they stirred up the people’s fear and jealousy so far, as to question and send divers of them into banishment; as Alcibiades, Themistocles, and others.”

Why are Aristides, Miltiades, Socrates, and Phocion, forgotten? These would have been too grossly against him, and warnings too terrible against his paltry system.

“Whereas, if the rules of a free state had been punctually observed, by preserving a discreet revolution of powers, and an equability, or moderate state of particular persons, there had been no occasion of encroachment on one part, or of fear on the other.”

That is to say, if the rules of a free state had been observed in a city where no such rule of a free state existed; and an equability and moderation maintained, of which there is no example in history, and which is totally impracticable; then there would have been no encroachment or fear; or, in other words, if all men had been wise and virtuous, and there had been no need of government at all, then there would have been no democratical tyranny, and, he might add, monarchical or aristocratical. It is burlesque to talk of a rule of a free state, which never was, and every man of common sense knows never can be, a rule of a free state. Our conclusion must be directly contrary to that of our author; namely,—the calumniation under his “Right Constitution” must be more frequent, intolerable, and remediless, than under any form of tyranny, whether monarchical or aristocratical. The English constitution furnishes rules, means, and judicatures, in their grand and petit juries, and in impeachments of the commons before the lords, so equitable and admirable, that it is very unaccountable that any man should think of preferring to it a simple democracy of a single representative assembly, where it is so obvious that every man’s reputation, liberty, property, and life must be in constant danger of accusations by and before an omnipotent party.

“The liberty of accusation by the people before their supreme assemblies,” cannot mean that the whole people should join in such accusation. This is impossible; every man then must have liberty to accuse whom he will. The house will consider who is the accuser and who the accused; and members in the house will consider how their parties are likely to be affected by the sentence, more than truth or justice. An accuser, who is useful to the majority, will rarely be punished, let his accusation be ever so false or malicious. One of the minority will never be heard, though his complaint be ever so true.

“The liberty of accusation is, indeed, a thing so essentially necessary for the preservation of a commonwealth, that there is no possibility of having persons kept accountable without it; and, by consequence, no security of life and estate, liberty and property. Maxime interest reipublicæ libertatis ut libere possis civem aliquem accusare: it most highly concerns the freedom of a commonwealth, that the people have liberty of accusing any persons whatsoever.”

Thus far we agree, as well as in the opinion, that a great evil in governments simply monarchical or aristocratical, is the want of such liberty. But simple democracy has in it as great an evil in this respect; for the minority have too little liberty of accusation, in proportion as the majority have too much. It is therefore in a mixed government only where an equal liberty can be preserved to all, without being too great in any. It is agreed further to be a means, and the only means, of extinguishing jealousies and emulations, discontents and fury in the people, when they can bring to account their oppressors; and the instances of the Decemviri and Coriolanus are properly enough produced. The story from Florence too, of one who occasioned such calamities for want of this liberty of accusation, by which he might have been taken down; and the case of Soderini, who drove the people to call in the Spaniard to suppress him for want of such a power. To these examples there is no objection, nor to the doctrine they convey, namely,—that the liberty of accusation prevents the people very often from running in rage and despair to internal violence or foreign alliance, and in both cases to arms. But the conclusion upon the whole must be, that this objection stands in full force against our author’s plan, and wholly unanswered. There is no security for the most wealthy and powerful sort of men among the minority; they will be constantly exposed to ruin by false accusations.

The sixth objection is, “that people by nature are factious, inconstant, and ungrateful.” In answer to the charge of faction, he repeats his positions under the fourth reason; and his examples of Pompey and Cæsar; Guelph and Ghibelline in Italy; the families of Orleans and Burgundy in France; the Guises; York and Lancaster, &c., we must refer to our observations on the fourth reason.

Inconstancy he allows to be a characteristic of the people who are debauched and in a corrupted state of a commonwealth, when degenerated from its true principles, as in Athens, Rome, Florence.

“But yet in Rome you may see as pregnant instances of that people’s constancy as of any sort of men whatsoever; for they continued constant, irreconcilable enemies to all tyranny in general, and kingly power in particular. In like manner, when they had once gotten their successive assemblies, they remained firm and stiff to uphold them. In making their elections, too, they could never be persuaded to choose a known infamous, vicious, or unworthy fellow, so that they seldom or never erred in the choice of their tribunes and other officers. But it has ever been otherwise under kings and all standing powers.”

Here he must mean simple monarchies and aristocracies, because he distinguishes the case from Rome, which was a mixed government. “Standing powers usually ran into all the extremes of inconstancy upon every new project, petty humor, and occasion; shifted principles every moon; cashiered all oaths, protestations, promises, and engagements, and blotted out the memory of them with a wet finger;” he instances in Charles I.

If we speak impartially upon this head, we must say that all men are alike; that simple governments are equally inconstant, so far as they partake of the same human nature. Kings have been as inconstant as any men; so have simple senates. Simple democracies have never been tried; but, if we reason from their nature, we shall conclude that they are more inconstant than either, because the result depending on the majority of votes, the difficulty and impossibility of assembling equal numbers at all times, increases the chances of change and inconstancy. The ignorance of multitudes, who compose a part of the people, is another cause. So that if a difference must be allowed, it must be confessed that simple democracy is the least constant. But a mixed government produces and necessitates constancy in all its parts; the king must be constant to preserve his prerogatives; the senate must be constant to preserve their share; and the house theirs. Neither can go beyond its line, without being called back by the other. The legislative must be constant to preserve its rights, and the executive for the same end. The judicial too must be constant to the laws, which alone can screen it from the resentment and encroachment of one or other of the three branches in the legislature. It is to this universal vigilance and constancy, which such a constitution renders necessary and unavoidable, that the laws owe their perpetual superiority, and are able to make kings, nobles, and commoners, ministers of state and religion, and judges too, bow with reverence to its decisions. To this constancy, therefore, is due that delightful tranquillity of mind, arising from a sense of perfect security in the protection of known laws for the enjoyment of life, liberty, honor, reputation, and property.

“Ingratitude has been much charged upon this form. In Athens and Rome, unhandsome returns were made to some worthy persons that had done high services,—Alcibiades, Themistocles, Phocion, Miltiades, Camillus, Coriolanus, and both the Scipios, the cause of whose misfortunes is described by Plutarch and Livy, to be their own lofty and unwary carriage, which stirred up the people’s fear and jealousy. The Scipios were most to be pitied, because the nobles, not the people, disobliged them; as for Camillus and Coriolanus, they deserved whatever befell them, because they maligned and hated the people.”

All this is tolerably just. Our author proceeds:—

“This humor, however, is highly commended by some, as a sign of a commonwealth’s being in pure and perfect health, when the people are thus active, zealous, and jealous in the behalf of their liberties, that will permit no such growth of power as may endanger it.” Yet he adds, with great truth, “that the people have been so far from ingratitude, that they have always been excessive in their rewards and honors to such men as deserved any way of the public, whilst they conformed themselves to rules and kept in a posture suitable to liberty. Witness their consecration of statues, incense, sacrifices, and crowns of laurel, enrolling such men in the number of their deities. The crime of ingratitude cannot, in any peculiar manner, be fastened upon the people.”

This is very just; the people are no more ungrateful than kings or senates, nor more jealous; and the instances from republics of apparent ingratitude, are not fair proofs. They commonly have arisen from party; and the ill treatment of deserving men has been the work of intrigues of the aristocratical and monarchical parts of these communities, oftener than of the people themselves. The jealousy and envy of commanders and leading senators and patricians have plotted with the people, fomented their prejudices, inflamed their passions, and misrepresented by false reports, until such points have been carried.

There is another thing, too, to be considered. The real merit of public men is rarely fully known and impartially considered; empiricism is practised to an astonishing degree by some, even in the purest times. Aristides and Themistocles, Cæsar and Cato, are not upon an equal footing; but when men arise, who to real services add the arts of political empiricism, conform to the errors of the people, comply with their prejudices, gain their hearts, and excite their enthusiasm, then their gratitude is a contagion; it is a whirlwind; it is infinitely worse to the public than their ingratitude, or than the ingratitude of kings or nobles.

Our author produces, as instances of the ingratitude of princes: “Alexander hated Antipater and Parmenio, and put the latter to death; Vespasian cashiered the meritorious Antonies; the King of Portugal, Alphonsus Albuquerque; Ferdinand of Arragon, Consalvus the Great; Henry VII., Stanley of the House of Derby, who put the crown upon his head; Sylla, his instruments; Augustus, Cicero;” and he might have added many thousands of others. After all, justice and sound policy ought to be the rule and measure of rewards and punishments, not any vague sensation of gratitude or jealousy. Every simple government and every unbalanced mixture must produce frequent instances, not only of ingratitude, but of injustice and bad policy, in the article of rewards and punishments; but in a mixed government effectually balanced, it is rarely possible that real service, merit, and virtue, should go unrewarded. If the king is disposed to be ungrateful, the lords and commons will not suffer it; if the commons are ungrateful, the king and lords will do justice; if the lords are faulty, the king and commons will set all right. The chances of ingratitude, therefore, in such a government are much less, and the assurance of a just recompense of reward is much greater, while the danger of royal favoritism and popular extravagance are wholly avoided. As there is nothing of more essential importance to the preservation of liberty, the promotion of prosperity, and the exaltation of the dignity and grandeur of a state, than a just, generous, and steady rule of policy in rewards and punishments, it must, with all humble submission, be presumed that a mixed government has an infinite advantage of all others in this respect. But of all imaginable governments, that of one assembly is the worst; for every man of the minority will be sure of ingratitude and injustice, let his service be what it will; nay, he will be in danger of punishment for his merit; and every man of the majority will be safe against punishment for many misdemeanors, and sure of excessive rewards for every trifling service.

We may fairly conclude, upon the whole, that none of these six objections stand against a free government of three branches; but every one of them in full force against a single sovereign assembly.

The next chapter is entitled, “The Original of all Just Power is in the People.” This book is valuable, as it is so ancient a monument of liberty and political knowledge in England. Many of its principles were at that time extremely rare in the world, excepting in England. They have been since enlarged on, with great success, by Sidney, Locke, Hoadley, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Raynal, De Mably, Price, Priestley, Beccaria, and many others of various nations, and are now becoming universal. It is unnecessary to abridge this chapter; because, although it contains the hints on which succeeding writers have enlarged, their discourses are more ample and more satisfactory.

CHAPTER THIRD.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

ERRORS OF GOVERNMENT AND RULES OF POLICY.

“The first error in ancient Christian policy, which hath indeed been a main foundation of tyranny, is that corrupt division of a state into ecclesiastical and civil.”

Our author enlarges upon this error, and his speculations are worth reading; but as this is not likely to be the error of America, I shall leave it to be read when such danger approaches.

“The second error is very frequent under all forms of government. It is this,—that care hath not been taken, upon all occasions of alteration, to prevent the passage of tyranny out of one form into another, in all the nations of the world. The interest of absolute monarchy and its inconveniences have been visible and fatal under the other forms, and given undeniable proof of this maxim by experience, in all times, that the interest of monarchy may reside in the hands of many as well as of a single person.”

The interest of absolute monarchy he defines to be,—

“An unlimited, uncontrollable, unaccountable station of power and authority in the hands of a particular person, who governs only according to the dictates of his own will and pleasure; and though it hath often been disguised by sophisters in policy, so as it hath lost its own name by shifting forms, yet the thing in itself hath been discovered under the artificial covers of every form, in the various revolutions of government. In Athens, when they had laid aside their king, the kingly power was retained still in all the after turns of government; for their decimal governors and their thirty tyrants were but a multiplied monarchy, the people being in a worse condition than before; for their kings had supervisors and senatic assemblies that did restrain and correct them; but the new governors having none, ran into all the heats and fits and wild extravagancies of an unbounded prerogative. Necessity and extremity opening the people’s eyes, they at length saw all the inconveniences of kingship wrapt up in new forms, and rather increased than diminished; so that (as the only remedy) they dislodged the power out of those hands, putting it into their own, and placing it in a constant, orderly revolution of persons elective by the community. And now, one would have thought there was no shelter for a monarchal interest, under a popular form too. But alas! they found the contrary; for the people not keeping a strict watch over themselves, according to the rules of a free state, but being won by specious pretences, and deluded by created necessities to intrust the management of affairs into some particular hands, such an occasion was given thereby to those men to frame parties of their own, that by this means they in a short time became able to do what they list without the people’s consent; and, in the end, not only discontinued, but utterly extirpated their successive assemblies.”

I have given this at length, in our author’s own words, because it is an exact compendium of the whole history of Athens, and shows that he had read it attentively, and understood it perfectly well; and because it is a complete refutation of his own system, his Right Constitution of a Commonwealth. Absolute monarchy, unlimited power in a particular person, who governed by his own will, run through all the history and changes in Athens, according to his own account, even when the people had placed the supreme power in an orderly revolution of persons elective by themselves. Why? “Because the people did not keep a watch over themselves.” Did any other people keep a strict watch over themselves? Will any people ever keep a strict watch over themselves? No, surely. Is not this, then, a sufficient reason for instituting a senate to keep a strict watch over them? Is not this a sufficient reason for separating the whole executive power from them, which they know will, and must corrupt them, throw them off their guard, and render it impossible to keep a strict watch over themselves?”

“They did not observe the rules of a free state.”

Did any people, that ever attempted to exercise unlimited power, observe the rules of a free state? Is it possible they should, any more than obey, without sin, the law of nature and nature’s God? When we find one of these sorts of obedience, we may expect the other. If this writer had been one of the enthusiasts of that day, and told the people they must pray to God for his omnipotent grace to be poured out upon them, to distinguish them from all the rest of mankind as his favorite people, more even than the Jews were, that they might be enabled to observe the rules of a free state, though all history and experience, even that of the Hebrews themselves, and the constitution of human nature, proved it impossible without a miracle; or if he had told them that they were a chosen people, different from all other men, numbers would have believed him, and been disappointed; for it is impious presumption to suppose that Providence will thus distinguish any nation; but it would have been more sensible than thus to acknowledge in effect, as he does repeatedly, the impracticability of his scheme, and still insist upon it.

“The people were won by specious pretences, and deluded by created necessities, to intrust the management of affairs into some particular hands.”

And will not the people always be won by specious pretences, when they are unchecked? Is any people more sagacious or sensible than the Athenians, those ten thousand citizens, who had four hundred thousand slaves to maintain them at leisure to study? Will not a few capital characters in a single assembly always have the power to excite a war, and thus create a necessity of commanders? Has not a general a party of course? Are not all his officers and men at his devotion so long as to acquire habits of it? When a general saves a nation from destruction, as the people think, and brings home triumph, peace, glory, and prosperity to his country, is there not an affection, veneration, gratitude, admiration, and adoration of him, that no people can resist? It is want of patriotism not to adore him; it is enmity to liberty; it is treason. His judgment, which is his will, becomes the only law; reason will allay a hurricane as soon; and if the executive and judicial power are in the people, they at once give him both, in substance at first, and not long afterwards in form. The representatives lose all authority before him. If they disoblige him, they are left out by their constituents at the next election, and one of his idolaters is chosen.

“In Rome, also, the case was the same, under every alteration; and all occasioned by the crafty contrivances of grandizing parties, and the people’s own facility and negligence in suffering themselves to be deluded; for with the Tarquins (as it is observed by Livy and others) only the name king was expelled, but not the thing; the power and interest of kingship was still retained in the senate, and engrossed by the consuls; for besides the rape of Lucretia, among the other faults objected against Tarquin, this was most considerable, that he had acted all things after his own head, and discontinued consultations with the senate, which was the very height of arbitrary power; but yet as soon as the senate was in the saddle, they forgot what was charged by themselves upon Tarquin, and ran into the same error, by establishing an arbitrary, hereditary, unaccountable, power in themselves and their posterity, not admitting the people (whose interest and liberty they had pleaded) into any share in consultation or government, as they ought to have done, by a present erecting of their successive assemblies; so that you see the same kingly interest, which was in one before, resided then in the hands of many. Nor is it my observation only, but pointed out by Livy, in his second book, and in many other places, ‘Cum a patribus non consulem sed carnificem, &c.’ when the senators strove to create, not consuls, but executioners and tormentors, to vex and tear the people, &c. And in another place of the same book, ‘Consules, immoderatâ infinitaque potestate, omnes metus legum, &c.’ the consuls, having an immoderate and unlimited power, turned the terror of laws and punishments only upon the people, themselves (in the mean while) being accountable to none but themselves, and their confederates in the senate. Then, the consular government being cashiered, came on the decemviri: ‘Cum consulari imperio ac regio, sine provocatione,’ saith my author; being invested with a consular and kingly power, without appeal to any other. And in his third book he saith, ‘Decem regum species erat,’ it was a form of ten kings; the miseries of the people being increased ten times more than they were under kings and consuls. For remedy, therefore, the ten were cashiered also; and consuls being restored, it was thought fit, for the bridling of their power, to revive also the dictatorship (which was a temporary kingship, used only now and then upon occasion of necessity) and also those deputies of the people, called tribunes, which one would have thought had been sufficient bars against monarchic interest, especially being assisted by the people’s successive assemblies; but yet, for all this, the people were cheated through their own neglect, and bestowing too much confidence and trust upon such as they thought their friends; for when they swerved from the rules of a free state, by lengthening the dictatorship in any hand, then monarchic interest stept in there, as it did under Sylla, Cæsar, and others, long before it returned to a declared monarchal form; and when they lengthened commands in their armies, then it crept in there, as it did under the aforenamed persons, as well as Marius, Cinna, and others also; and even Pompey himself, not forgetting the pranks of the two triumvirates, who all made a shift under every form, being sometimes called consuls, sometimes dictators, and sometimes tribunes of the people, to outact all the flagitious enormities of an absolute monarchy.”

This valuable passage, so remarkable as an abridgment of the Roman history, as containing the essence of the whole that relates to the constitution, as a profound judgment of what passes in all societies, has been transcribed in the author’s own words; and, it may be truly said, it contains a full confutation of his own system, and a complete proof of the necessity of the composition of three branches. It is strictly true, that there is a strong and continual effort in every society of men, arising from the constitution of their minds, towards a kingly power; it is as true in a simple democracy, or a democracy by representation, as it is in simple aristocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy, and in all possible combinations and mixtures of them. This tendency can never be eradicated; it can only be watched and controlled; and the whole art of government consists in combining the powers of society in such a manner, that it shall not prevail over the laws. The excellence of the Spartan and Roman constitutions lay in this; that they were mixtures which did restrain it, in some measure, for a long period, but never perfectly. Why? Because the mixture was not equal. The balance of three branches is alone adequate to this end; and one great reason is, because it gives way to human nature so far, as to determine who is the first man. Such is the constitution of men’s minds, that this question, if undecided, will forever disorder the state. It is a question that must be decided, whatever blood or wounds it may occasion, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men. This point, in the triple division of power, is always determined; and this alone is a powerful argument in favor of such a form.

Our author’s Right Constitution is the worst of all possible forms in this respect. There are more pretenders; the choice of means is multiplied; the worst men have too much influence in the decision, more, indeed, than the best; and the whole executive and judicial powers, and the public treasure too, will be prostituted to the decision of this point. In the state of nature, when savage, brutal man ranged the forests with all his fellow-creatures, this mighty contest was decided with nails and teeth, fists, stones, and clubs, in single combats, between all that dared to pretend. Amidst all the refinements of humanity, and all the improvements of civil life, the same nature remains, and war, with more serious and dreadful preparations, and rencounters of greater numbers, must prevail, until the decision takes place.

“The people,” says our author, “were cheated through their own neglect, and bestowing too much confidence and trust upon such as they thought their friends.” And could he quote an instance from all history of a people who have not been cheated; who have not been negligent; who have not bestowed too much confidence and trust upon such as they thought their friends; who have not swerved from the rules of a free state, by lengthening power in hands that hold it? Can he give a plausible reason to hope that such a people will ever appear? On the contrary, is it not demonstrable that such a people is impossible, without a miracle and a renovation of the species? Why, then, should the people be bribed to betray themselves? Putting the executive power into their hands is bribing them to their own destruction; putting it into the hands of their representatives is the same thing, with this difference for the worse, that it gives more opportunity to conceal the knavery. Giving the executive power to the senate is nearly the same, for it will be in that case used in bribes, to elevate certain senatorial families.

All projects of government, formed upon a supposition of continual vigilance, sagacity, and virtue, firmness of the people, when possessed of the exercise of supreme power, are cheats and delusions. The people are the fountain of power; they must, in their constitution, appoint different orders to watch one another, and give them the alarm in time of danger. When a first magistrate, possessed of the executive, can appeal to the people in time of danger; when a senate can appeal to the people; and when a house of commons can appeal to the people; when it is the interest of each, in its turn, to appeal to the people; when self-preservation causes such appeal; then, and then only, can the people hope to be warned of every danger, and be put constantly on their guard, kept constantly vigilant, penetrating, virtuous, and steady. When their attention, too, is fixed only upon the preservation of the laws, and they cannot be diverted like apes, by throwing the nuts of the executive power among them, to divide them. When they have any thing to do with the executive power, they think of nothing else but scrambling for offices, and neglect altogether the legislature and the laws, which are their proper department. All the flagitious enormities of absolute monarchy will be practised by the democratical despot, triumvirs, decemvirs, who get possession of the confidence of the majority.

Florence testifies the same truth.

“Even when it seemed most free, it was ever the business of one upstart or other, either in the senate or among the people, to make way to their own ambitious ends, and hoist themselves into a kingly posture through the people’s favor; as Savonarola, Soderini, and the Medici, whose family fixed itself in a dukedom. Nor can it be forgotten how much of monarchy, of late, crept into the United Provinces.”

The conclusion is that, “since the interest of monarchy” (that is, arbitrary power, or the government of men) “may reside in a consul as well as in a king; in a dictator as well as in a consul; in the hands of many as well as of a single person; and that its custom hath been to lurk under every form, in the various turns of government; therefore it concerns every people in a state of freedom, to keep close to the rules of a free state for the turning out of monarchy, whether simple or compound, both name and thing, in one or many; so they ought ever to have a reverend and noble respect of such founders of free states and commonwealths, as shall block up the way against monarchic tyranny, by declaring for the liberty of the people, as it consists in a due and orderly succession of authority in their supreme assemblies;” that is, for himself, Oliver Cromwell, and their party, for no other such founders of commonwealths had then ever existed.

The true conclusion from all the reasoning and all the examples, under this second head of Error in Policy, ought to have been, that arbitrary power, or the interest of monarchy, or the government of men, cannot be prevented, nor the government of laws supported, but by mixing the powers of the one, the few, and the many, in equal proportions, in the legislature; by separating the executive from the legislative power, and the judicial department from both.

The third error in policy is, “keeping the people ignorant of those ways and means that are essentially necessary for the preservation of their liberty; for implicit faith and blind obedience hath hitherto passed current, and been equally pressed and practised by grandees, both spiritual and temporal, upon the people.”

Under this head, our author merits all the approbation and praise that can be bestowed upon him. The instruction of the people, in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties, as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties, as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practised in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and the poorest. It is not too much to say, that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances, and maintained at the public expense. The revenues of the state would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically, in this way, than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor. If nations should ever be wise, instead of erecting thousands of useless offices, or engaging in unmeaning wars, they will make a fundamental maxim of this, that no human being shall grow up in ignorance. In proportion as this is done, tyranny will disappear, kings and nobles will be made to feel their equitable equality with commoners, and commoners will see their interest and duty to respect the guardians of the laws; for guardians they must have as long as human nature endures. There is no room to doubt that the schools, academies, aud universities, the stage, the press, the bar, pulpit, and parliament, might all be improved to better purpose than they have been in any country for this great purpose. The emanations of error, folly, and vice, which proceed from all these sources, might be lessened, and those of wisdom, virtue, and truth, might be increased; more of decency and dignity might be added to the human character in high and low life; manners would assist the laws, and the laws reform manners; and imposture, superstition, knavery, and tyranny, be made ashamed to show their heads before the wisdom and integrity, decency and delicacy, of a venerable public opinion.

But it is in vain that our author endeavors to throw the blame of impressing implicit faith and blind obedience upon grandees, spiritual and temporal; for the grandees he contends for, both spiritual and temporal, I mean the first man and other principal members of his successive representative assemblies, will have as much occasion to keep the people in ignorance, and more opportunity to conceal truth and propagate falsehood, than those whom he calls standing powers. All intelligence and information will be directed to them; they may conceal what they will, and they will conceal every thing they can from their adversaries, the minority, and even much from their own followers. It is a mixed government alone that can bear that truth and knowledge should be communicated freely to the people; and in a mixed government alone can the people compel all men to communicate such information as ought to be laid before them. The majority in a single assembly can conceal much from the minority, indeed almost what they will; but the crown, or its ministers, can conceal nothing from a house of representatives which they ought to know.

It is very true, that a people who have declared themselves “a free state should know what freedom is, and have it represented in all its lively and lovely features, that they may grow zealous and jealous over it. They should also be made acquainted and thoroughly instructed in the means and rules of its preservation against the adulterous wiles and rapes of any projecting sophisters that may arise.” How different from this, alas! is the deplorable state of mankind! “Ce n’est qu’en Angleterre, où l’on pourroit faire ou avoir des livres sur les constitutions,” said one of the most enlightened ambassadors in Europe; and it is but a very few years since a French gentleman answered a foreigner, who inquired for the best book upon the constitution of France, “Monsieur, c’est l’Almanach Royal.”1

“The fourth error in policy hath been the regulation of affairs by reason of state, not by the strict rule of honest.”

It is unnecessary to follow our author through Greece and Italy, the Old Testament and the New, through France, Spain, and England, for instances of this raggione di stato, this kingcraft and priestcraft; it is well enough known; but it may be practised with more facility in a simple democracy than in any other government. The leaders of a majority have only to allege “reason of state” to justify themselves to their partisans for every species of tyranny and oppression over the minority, until they become strong enough to allege the same “reason of state” to justify their tyranny over their own party.

“Fifth Error. Permitting of the legislative and executive powers of a state to rest in one and the same hands and persons. By the legislative power we understand the power of making, altering, or repealing laws, which, in all well-ordered governments, hath ever been lodged in a succession of the supreme councils or assemblies of a nation. By the executive power we mean that power which is derived from the other, and by their authority transferred into the hands of one person, called a prince, or into the hands of many, called states, for the administration of government in the execution of those laws. In the keeping of these two powers distinct, flowing in distinct channels, so that they may never meet in one, save upon some short, extraordinary occasion, consists the safety of a state. The reason is evident; because, if the law-makers (who ever have the supreme power) should be also the constant administrators and dispensers of law and justice, then, by consequence, the people would be left without remedy in case of injustice, since no appeal can lie under heaven against such as have the supremacy; which, if once admitted, were inconsistent with the very intent and natural import of true policy, which ever supposeth that men in power may be unrighteous, and therefore, presuming the worst, points always, in all determinations, at the enormities and remedies of government, on the behalf of the people. For the clearing of this, it is worthy your observation, that in all kingdoms and states whatsoever, where they have had any thing of freedom among them, the legislative and executive powers have been managed in distinct hands; that is to say, the law-makers have set down laws as rules of government, and then put power into the hands of others, not their own, to govern by those rules; by which means the people were happy, having no governors but such as were liable to give an account of government to the supreme council of law-makers. And, on the other side, it is no less worthy of a very serious observation, that kings and standing states never became absolute over the people, till they brought both the making and execution of laws into their own hands; and as this usurpation of theirs took place by degrees, so unlimited, arbitrary power crept up into the throne, there to domineer over the world, and defy the liberties of the people.”

Let us pause here with astonishment. A person who had read the former part of the book with attention, would think these words a complete refutation of his whole “Right Constitution of a Commonwealth.” The whole drift of the book before this was to prove, that all authority should be collected into one centre; that the whole legislative and judicial power, as well as the executive, was to be vested in successive, supreme sovereign assemblies of the people’s representatives; and our endeavor has been to show, that this would naturally be applied to corruption in election, to promote division, faction, sedition, and rebellion. All this is now very frankly admitted, and “the safety of the state” depends upon placing the power of making laws, of executing them, and administering justice, in different hands. But how is this to be done?

“The executive power,” our author tells us, “is derived from the legislative; and by their authority transferred into the hand of one person, called a prince, or into the hands of many, called states, for the administration of government in the execution of those laws.”

This is totally denied. The executive power is not naturally, nor necessarily, and ought never to be in fact, derived from the legislative. The body of the people, according to our author and to truth, is the fountain and original of all power and authority, executive and judicial, as well as legislative; and the executive ought to be appointed by the people, in the formation of their constitution, as much as the legislative. The executive represents the majesty, persons, wills, and power of the people in the administration of government and dispensing of laws, as the legislative does in making, altering, and repealing them. The executive represents the people for one purpose, as much as the legislative does for another; and the executive ought to be as distinct and independent of the legislative, as the legislative is of that. There is no more truth, nature, or propriety, in saying that the executive is derived from the legislative, than that the legislative is derived from the executive; both are derived from the people. It is as untrue to say that the executive power is transferred by the authority of the legislative into the hands of a prince, as it would be to say that the legislative power was transferred by the authority of the prince into the hands of a legislative assembly. The people may, indeed, by their constitution, appoint the house of representatives, to represent them in watching the executive magistrates, and in accusing them of misrule and misdemeanors; they may appoint a senate to represent them, in hearing and determining upon those accusations. The people are represented by every power and body in the state, and in every act they do. So the people are represented in courts of justice by the judges and juries, grand and petit, in hearing and determining complaints against ministers of the executive power, as well as members of the senate and the house. It is true the body of the people have authority, if they please, to empower the legislative assembly or assemblies to appoint the executive power, by appointing a prince, president, governor, podestà, doge, or king, and to call him by which of these names they please; but it would be a fatal error in policy to do it, because it would in fact amount to the same thing which our author seemed to contend for through his whole book, and which he now allows to be inconsistent with the safety of the state, namely,—a union of the legislative and executive powers in the same hands.

Whoever appoints bishops and judges will dictate law and gospel. Whoever appoints a general will command the army; an admiral, the fleet. Any executor of the law will have it executed as he will. It makes the executive power a mere tool of the legislative, and the prince a weathercock blown about by the leading member of the house. Every commission will be disposed of as the lord and master in the house shall direct; military discipline will bow before his nod; and the judicial power must have the same complaisance; so that both executive and judicial powers will be prostituted to corrupt the people in elections, and the members of the house, as much as if all these powers were exercised in the house, and all the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the same hands, the state unsafe, the people left without remedy, in case of injustice, but by an appeal to Heaven, by our author’s own confession.

“In all free states, the legislative and executive powers have been managed in distinct hands,” says our author; “that is, the law-makers have set down rules, and then put power into the hands of others to govern by those rules.”

I wonder where. In Sparta, the executive power was in the kings, hereditary kings, not appointed by the senate, or either of the popular assemblies, that of the city, or that for the country; in Athens, the executive power was in the archons; in Rome, first in kings, and then in consuls, through all the period of the republic; but, what is worse, some important executive powers were reserved in the hands of the senate in Sparta, in the popular assemblies in Athens, in the senate in Rome; that is, the executive and legislative powers were so far united, which finally produced the ruin of all of them. In short, our author is perfectly right in his rule, that the two powers ought to be distinct, and in the fatal effects of their union; but totally wrong in deriving one from the other, and in his examples to show they ever were so derived.

But as the separation and division of authority, for the preservation of equity, equality, and liberty, in opposition to the union of it simply in one, the few, or the many, is the end of all the pains we have taken upon this subject, not a word of assistance afforded us by our author ought to be lost. He goes on,—

“Cicero, in his second book, De Officiis, and his third, De Legibus, speaking of the first institution of kings, tells us, how they were at first left to govern at their own discretion, without laws. Then their wills and their words were law; the making and execution of laws were in one and the same hands. But what was the consequence? Nothing but injustice, and injustice without remedy, till the people were taught by necessity to ordain laws, as rules whereby they ought to govern. Then began the meeting of the people successively in their supreme assemblies to make laws, whereby kings, in such places as continued under the kingly form, were limited and restrained, so that they could do nothing in government but what was agreeable to law, for which they were accountable, as well as other officers were in other forms of government, to those supreme councils and assemblies. Witness all the old stories of Athens, Sparta, and other countries of Greece, where you shall find, that the law-making and the law-executing powers were placed in distinct hands under every form of government; for so much of freedom they retained still under every form, till they were both swallowed up, as they were several times, by an absolute domination.

“In old Rome we find Romulus, their first king, cut in pieces by the senate, for taking upon him to make and execute laws at his own pleasure; and Livy tells us, that the reason why they expelled Tarquin, their last king, was, because he took the executive and legislative powers both into his own hands, making himself both legislator and officer, inconsulto senatu, ‘without advice, and in defiance of the senate.’

“Kings being cashiered, then their standing senates came in play, who, making and executing laws by decrees of their own, soon grew intolerable, and put the people upon divers desperate adventures, to get the legislative power out of their hands, and place it in their own, that is, in a succession of their supreme assemblies; but the executive power they left, part in the hands of officers of their own, and part in the senate; in which state it continued some hundreds of years, to the great happiness and content of all, till the senate, by sleights and subtilties, got both powers into their own possession again, and turned all into confusion.

“Afterwards, their emperors (though usurpers) durst not at first turn both these powers into the channel of their own unbounded will; but did it by degrees, that they might the more insensibly deprive the people of their liberty, till at length they openly made and executed laws at their own pleasure, being both legislators and officers, without giving an account to any; and so there was an end of the Roman liberty.

“To come nearer home, let us look into the old constitution of the commonwealths and kingdoms of Europe. We find in the Italian states, Venice, which having the legislative and executive power confined within the narrow pale of its nobility in the senate, is not so free as once Florence was, with Siena, Milan, and the rest, before their dukes, by arrogating both those powers to themselves, wormed them out of their liberty.

“Of all those states, only Genoa remains in a free posture, by keeping the power of legislation only in their supreme assemblies, and leaving the execution of law in a titular duke and a council. The keeping of these powers asunder, within their proper sphere, is one principal reason why they have been able to exclude tyranny out of their own state, while it hath run the round in Italy.

“What made the Grand Signor absolute of old, but his engrossing both these powers? and of late the kings of Spain and France? In ancient times, the case stood far otherwise; for in Ambrosio Morales his Chronicle you will find, that in Spain the legislative power was lodged only in their supreme council, and their king was no more but an elective officer, to execute such laws as they made, and, in case of failing, to give them an account, and submit to their judgments, which was the common practice, as you may see also in Mariana. It was so, also, in Arragon, till it was united to Castile by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; and then both states soon lost their liberty by the projects of Ferdinand and his successors, who drew the powers of legislation and execution of law within the verge and influence of the prerogative royal; whilst these two powers were kept distinct, then these states were free; but the engrossing of them in one and the same hands, was the loss of their freedom.

“France, likewise, was once as free as any nation under heaven; though the king of late hath done all, and been all in all, till the time of Louis XI. he was no more but an officer of state, regulated by law, to see the laws put in execution, and the legislative power rested in the assembly of the three estates; but Louis, by snatching both these powers into the single hands of himself and his successors, rooked them out of their liberty, which they may now recover again, if they have but so much manhood as to reduce the two powers into their ancient, or into better channels.

“This pattern of Louis was followed close by the late king of England (Charles I.) who, by our ancient laws, was the same here that Louis ought to have been in France, an officer in trust, to see to the execution of the laws; but by aiming at the same ends which Louis attained, and straining, by the ruin of parliaments, to reduce the legislative power, as well as the executive, into his own hands, he, instead of an absolute tyranny, which might have followed his project, brought a swift destruction upon himself and his family.

“Thus you see it appears, that the keeping of these two powers distinct hath been a ground preservative of the people’s interest, whereas their uniting hath been its ruin all along in so many ages and nations.”

This passage at large, in the author’s own words, has been quoted with pleasure, because, although the accuracy of it in every particular cannot be answered for, the principle and examples are good, and he might have added as many more examples as there were or had been simple governments in the world. It is in mixed governments alone where these two powers are separated. But the misfortune is, that our author contends for a mixed government, and a separation of the legislative and executive powers, in name and appearance only. If the executive is appointed by, or derived from, the legislative, it is still in essence but one power, and in the same hands.

It is inaccurate to say, that in “Athens and Sparta” the law-making and law-executing powers were placed in distinct hands under every form of government. It would be nearer the truth to say, that they were free and happy in proportion as they separated these powers. But the fact is, these powers were never wholly separated; part of the executive always was in the legislative, and sometimes all of it, and these errors proved their ruin.

When “the executive power was left by the people of Rome partly in the hands of officers of their own, and partly in the senate,” it was a continual object of jealousy and contention between the senate and people. Whether France was ever “as free as any nation under heaven,” or not, may be learned from Boulainvilliers,* the Abbé de Mably,† and M. Moreau.‡

To read through the voluminous histories of Father Daniel, Mezeray, Velly, and consult original authorities, as Gregory of Tours, Froissart, &c. would be a tedious enterprise, and, after all, the controversy would remain. Boulainvilliers contends that France was a republic, and that the feudal lords had a right to make war upon the kings and upon one another; but it was, according to him, but an aristocracy. M. Moreau, who examines all the other writers, as Boulainvilliers, Du Bos, De Mably, &c. contends that the monarchs have ever been absolute; but at what period the common people, such as farmers, mechanics, merchants, &c. were admitted to a vote in the choice of their rulers, even of the procurators of cities and boroughs which composed the third estate, the public would yet be glad to be informed. Louis XVI. has the unrivalled glory of admitting the people to a share in the government. Upon what grounds our author could pretend that France was ever as free as any nation under heaven is utterly incomprehensible. The kings, nobles, and clergy, were such standing powers as our author detested; and the third estate was very far from being an adequate representation of the people; so that the assemblies of the states, and the ancient parliaments, were by no means successions of the people’s sovereign assemblies. The constitutions of the cortes in Castile, Arragon, Portugal, and all the other kingdoms now united under the kings of Spain or Portugal, were equally repugnant to our author’s system, and equally destructive of it.*

“Sixth Error. Reducing transactions and the interests of the public into the disposition and power of a few particular persons. The ill consequences have been, that matters were not carried by fair debate, but by design and surprise; not by deliberation of the people in their open assemblies, but according to the premeditated resolutions and forestalments of crafty projectors in private juntos; not according to the true interest of state, but in order to the serving of men’s ends; not for the benefit and improvement of the people, but to keep them under, as ignorant of true liberty as the horse and mule, to be bridled, saddled, and ridden, under the wise pretences of being governed and kept in order. But the grand and worse consequence of all hath been this; that such colleagues, partners, and engrossers of power, having once brought about their ends by lying practices upon the people, have ever fallen into fits of emulation against themselves, and their next design hath ever been to rook their fellows and rid themselves of competitors, so that at length they have been their own executioners, and ruined one another. And the people having by this means been torn with civil dissensions and the miseries of war, by being drawn into parties, according to their several humors and affections, the usual event ever was, that in the end they have been seized as the prey of some single tyrant.”

It must be confessed our author understands himself and his subject very well. He is aware of all the difficulties and dangers, but yet he will not see, or will not confess, that his own Right Constitution remains exposed to all their ravages, without the smallest provision to defend it. How will it be possible, in a single sovereign assembly, to prevent transactions and public interests falling into the disposition of a few? How will it be possible that matters should always be carried by friendly debate, and not by design and surprise, by premeditated resolutions of crafty projectors in private cabinets; not according to public interest, but private ends; not for the benefit of the people, but to keep them in ignorance, to be bridled and ridden? How can such colleagues and partners be prevented from imposing lying practices on the people, from emulation, envy, and jealousy among themselves, and from rooking one another? How shall the people be prevented from being torn with civil dissensions, and drawn into parties, by their several humors, principles, superstitions, prejudices, fancies, and affections? and how shall all this be prevented from ending in a single tyranny? Not one check, not the least restraint, no appearance of balance or control, is once mentioned or thought of. For an executive appointed by the legislative will be none at all; it will only facilitate intrigue and artifice, to disguise and conceal the blackest designs.

The example of the thirty tyrants of Athens is a proof of this. “Xenophon tells us they drew the determinations of all things into their own closets, but seemed to manage them ‘calculis et suffragiis populi,’ by the votes of the people, which they had brought to their own devotion in the assembly, to countenance their proceedings. And their custom was, if any sort of men complained and murmured at their doings, or appeared for the public, immediately to snap them off by the loss of life or fortune, under a pretence of being seditious and turbulent fellows against the peace of their tyranny.”

But will not such thirty or less number of tyrants arise in every single sovereign assembly and behave in the same manner? In a representative assembly they may take off a troublesome member in an easier manner, by applying the executive and judicial powers and the public treasure among his constituents, to have him rejected or left out at the next election.

“The event of the thirty tyrants’ combination was a civil war, which ended in their banishment; but a new junto of ten men got into their places, whose government proving little less odious than the former, gave occasion to new changes, which never left shifting till they fell into a single tyranny.” If “the wilder sort of people, having by a sad experience felt the fruits of their own error, in following the lusts of particular powerful persons, grew wise, and combining with the honester sort, they all, as one man, set their shoulders to the work, and restored the primitive majesty and authority of their supreme assemblies,” how long did it last? Aristides himself began to destroy it, Themistocles did more, Pericles more still, and Alcibiades finished the ruin. It is not possible to say that the Athenian constitution operated as a steady system of liberty for one moment; because, although a multitude of checks played in it, there was no settled balance.

The example cited from Herodotus is still more decisive in our favor, and against our author.

“Monarchy being abolished in Egypt after the death of King Setho, and a declaration published for the freedom of the people, immediately the administration of all affairs was engrossed in the hands of twelve grandees” (or popular men, principes populi) “who, having made themselves secure against the people, in a few years fell to quarrelling with one another (as the manner is) about their share in the government. This drew the people into several parties, and a civil war ensued, wherein Psammeticus (one of the twelve) having slain all his partners, left the people in the lurch, and instead of a free state, seated himself in the possession of a single tyranny.”

Our author might have quoted the example of the apostles themselves, who fell into disputes who should be the first in the kingdom they thought approaching.

The two triumvirates are illustrious among thousands of other examples equally apposite.

“Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus, drew the affairs of the world into their hands, determining all in a private junto, without the advice or the consent of the senate or people, unless it were now and then to make stalking-horses of them, for the more clear conveyance of some unpleasing design. These men, having made an agreement among themselves, that nothing should be done in the commonwealth but what pleased their own humor, it was not long ere the spirit of ambition set them flying at the faces of one another, and drew the whole world upon the stage to act that bloody tragedy, whose catastrophe was the death of Pompey and the dominion of Cæsar. The second triumvirate was between Octavius, Lepidus, and Antony. These having shared the world between them, presently fell a bandying against one another. Augustus, picking a quarrel with Lepidus, gave him a lift out of his authority, and confined him to a close imprisonment in the city; next he picks a quarrel with Antony, begins a new civil war, in which he ruined Antony, and seated himself in the enjoyment of a single tyranny.”

But our author should have remembered, that all this was after the senate had lost its authority, and the people, in their assemblies, assumed all power; and he should have been sensible, that thus it will and must ever be, in all simple governments, to the end of the world.

“In the great contest between Henry III. and the barons, about the liberties of themselves and the people, the king being forced at length to yield, the lords, instead of freeing the nation, indeed, engrossed all power into their own hands, under the name of the twenty-four conservators of the kingdom, and behaved themselves like totidem tyranni, acting all in their own names, neglecting or overruling parliaments. But then, not agreeing among themselves, there were three or four of them defeated the other twenty, and drew the entire management of affairs into their own hands, namely,—the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, Hereford, and Spencer. Yet it continued so not long; for Leicester getting all into his power, fell at enmity with Gloucester, and was defeated by him.

“At length Leicester, putting his fortune to a battle, was slain; and the king thereupon getting all power back again, took advantage of that opportunity for the greatening himself and his prerogative.

“And so you see all that the people got by the effusion of their blood and loss of their peace was, that instead of one tyrant they had twenty-four, and then four; and after them a single usurper (Montfort, Earl of Leicester); and he being gone, they were forced to serve their old tyrant Henry III. again, who by this means became the more secure and firm in his tyranny.”

And are not all these examples, and millions of others that happen in every village, hamlet, and burgade in the world (for in all these there are contentions for precedence, and men who would rather be there the first than the second in Rome, as sincerely as Cæsar) enough to convince the people and popular writers of the necessity of more than one branch of power, and indeed of more than two? The single struggle for the first place must eternally distract every simple government, and must disturb every one that has only two branches. Unless there is a legal, constitutional, and habitual mode of always determining who shall be foremost, there can be no tranquillity among mankind. Grave exhortations to single assemblies, whether senates or representatives, not to permit public transactions to be engrossed, and rest in the power of a few particular persons, will be thrown away; for such are the contradictions in the human character, the multitude who have no hopes of being intrusted, are as servile as the few who have, are aspiring; and, upon the whole, there is more superiority in the world given than assumed.

“Seventh Error. Driving of factions and parties. Faction destroyed Rome. The factions, headed by the two potent families of Hannibal and Hanno, destroyed Carthage. Faction made Rome stoop to Cæsar; Athens to Pisistratus. Faction let the Turk into Constantinople and Hungary; the Goths and Vandals into Spain and Italy; the Romans into Jerusalem. It subjected Genoa to the family of Sforza, Dukes of Milan; brought the Spaniard into Sicily and Naples; and the French into Milan, where they ousted Sforza.”

To these instances might be added as many as you please; but it is amazing that all that have happened have not been sufficient to show the necessity of a government so mixed that factions may always be ruled. There can be no faction but of the one, the few, or the many; and a triple balance of equal powers affords a never-failing remedy against either; and if either of these is wanting, there is always not only a possibility and a probability, but an absolute certainty, of one species of faction arising, against which the constitution affords no defence.

“Eighth Error. Violation of faith, principles, promises, and engagements, an impiety that ought to be exploded out of all nations that bear the name of Christians; and yet we find it often pass among the less discerning sort of men for admirable policy; and those impostors that used it, have had the luck to be esteemed the only politicians.” Our author wisely and nobly condemns the reasoning of Machiavel, in his Prince, “that, because the greatest part of the world being wicked, unjust, deceitful, full of treachery and circumvention, there is a necessity that those who are downright, and confine themselves to the strict rule of honesty, must ever look to be overreached by the knavery of others.” He quotes, too, from Machiavel: “This part hath been covertly showed to princes by ancient writers, who say that Achilles, and many others of those ancient princes, were intrusted to Chiron the Centaur, to be brought up under his discipline. The moral of this having for their teacher one that was half a beast and half a man, was nothing else, but that it was needful for a prince to understand how to make his advantage of the one and other nature, because neither could submit without the other.”

Without condemning our species so far as Machiavel, by pronouncing the greatest part wicked; or going the length of the ancients, in supposing them half beasts; or of some moderns, in calling them half devils, candor, and charity itself, must allow, that in all great nations, at least, there are many both wicked, brutal, and diabolical; and enough of both to trample on the laws, and disturb the peace, liberty, and property of the good and humane, unless provision is made in the constitution to restrain them. In all simple governments, the worst part of the species are least controlled and have most temptations; and from hence arises a new and strong argument in favor of such a mixture, as shall guard every avenue to imposture and every inlet to vice. Although the vices and follies of mankind, no more than their diseases and bodily infirmities, can never be wholly eradicated in this mixed state of good and evil, and we cannot rationally hope that policy will ever change the earth into heaven, yet the balance of three branches appears to afford all that the constitution and course of things will admit; at least, all that have hitherto been discovered. It would be folly to say, that no further improvements can be discovered. The moral and intellectual world is as little known as the physical. We may hope, from education, inquiry, and experiment, great advances; but, until they are further pursued, let us adopt such as have already been found practicable and useful.

There is one alteration which will be found indispensable, before any great meliorations can be made in society and government, some more rational method of determining the people’s votes in elections, and some effectual provision against corruption. The cry of family fortune, some prejudice of superstition, some habitual fondness, a prejudice, a whim, a name, too often determine the votes of multitudes, even when grosser profligacy has no share. The people must be taught to be governed more by reason, and less by sounds. The word king, like magic, excites the adoration of some, and execration of others; some, who would obey the lawful orders of a king, would rebel against the same orders, given by the same authority, under the name of governors or president; others would cheerfully submit to a governor or president, but think rebellion against a king with only the same authority, virtue, and merit, and obedience to God. Until the nature of things is more generally understood by the people, and mere sounds have less influence, it will be in vain to expect any great improvements.

There is another particular, too, in which, I suspect, the people must change the fundamental maxim of their policy throughout the world, before much further improvements will be made. The people, in all ages and countries, have laid it down as a rule, that their service must be perfectly disinterested. No man deserves to be employed by them, who will not serve them gratis, at least, if not put himself to great expense to procure their votes. The consequences of this are many.

1. No man can serve them who is not rich. This is giving up at once their own right of election into the hands of an aristocracy, and that characteristic of aristocracy, too, which has the least merit in it, mere wealth.

2. This introduces a universal system of Machiavelian hypocrisy into popular elections; and those who are most interested, most corrupted, and most determined to carry the commodity to market, are the most liberal in their offers of a price to purchase it, the most ostentatious in professions of disinterested motives. Aristides, Fabricius, and Cincinnatus are eternally quoted, as if such characters were always to be found in sufficient numbers to protect the people’s liberties, and a cry and show of pure virtue is set up by the most profligate and abandoned of human kind, such as would sell their fathers, their country, and their God, for profit, place, and power. Hypocrisy, simulation, finesse, are not more practised in the courts of princes, than they are in popular elections; nor more encouraged by kings than people. Unless some means can be discovered to reform the people, and to enlighten them, to make rectitude, instead of chicanery, the visible, obvious interest both of governors and governed, it will be in vain to expect great changes for the better in government. To improve this, morals and science must be improved, extended, and made more general, if not universal; and, after all, perfection, we know, can never be attained in either.

“First Rule of Policy. To educate the young fry in principles of dislike and enmity against kingly government, and enter into an oath of abjuration, to abjure a toleration of kings and kingly power in time to come.”

This rule was made for Charles Stuart.

Brutus made the Romans swear, “that they never should suffer any man again to reign at Rome. The Hollanders abjured Philip, his family, and all kings, forever.”

These were inventions of aristocratical cunning, and the people were dupes for taking them. A king, meaning a single person vested with the whole executive, is the only remedy for the people, whenever the nobles get the better of them, and are on the scramble for unlimited power. Let every people have a care how they enslave themselves by such an oath, or lay themselves under the necessity of committing perjury. Let them swear, if they will, never to be governed by an absolute monarch; but even this had better be omitted, for there are cases in which an absolute monarch is a less evil than a crowd of lawless lords. A better oath for the common people would be, never to intrust any part of the executive power to a senate, or, in other words, to the body of the gentlemen.

I am not without apprehensions that I have not made myself fully understood. The people, in all nations, are naturally divided into two sorts, the gentlemen and the simplemen, a word which is here chosen to signify the common people. By gentlemen are not meant the rich or the poor, the high-born or the low-born, the industrious or the idle; but all those who have received a liberal education, an ordinary degree of erudition in liberal arts and sciences, whether by birth they be descended from magistrates and officers of government, or from husbandmen, merchants, mechanics, or laborers; or whether they be rich or poor. We must, nevertheless, remember, that generally those who are rich, and descended from families in public life, will have the best education in arts and sciences, and therefore the gentlemen will ordinarily, notwithstanding some exceptions to the rule, be the richer, and born of more noted families. By the common people we mean laborers, husbandmen, mechanics, and merchants in general, who pursue their occupations and industry without any knowledge in liberal arts or sciences, or in any thing but their own trades or pursuits; though there may be exceptions to this rule, and individuals may be found in each of these classes who may really be gentlemen.

Now it seems to be clear, that the gentlemen in every country are, and ever must be, few in number, in comparison of the simplemen. If you please, then, by the democratical portion of society we will understand the common people, as before explained; by the aristocratical part of the community we will understand the gentlemen. The distinctions which have been introduced among the gentlemen, into nobility greater or lesser, are perfectly immaterial to our present purpose; knights, barons, earls, viscounts, marquises, dukes, and even princes and kings, are still but gentlemen, and the word noble signifies no more than knowable, or conspicuous. But the gentlemen are more intelligent and skilful, as well as generally richer and better connected, and therefore have more influence and power than an equal number of the common people. There is a constant energy and effort in the minds of the former to increase the advantages they possess over the latter, and to augment their wealth and influence at their expense. This effort produces resentments and jealousies, contempt, hatred, and fear, between the one sort and the other. Individuals among the common people endeavor to make friends, patrons, and protectors among the gentlemen. This produces parties, divisions, tumults, and war. But as the former have most address and capacity, they gain more and more continually, until they become exorbitantly rich, and the others miserably poor. In this progress, the common people are continually looking up for a protector among the gentlemen, and he who is most able and willing to protect them acquires their confidence. They unite together by their feelings, more than their reflections, in augmenting his power, because the more power he has, and the less the gentlemen have, the safer they are. This is a short sketch of the history of that progress of passions and feelings which has produced every simple monarchy in the world; and, if nature and its feelings have their course without reflection, they will produce a simple monarchy forever. It has been the common people, then, and not the gentlemen, who have established simple monarchies all over the world. The common people, against the gentlemen, established a simple monarchy in Cæsar at Rome, in the Medici at Florence, &c., and are now in danger of doing the same thing in Holland; and if the British constitution should have its euthanasia in simple monarchy, according to the prophecy of Mr. Hume, it will be effected by the common people, to avoid the increasing oppressions of the gentlemen.

If this is the progress and course of things (and who does not know that it is?) it follows, that it is the true interest and best policy of the common people to take away from the body of the gentlemen all share in the distribution of offices and management of the executive power. Why? Because if any body of gentlemen have the gift of offices, they will dispose of them among their own families, friends, and connections; they will also make use of their votes in disposing of offices, to procure themselves votes in popular elections to the senate or other council, or to procure themselves appointments in the executive department. It is the true policy of the common people to place the whole executive power in one man, to make him a distinct order in the state, from whence arises an inevitable jealousy between him and the gentlemen; this forces him to become a father and protector of the common people, and to endeavor always to humble every proud, aspiring senator, or other officer in the state, who is in danger of acquiring an influence too great for the law or the spirit of the constitution. This influences him to look for merit among the common people, and to promote from among them such as are capable of public employments; so that the road to preferment is open to the common people much more generally and equitably in such a government than in an aristocracy, or one in which the gentlemen have any share in appointments to office.

From this deduction it follows, that the precept of our author, “to educate children (of the common people) in principles of dislike and enmity against kingly government, and enter into an oath of abjuration to abjure a toleration of kings and kingly powers,” is a most iniquitous and infamous aristocratical artifice, a most formal conspiracy against the rights of mankind, and against that equality between the gentlemen and the common people which nature has established as a moral right, and law should ordain as a political right, for the preservation of liberty.

By kings and kingly power is meant, both by our author and me, the executive power in a single person. American common people are too enlightened, it is hoped, ever to fall into such a hypocritical snare; the gentlemen, too, it is hoped, are too enlightened, as well as too equitable, ever to attempt such a measure; because they must know that the consequence will be, that, after suffering all the evils of contests and dissensions, cruelty and oppression, from the aristocratics, the common people will perjure themselves, and set up an unlimited monarchy instead of a regal republic.

The second rule of policy is, “not to suffer particular persons to grandize or greaten themselves more than ordinary; for that by the Romans was called ‘affectatio regni,’ an aspiring to kingship.” Mælius and Manlius are again cited. “The name of the latter was ever after disowned by his whole family, that famous family of the Manlii, and both the name and memory of him and of his consulship were razed out of all public records by decree of the senate.”

It is certainly an essential rule in a free government, to suffer no man to greaten himself above the law. But it is impossible it should ever be observed in a simple democracy or aristocracy. What might not Manlius have done, if Rome had been governed by a single sovereign assembly of representatives? It was the aristocracy that murdered Manlius, much against the will of the democracy, so that the instance is against the author. The Orange family in Holland are mentioned too; but it is the common people who have supported that family for their protection against the aristocracy. It is agreed, however, by many respectable writers, that the family of Orange have been dangerous in that state, because the people have no constitutional share in the government, and the authority exercised by the stadtholder is not legally defined. If the people, therefore, in their anger, should augment the power of that house too much above the aristocracy, it would be absolute; but if the people should expel that house, they must set up another, as well as demand a share in the legislature for themselves, or become slaves and a prey to the aristocracy. It is a good rule for Holland to beware of too great a man; but it is equally necessary to beware of five thousand men, who may easily become too great. But in our author’s Right Constitution the observance of the rule is impossible. The people, if unrestrained by a senate or a king, will set up some one man, and advance him to a greatness of dignity and authority inconsistent with liberty. As soon as any one in such a government gets the command-in-chief of an army, he has the state in his power. The common people in Holland would assist the army in making the prince absolute (if, indeed, the prince would accept of a gift that would ruin his country as well as his house) if they were not restrained by a standing aristocratical power, which our author abhors.

“Third Rule. Non diurnare imperia; not to permit a continuation of command and authority in the hands of particular persons or families.”

This rule is undoubtedly necessary to preserve a simple aristocracy or democracy; but it is impracticable in both, and, therefore, it is impracticable to preserve an aristocracy or democracy. But this is by no means a necessary or proper rule in a well constituted free government. Command and authority may be continued for any number of years, or for life, in the same person, without the least danger; because, upon the smallest symptom of an inclination to abuse his power, he may be displaced by the executive, without danger or inconvenience. But in a simple aristocracy or democracy he cannot be removed at all; the majority will support him at all events; or, if they do not, the majority that removes him will be so small, that the minority who are his friends may often raise convulsions.

It is a necessary rule, too, in such a mixed government as that of Rome, where, in the best of times, the people had an authority nearly equal to that of the senate. Where the mixture is of two powers only, and the executive is wholly in one of them, or partly in one and partly in another, they are in continual danger of the tyranny of a single person, on account of the frequent disputes between the two branches about the exercise of the executive and judicial power; but where the executive is in one hand, the legislative in three, and the judicial in hands different from both, there is rarely, if ever, any danger from a continuance of command in any one. Livy had good reason in the Roman state to say, “Libertatis magna custodia est, si magna imperia esse non sinas, et temporis modus imponatur; it is a grand preservative of liberty, if you do not permit great powers and commands to continue long, and if you limit in point of time.” And to this purpose the Æmilian law, if it could have been observed, would have been a good one. The noble Roman, in the ninth book, spoke in character, when he said, “Hoc quidem regno simile est,” and this indeed is like a kingship, that I alone should bear this great office of censorship triennium et sex menses three years and six months, contrary to the Æmilian law.” Livy, too, speaks in character, as a good citizen of an aristocratical government, when “in his third book he speaks of a monstrous business, that the ides of May were come (which was the time of their year’s choice) and yet no new election appointed. Id vero regnum haud dubie videri; deploratur in perpetuum libertas; it without doubt seems no other than a kingdom, and liberty is lost for ever. It was treason for any man to hold that high office of the dictatorship in his own hand beyond six months. Cicero’s Epistles to Atticus, concerning Cæsar, contain notable stuff to this purpose. The care of that people, in not permitting any man to bear the same office twice together,” was all in character, because continuance in high office constantly exposed the state and constitution to the danger of being overturned and converted into an absolute monarchy. In this constitution, too, in consequence of the checks between the senate, the tribunes, and the people, there was some chance for having this law observed. But an Æmilian law, in our author’s “Right Constitution,” would be made to no purpose; it would be set aside, without ceremony, when nothing but a vote of an all-powerful majority would be wanting to set it at defiance. But in a mixed constitution of three branches, such a law, if made, would be punctually executed, much more exactly and certainly than in the Roman constitution; but in such a constitution such a law would be unnecessary, as no danger can arise from the continuance of any general or admiral in command.

The same reasoning is applicable to the free states of Greece, where “Aristotle tells us this rule was observed. The speech of Cincinnatus to the people, to persuade them to let him lay down his command, now the time was come, though the enemy was almost at the gates, and never more need than at that time of his valor and prudence,” is a terrible example against our author’s system. For, though “no persuasion would serve the turn, resign he would, telling them there would be more danger to the state in prolonging his power than from the enemy, since it might prove a pernicious precedent to the Roman freedom;” yet, as no more than two or three such characters as Cincinnatus appeared in seven hundred years, a statesman would be mad who should place the existence of his form of government upon the presumption that a succession of characters so disinterested would appear to resist the people themselves in their desire to violate a law. If the people at that period could forget a rule so essential to their safety, what are we to expect when they and their idols too are more corrupt? “M. Rutilius Censorinus, although he too made a speech against it, gave way to the people, when they forced him to undergo the office of censor twice together, contrary to the intent and practice of their ancestors, and accepted it upon this condition, that a law might pass against the title in that and other officers, lest it should be drawn into precedent in time to come.”

But our author all along mistakes the spirit of this rule; it was an aristocratical regulation altogether; it was the senate and patricians who procured it to be observed, from an aristocratical motive and principle; from a jealousy of the people on one side, and of kingly power on the other. It is the same spirit which precipitated Cassius and Manlius from the rock, and put Mælius to death without ceremony. The people, or their representatives, if uncontrolled, would not probably ever make such a law; if they did, they would never long observe it. The people would not suffer it to be much or long observed in Rome, notwithstanding all the exertions of the aristocracy. The times soon came when Cincinnatuses and Censorinuses were not found to refuse power and office offered them against law, any more than Horatii and Valerii were found to postpone their private fortune to plebeian liberty. Even the Grecian aristocracies could not observe this rule. It was a law of Sparta that no man should be twice admiral; but Lysander had address enough to persuade his countrymen to give the title to Aratus, but the real command to himself, under the title of vice-admiral. Even in that which was in appearance the most democratical state of Greece, Achaia, Aratus had the real power and command when he was out of place as much as when he was in. Our author mistakes, too, the spirit of the law, “that no tribune should be continued two years together.” This law was a mere aristocratical artifice, to weaken the influence of the tribunes and their constituents, by preventing them from acquiring confidence, skill, and influence by experience. If the people had understood their own cause, they would have insisted upon the privilege of choosing the same tribune as long as they approved his conduct.

“Fourth Rule. Not to let two of one family to bear offices of high trust at one time, nor to permit a continuation of great powers in any one family.” This rule is indispensable in aristocracies, where the sovereignty is in continual danger from individuals of great influence and powerful connections, where a jealousy of popular men and measures must be constantly kept up to its highest pitch. The Roman rule, “Ne duo vel plures ex unâ familiâ magnos magistratus gerant eodem tempore, let not two or more of one family bear great offices at the same time;” and the other, “Ne magna imperia ab unâ familiâ prescribantur, let not great commands be prescribed or continued in one family;” were necessary aristocratical rules, because, as the patricians were always afraid of the people, who were continually urging for more power, a very powerful family, by joining with the people, might have changed the constitution. It is a wise and useful rule in general in all governments; but in a simple democracy, though it may be more necessary than in any other form, it is always impracticable; the people will set it aside whenever they please, and will always be sure to depart from it in favor of a favorite man or family. But in a mixed constitution of three branches there is less necessity of observing the rule with strictness, and more facility of observing it when necessary. It is very doubtful whether the constitution of Rome could have been longer preserved, if Cicero had joined Antony instead of Octavius. The people were now uncontrolled and the senate had lost its authority; and the people behaved as they always do, when they pretend to exercise the whole executive and legislative power; that is, they set up immediately one man and one family for an emperor, in effect, sometimes respecting ancient forms at first, and sometimes rejecting them altogether.

But of all rules, this is the least possible to persuade them to observe in such a case. The Florentine family of the Medici were set up in this manner by the people, who, as Machiavel informs us, aimed at all power, and a simple democracy; and in such cases, “Cosimus is always easily admitted to succeed his cousin Alexander.” It is not to be wondered at, that “Pompeius Columba stood up in the conclave, and showed them how dangerous and prejudicial it must of necessity prove to the liberties of Italy, that the popedom should be continued in one house, in the hands of two brothers, one after another;” but if the election of a pope had depended upon the people of Florence, Julian de Medici would have been chosen to succeed his brother, though Columba had harangued them with ever so much eloquence against it. A conclave of cardinals, and a body of people in a city, are very different electors. The continuation of power in the House of Orange, is another instance in point; that family have been continued in power by the will of the people, very often expressed in outrageous fury, and very often much against the inclination of the aristocracy.

In every nation, under every form of government, public affairs were always managed by a very small number of families, compared with the whole number. In a simple democracy they will ever be conducted by the smallest number of all; the people will confer all upon a very few families at first, and upon one alone at length. “The Roman senate carried all by families; so does the senate of Venice;” but the number is greater than will ever be intrusted by a people who exercise the whole executive and legislative power in one assembly. But the largest number of families that can be introduced into actual confidence and service, in any combination of the powers of society, is in the composition of three branches; because here as many families are employed to represent the people by numbers, as to represent property in the senate; and it is in such a form alone, that so many families may be employed without confusion and sedition. Here, then, this rule of policy may be best observed, not to let two or more, unnecessarily, bear high offices at once; or, if there are several of a family, whose merit is acknowledged, they may be employed without the smallest danger.

“Fifth Rule. To hold up the majesty and authority of their suffrages or votes, entire in their senators or supreme assemblies;” or, in other words, to maintain the free suffrages of senates or people, untainted with the influence or mixture of any commanding power; “for, if this were not secured from control or influence of any other power, then, actum erat de libertate.”

To maintain the independence and integrity of suffrages, without corruption from flattery, artifice, bribes, or fear, is no doubt a good rule; but if the author here means that the power of the people should be absolute, and without control from a senate or a first executive magistrate, it is begging the question, and, what is more, it is notoriously false and destructive.

“So long,” says our author, “as the Roman people kept up their credit and authority as sacred in their tribunes and supreme assemblies, so long they continued really free.” But how long was this? While they were only defending themselves from the tyranny of the senate; while they were greatly inferior to the senate in power; while they were increasing their own power by obtaining the office of tribune, by obtaining liberty to marry into patrician families, to be appointed ædiles, consuls, censors, &c. In short, while their power was inferior to that of the senate, and controllable by it, they enjoyed as much liberty as ever was enjoyed under that government; but the moment they obtained an equality of power with the senate, they began to exercise more than their half, and to give it to their idols.

“When, by their own neglect, they gave Sylla, and his party in the senate, an opportunity of power to curb them, then their suffrages (once esteemed sacred) were trodden under foot; for immediately after, they came to debate and act but by courtesy, the authority being left by Sylla, after the expiration of his dictatorship, in the hands of the standing senate, so that it could never after be regained by the people. Cæsar, when he marched to Rome, deprived them also of the authority of their suffrages; only in a formal way made use of them; and so, under a shadow of legality, he assumed that power unto himself which they durst not deny him.”

Our author is never weary of producing anecdotes and examples from history, which prove his own system to be infallibly destructive of liberty. It is a miserable consolation to a virtuous citizen who has lost his liberty, to tell him that he has lost it “by the neglect and fault of his fellow-citizens in general;” it is the most humiliating and desperate slavery of all. If he had lost it by the simple usurpation of a single man or senate, without the fault of the people (if that, indeed, is a possible or supposable case,) he might still entertain a hope of regaining it; but when we are told that a people lost their liberty by a neglect or fault that we know they will always commit when uncontrolled, is it not a conclusive argument for providing in the constitution for an effectual control? When the people exercise all powers in single assemblies, we know that the power of Sylla and Cæsar will always mix in, and influence and control; it is impossible, then, that in our author’s form of government this fifth rule of policy ever should be observed, or the suffrages kept pure and upright. “Just in the same manner dealt Cosmus in the Florentine senate. He made use of their suffrages; but he had so played his cards beforehand, that they durst not but yield to his ambition. So, also, Tiberius first brought the suffrages of the senate at his own devotion, that they durst not but consent to his establishment; and then so ordered the matter, that he might seem to do nothing, not only without their consent, but to be forced to accept the empire by their intreaty; so that you see there was an empire in effect, long before it was declared in formality.” Will duplicity be less practicable, or less common, in an assembly of the people than in a senate? May not an empire or despotism in effect, though democratical in form, be less difficult to accomplish than even under an aristocratical form? Empire of particular men will exist in effect under every simple form and every unequal mixture. An empire of laws in reality can be maintained only in an equal mixture of all three.

Sixth Rule. “That the people be continually trained up in the exercise of arms, and the militia lodged only in the people’s hands, or that part of them which are most firm to the interest of liberty, that so the power may rest fully in the disposition of their supreme assemblies.”

The limitation to “that part most firm to the interest of liberty” was inserted here, no doubt, to reserve the right of disarming all the friends of Charles Stuart, the nobles and bishops. Without stopping to inquire into the justice, policy, or necessity of this, the rule in general is excellent. All the consequences that our author draws from it, however, cannot be admitted. One consequence was, according to him,—

“That nothing could at any time be imposed upon the people but by their consent,” that is, by the consent of themselves, or of such as were by them intrusted. “As Aristotle tells us, in his fourth book of Politics, the Grecian states ever had special care to place the use and exercise of arms in the people, because the commonwealth is theirs who held the arms. The sword and sovereignty ever walk hand in hand together.” This is perfectly just. “Rome, and the territories about it, were trained up perpetually in arms, and the whole commonwealth, by this means, became one formal militia. There was no difference in order between the citizen, the husbandman, and the soldier.” This was the “usual course, even before they had gained their tribunes and assemblies; that is, in the infancy of the senate, immediately after the expulsion of their kings.”

But why does our author disguise that it was the same under the kings? This is the truth; and it is not honest to conceal it here. In the times of Tarquin, even, we find no standing army, “not any form of soldiery;” “nor do we find, that in after times they permitted a deposition of the arms of the commonwealth in any other way, till, their empire increasing, necessity constrained them to erect a continued stipendiary soldiery (abroad in foreign parts) either for the holding or winning of provinces.”

Thus we have the truth from himself; the whole people were a militia under the kings, under the senate, and after the senate’s authority was tempered by popular tribunes and assemblies; but after the people acquired power, equal, at least, if not superior to the senate, then “forces were kept up; the ambition of Cinna, the horrid tyranny of Sylla, the insolence of Marius, and the self ends of divers other leaders, both before and after them, filled all Italy with tragedies, and the world with wonder.” Is not this an argument for the power of kings and senates, rather than the uncontrollable power of the people, when it is confessed that the two first used it wisely, and the last perniciously? The truth is, as he said before, “the sword and sovereignty go together.” While the sovereignty was in the senate under kings, the militia obeyed the orders of the senate given out by the kings; while the sovereignty was in the senate, under the consuls, the militia obeyed the orders of the senate given out by consuls; but when the sovereignty was lost by the senate, and gained by the people, the militia was neglected, a standing army set up, and obeyed the orders of the popular idols.

“The people, seeing what misery they had brought on themselves by keeping their armies within the bowels of Italy, passed a law to prevent it, and to employ them abroad, or at a convenient distance. The law was, that if any general marched over the river of Rubicon, he should be declared a public enemy; and in the passage of that river this following inscription was erected, to put the men of arms in mind of their duty: ‘Imperator, sive miles, sive tyrannus armatus quisquis, sistito vexillum, armaque deponito, nec citra hunc amnem trajicito;’ general, or soldier, or tyrant in arms, whosoever thou be, stand, quit thy standard, and lay aside thy arms, or else cross not this river.”

But to what purpose was the law? Cæsar knew the people now to be sovereign, without control of the senate, and that he had the confidence both of them and his army, and cast the die, and “erected a prætorian band, instead of a public militia; and was followed in it by his successors, by the Grand Signor, by Cosmus, the first great duke of Tuscany, by the Muscovite, the Russian, the Tartar, by the French,” and, he might have added, by all Europe, “who by that means are all absolute, excepting England, because the late king Charles I., who attempted it, did not succeed;” and because our author’s “Right Constitution of a Commonwealth” did not succeed. If it had, Oliver Cromwell and his descendants would have been emperors of Old England, as the Cæsars were of Old Rome. The militia and sovereignty are inseparable. In the English constitution, if the whole nation were a militia, there would be a militia to defend the crown, the lords, or the commons, if either were attacked. The crown, though it commands them, has no power to use them improperly, because it cannot pay or subsist them without the consent of the lords and commons; but if the militia are to obey a sovereignty in a single assembly, it is commanded, paid, and subsisted, and a standing army, too, may be raised, paid, and subsisted, by the vote of a majority; the militia, then, must all obey the sovereign majority, or divide, and part follow the majority, and part the minority. This last case is civil war; but, until it comes to this, the whole militia may be employed by the majority in any degree of tyranny and oppression over the minority. The constitution furnishes no resource or remedy; nothing affords a chance of relief but rebellion and civil war. If this terminates in favor of the minority, they will tyrannize in their turn, exasperated by revenge, in addition to ambition and avarice; if the majority prevail, their domination becomes more cruel, and soon ends in one despot. It must be made a sacred maxim, that the militia obey the executive power, which represents the whole people in the execution of laws. To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defence, or by partial orders of towns, counties, or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed, and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws. This truth is acknowledged by our author, when he says: “The arms of the commonwealth should be lodged in the hands of that part of the people which are firm to its establishment.”

“Seventh Rule. Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. Aristotle speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, ‘that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live; forasmuch as it makes exceedingly for the preservation of the present government, whatsoever it be.’ ”

It is unnecessary to take pains to show that the “impression men receive in youth are retained in full age, though never so bad, unless they happen, which is very rare, to quell the corrupt principles of education by an excellent reason and sound judgment;” nor is it necessary to cite the testimonies “of Plutarch or Isocrates,” Plato or Solomon, or “Cæsar’s Commentaries,” nor the examples of “Greece or Gallia,” and her “Druids.” The example of the difficulty the Romans found to establish their aristocracy upon the ruins of monarchy, arising from the education of their youth (even the sons of Brutus) in different principles, and the obstructions experienced by the Cæsars in establishing despotism among a people educated under a commonwealth, are apposite enough. Education is more indispensable, and must be more general, under a free government than any other. In a monarchy, the few who are likely to govern must have some education, but the common people must be kept in ignorance; in an aristocracy, the nobles should be educated, but here it is even more necessary that the common people should be ignorant; but in a free government knowledge must be general, and ought to be universal. Yet such is the miserable blindness of mankind, that in our author’s “Right Constitution” it is very doubtful whether the pitiful motive of saving the expense would not wholly extinguish public education. If there were not a senate, but the people in one assembly ruled all, it is a serious question, whether there is one people upon earth so generally generous and intelligent, as to maintain schools and universities at the public expense. The greater number of every people are still ignorant; and although their leaders might artfully persuade them to a thousand idle expenses, they would not be able to persuade them to this. Education, then, must be supported by private munificence; and this source, although sufficient to maintain a few schools and a university in a great nation, can never be sufficient to maintain schools in sufficient numbers to educate a whole people. Where a senate is preserved, it is always a maxim with them to respect learning and educate their own families; their example is followed by all others, who are any way in easy circumstances. In a government of three branches, commoners as well as nobles are under a necessity of educating their children, because they hope to be called to public service, where it is necessary. In all the mixed governments of antiquity, education was necessary, and where the people had a share it was the most generally practised; but in a simple government it never was general. In Sparta it was far from being general; it was confined to youth of family; so it was under the aristocracy in Rome. And although we have no examples of simple democracy to recur to, we need only consider, that the majority must be ignorant and poor; and recollect the murmurs and opposition made by numbers of the lowest classes, who are often joined for sinister purposes by some men of consequence, to be convinced that a general public education never can long exist in a simple democracy; the stinginess, the envy, and malignity of the base and ignorant would be flattered by the artful and designing, and the education of every family left to its own expense, that the rich only might have their children educated.

“Eighth Rule. To use liberty with moderation, lest it turn to licentiousness; which, as it is a tyranny itself, so in the end it usually occasions the corruption and conversion of a free state into monarchical tyranny.”

This is a caution to the people, and can do no harm; but will do little more good, than “be ye warmed and be ye clothed,” will relieve the wants of the poor. Lectures and sermons and admonitions will never be sufficient to make all men virtuous; political, as well as moral writers and exhorters will spend their ink and breath, not in vain, it is to be hoped, but without completely reforming the world and restoring innocence and purity to all mankind. How then is the tyranny of licentiousness to be avoided? By the energy of laws. And where will be the energy of law, when a majority may set it aside upon every question? Will not the licentious rich man, who has perhaps greater influence in elections for his licentiousness, be protected from punishment by his party in the house? Will not the continual prostitution of judgment in the executive courts, to the views of a political party, increase and propagate licentiousness? Will not the daily prostitution of the executive power, by bestowing offices, not for virtue or abilities, but merely for party merit, daily increase licentiousness? Will not the appropriation of the public money to elections increase the means of debauchery among the vicious? Will not the minor party be necessitated to imitate the majority in these practices as much as possible, in order to keep themselves in any hopes? When their hopes are gone, they must join the other side in worshipping the same idols, who then become complete despots. In our author’s plan of government, then, his caution against licentiousness will be thrown away; but in a mixed government it will be extremely useful. The laws may be made to concur with sermons; and the scourge, the pillory, and the gallows may enforce the precepts of moral writers. The magistrate may be a terror to evil doers and a praise to them that do well, instead of being a terror only to the minority and a praise to those who oppress them. As cautions and admonitions, therefore, are undoubtedly useful in a government truly free, though idle and trifling in a simple democracy, let us proceed to consider those of our author.

His first caution under this eighth rule of policy is, “It is above all things necessary to avoid civil dissension;” and “the uttermost remedy is not to be used upon every distemper or default of those that shall be intrusted with the people’s power and authority.”

How charming it is for brothers to live in harmony! The smallest things increase by concord! How many beautiful sentiments, in heavenly numbers, from writers sacred and profane, might be said or sung in honor of peace, concord, harmony, and brotherly love! Repetitions of them from age to age have been made, no doubt, to the edification and comfort of many; but, alas! dissensions still exist and daily arise in every nation, city, village, and, I fear I may add, family, in the whole world. Something more efficacious, then, than moral song, ingenious fable, philosophic precept, or Christian ordinance, with reverence be it spoken, must be employed in society, or dissensions will still ravage and desolate the world.

In a simple democracy the citizens will not all think alike; various systems of policy will be approved by different persons; parties will be formed, even with the best intentions and from the purest motives; others will be formed from private views and from base motives. The majority must decide, and, to obtain this, the good will be obliged to unite with the bad, and probably there will be no circle or combination, no club or party in the house, but will be composed partly of disinterested men and partly of interested ones, partly by the virtuous and partly by the vicious; honest men and knaves, wise men and fools will be kneaded together in every mass. Out of the collisions of these, dissensions unavoidably grow, and, therefore, some provision must be made to decide them. An upright, independent tribunal, to judge of controversies, is indispensable; and an upright, independent, judiciary tribunal, in a simple democracy, is impossible. The judges cannot hold their commissions but durante bene placito of the majority; if a law is made that their commissions shall be quamdiu se bene gesserint, this may be repealed whenever the majority will, and, without repealing it, the majority only are to judge when the judges behave amiss, and, therefore, have them always at mercy. When disputes arise between the rich and poor, the higher and the lower classes, the majority in the house must decide them; there is no possibility, therefore, of having any fixed rule to settle disputes and compose contentions. But in a mixed government the judges cannot be displaced but by the concurrence of two branches, who are jealous of each other, and can agree in nothing but justice; the house must accuse and the senate condemn; this cannot be without a formal trial and a full defence. In the other, a judge may be removed or condemned to infamy without any defence or hearing or trial. This part of our author’s caution, then, is vain, useless, and idle, in his own form of government, but wise, just, and excellent, in a government properly mixed. Such cautions are provided by the constitution itself, that civil dissensions can scarcely ever arise; or, if they do, may be easily composed.

The other part of the caution, “that the uttermost remedy is not to be used upon every distemper or default of those that shall be intrusted with the people’s power and authority,” is, in a simple democracy, totally useless and impracticable. There is no other remedy but the uttermost for any distemper or default. The courts of justice, being tools of the majority, will give no remedy to any of the minority; petitions and remonstrances to the house itself, against its own proceedings, will be despised or resented; so that there can be absolutely no remedy but in arms or by the enormity of tumult, dissension, and sedition, which I suppose are meant by “the uttermost remedy.”

It is very true, as our author says, “if one inconvenience happen in government, the correction or curing of it by violence introduceth a thousand; and for a man to think civil war or the sword is a way to be ordinarily used for the recovery of a sick state, it were as great a madness as to give strong waters in a high fever; or as if he shall let himself blood in the heart to cure the aching of his head.” This is perfectly just, and expressed with great beauty, propriety, and force; yet it is certain, that a member of the minor party, in Nedham’s and Turgot’s government, has no chance for any other remedy; and even this is often as desperate as it is always dreadful, because the weaker must attack the stronger. If the only expedient to “confute the arguments” against such a collection of authority in one centre be, that such a people “give them the lie by a discreet and moderate behavior in all their proceedings, and a due reverence of such as they have once elected and made their superiors,” these arguments will never be confuted, and the cause of liberty is desperate; because it is as desperate to expect that a majority uncontrolled should behave always discreetly and moderately, as to expect that all men will be wise and good.

Our author’s criterion for determining the cases in which the people (in whom “all majesty and authority fundamentally resides, being only ministerially in their trustees or representatives) may use sharp and quick remedies for the cure of a commonwealth,” is very judicious, and has been the rule in all English revolutions since; “in such cases only as appear to be manifest intrenchments, either in design or in being, by men of power, upon the fundamentals or essentials of their liberty, without which liberty cannot consist.” This rule is common to him and Milton, and has been adopted by Sidney, Locke, Burnet, Hoadley; but this rule is useless in a simple democracy. The minority have no chance for justice in smaller cases, because every department is in the hands of their enemies; and when the tyranny arrives at this last extremity, they have no hope, for all the means, at least the most of the means, of quick and sharp remedies, are in the hands of their enemies too; so that the most desperate, irremediable, and forlorn condition of liberty, is in that very collection of all authority into one centre, that our author calls “a Right Constitution of a Commonwealth.”

The instance brought by our author to illustrate his meaning, proves the same thing. In that contention of three hundred years in Rome, between the senate and people, about the division of the conquered lands, the people made a law that no citizen should possess above five hundred acres of land. The senators cried it was an abridgment of liberty; the people cried it was inconsistent with liberty, that the senators should engross too much wealth and power. Livy says, “the people were right, and the senators wrong, but that both did ill in making it a ground of civil dissension;” for the Gracchi, instead of finding out moderate expedients to reduce the senators to reason, proceeded with such heat and violence, that the senate was forced to choose Sylla for their general; which being observed by the people, they also raised an army, and made Marius their general, and herein came to a civil war, “which, through fines, banishment, inhuman cruelties acted on both sides, defeats in the open field, and massacres within the city, cost the best blood and estates of the nobility and commons, and in the end, cost them their liberty, for out of the root of this sprang that civil war between Pompey and Cæsar.”

All this again, which is true and just, shows that our author had read the Roman history with discernment, and renders it more unaccountable that he should have perverted so much good sense and learning to support a fantastical image, that he must have seen could not endure. The example in question shows more than the impracticability of liberty in a simple democracy; it shows the imperfection of a mixture of two powers, a senate and people. In a simple democracy, whatever dispute arises, whether about a division of lands, or any thing else, must be decided by the majority; and if their decree is unjust, there is no remedy but to appoint Sylla and Marius generals. In the Roman mixture of two powers there is no remedy to decide the dispute, but to appoint Sylla and Marius, Pompey and Cæsar; but when there are three branches, after two have offered all possible arguments, and cannot agree, the third has only to consider which is nearest justice, and join with that, to decide the controversy and restore the peace. It shall readily be granted, that the civil war between Marius and Sylla was needless, and about an object which did not immediately affect the fundamentals of the constitution; yet indirectly it did; and the fact is, that the struggle now began to be serious which should be master. It was no longer a question, whether the senate should be restrained, but whether the people should be masters. The army under Pompey was necessary. Why? To prevent the people from being masters, and to defend the existence of the senate. The people indeed were already masters, and would have an idol. The instance of Charles I. may be equally applicable; but those times afford as melancholy an example of a dominatio plebis, as they do a successful one of resistance to a tyrant. But if any one thinks these examples and cautions, without a balance in the constitution, will instruct people how to demean themselves, and avoid licentiousness, tumult, and civil dissension, and in all the “necessary points of prudence and forbearance which ought to take place in respect of superiors, till it shall evidently appear unto a people, that there is a design on foot to surprise and seize their liberties,” he will be miserably mistaken. In a simple democracy they will rise in arms, a thousand times, about common affairs of meum and tuum, between the major and minor party, before any fundamental attack shall be made on the constitution.

“Second Caution. That in all elections of magistrates, they have an especial eye upon the public, in making choice of such persons only as have appeared most eminent and active in the establishment and love of freedom.”

But suppose any of the people should love their friends better than liberty, and themselves better than the public, as nine tenths of the people did in the purest moments of Grecian and Roman liberty, even when Aristides appeared as a rare phenomenon in one, and Cincinnatus in the other? In such case they will vote for their friends, though royalists, papists, malignants, or call them by what name you will. In our author’s “Right Constitution” many will vote for a treat, many for a job, some for exemption from punishment for a crime, some for a monopoly, and some for the promise of an office. This will not be virtuous, but how can you help that?

“In the hands of those,” says our author, “who have appeared most eminent and active in the establishment of freedom, may be safely placed the guardianship of liberty; because such men have made the public interest and their own all one, and therefore will neither betray nor desert it in prosperity or adversity.”

This was modestly bespeaking unlimited confidence for Oliver Cromwell and his associates; and such blind, rash confidence has surrendered the liberties of all nations; but it is not the language nor the maxim of liberty; her universal precept should be, trust not to human nature, without a control, the conduct of my cause.

To lay it down “as a certain rule, that if any person be admitted into power that loves not the commonwealth above all other considerations, such a man is (as we say) every man’s money; any state-merchant may have him for a factor; and for good consideration he will often make returns upon the public interest, have a stock going in every party, and with men of every opinion; and, if occasion serve, truck with the common enemy and commonwealth, both together,” is perhaps to rely upon a patriotism that never existed in any whole nation. It is to be feared the commonwealth would suffer in most countries; but admitting so exalted an opinion of the patriotism of any given country, it will still remain true, that there will be differences of sentiment concerning the good of the commonwealth; and the parties formed by these divisions, if uncontrolled, will have all the ill consequences that have been pointed out. The more sincerely parties love the republic, with so much the more ardor will they pursue their own notions of its good. Aristotle’s opinion, in the first book of his Politics, “Per negligentiam mutatur status reipublicæ, cum ad potestates assumuntur illi qui presentem statum non amant; the form of a commonwealth is then altered by negligence, when those men are taken into power who do not love the present establishment,” may be well founded; and yet it may not follow that it is safe to trust omnipotence to those who are well affected, nay, even to those who really love the commonwealth above all other things, and prefer her good to their own, since that character may change, and those virtues, too, may not be accompanied with so many motives and so many advantages of information, in what the good of the public consists, as may be had in a division and mixture of powers.

It is a good rule “to avoid those who hate the commonwealth, and those who are neutral and indifferent about it;” and no doubt “most of the broils, tumults, and civil dissensions, in free states, have been occasioned by the ambitious, treacherous, and indirect practices of such persons admitted into power, as have not been firm in their hearts to the interests of liberty.” But how shall the people know whose heart will stand the trial, when so many people have been disappointed before them? Rome is again quoted as an example; and the senate are said to have garbled, perplexed, and turmoiled the people’s affairs, concernments, and understandings; but although this is true, it is equally so that the people perplexed their own affairs, and those of the senate too.

The reader, who has pardoned already so many digressions, will easily excuse another in this place. The words virtue and patriotism might have been enumerated among those of various and uncertain signification. Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws is a very useful collection of materials; but is it too irreverent to say that it is an unfinished work?* He defines a republican government to be “that in which the body, or only a part of the people, is possessed of the supreme power.”* This agrees with Johnson’s definition, “a state in which the government is more than one.” “When the body of the people,” says Montesquieu,† “in a republic, are possessed of the supreme power, this is called a democracy; when the supreme power is lodged in the hands of a part of the people, it is then an aristocracy.” And again,‡ “it is the nature of a republican government, that either the collective body of the people, or particular families, should be possessed of the sovereign power.” “In a popular state, virtue is the necessary spring of government. As virtue is necessary in a popular government, so it is necessary also under an aristocracy. True it is, that in the latter it is not so absolutely requisite.”§

Does this writer mean that honor and fear, the former of which he calls the principle of monarchy, and the latter of despotism, cannot exist in a republic? or that they are not necessary? Fear, surely, is necessary in a republican government; there can be no government without hopes and fears. Fear then, in truth, is at least one principle in every kind of government, in the simplest democracy as well as the simplest despotism. This arrangement, so exact and systematical in appearance, and which has been celebrated as a discovery of the principles of all government, is by no means satisfactory, since virtue and honor cannot be excluded from despotisms, nor fear nor virtue from monarchies, nor fear nor honor from republics; but at least it is apparent that in a republic, constituted as we propose, the three principles of fear, honor, and virtue, unite and produce more union among the citizens, and give greater energy to the laws.

But not to enlarge on this, let us proceed to the inquiry, what is virtue? It is not that classical virtue which we see personified in the choice of Hercules, and which the ancient philosophers summed up in four words,—prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. It is not Christian virtue, so much more sublime, which is summarily comprehended in universal benevolence. What is it then? According to Montesquieu,∥ it should seem to be merely a negative quality; the absence only of ambition and avarice; and he thinks that what he thus advances is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of historians. But is this matter well considered? Look over the history of any republic, and can you find a period in it, in which ambition and avarice do not appear in very strong characters, and in which ambitious men were not the most popular? In Athens, Pisistratus and his successors were more popular, as well as ambitious, than Solon, Themistocles than Aristides, &c. In Rome, under the kings, the eternal plots of the nobles against the lives of the kings, to usurp their thrones, are proofs of an ardent and unbridled ambition. Nay, if we attentively examine the most virtuous characters, we shall find unequivocal marks of an ardent ambition. The elder Brutus, Camillus, Regulus, Curius, Æmilius, Cato, all discover an ambition, a thirst of glory, as strong as that of Cæsar; an honorable ambition, an ambition governed by justice, if you will; but an ambition still. But there is not a period in Athenian or Roman annals, when great characters did not appear actuated by ambition of another kind; an unjust and dishonorable ambition; such as Pisistratus, Themistocles, Appius Claudius, &c.; and these characters were always more popular than the others, and were supported chiefly by plebeians, not senates and patricians. If the absence of avarice is necessary to republican virtue, can you find any age or country in which republican virtue has existed? That single characters, or a few among the patricians, have existed, who were exempt from avarice, has been already admitted; but that a moment ever existed, in any country, where property was enjoyed, when the body of the people were universally or even generally exempted from avarice, is not easy to prove. Every page of the history of Rome appears equally marked with ambition and avarice; and the only difference appears in the means and objects. In some periods the nation was extremely poor, in others immensely rich: but the passions existed in all; and the Roman soldiers and common people were forever quarrelling with their most virtuous generals, for refusing to indulge their avarice, by distributing the spoils among them, and for loving the public too well, by putting the booty into the public treasury.

Shall we say then that republican virtue is nothing but simple poverty; and that poverty alone can support such a government? But Montesquieu tells us,* virtue in a republic, is a love of the republic; virtue in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; and why might he not have said, that virtue in a monarchy is a love of the monarchy; in a despotism, of the despot; in a mixed government, of the mixture? Men in general love their country and its government. Can it be proved that Athenians loved Athens, or Romans, Rome, more than Frenchmen love France, or Englishmen their island?

There are two principal causes of discrimination; the first is, the greatness or smallness of the state. A citizen of a small republic, who knows every man and every house in it, appears generally to have the strongest attachment to it, because nothing can happen in it that does not interest and affect his feelings; but in a great nation, like France or England, a man is, as it were, lost in the crowd; there are very few persons that he knows, and few events that will much affect him; yet you will find him as much attached to his circle of friends and knowledge as the inhabitant of the small state. The second is, the goodness or badness of the constitution, the climate, soil, &c. Other things being equal, that constitution, whose blessings are the most felt, will be most beloved; and accordingly we find, that governments the best ordered and balanced have been most beloved, as Sparta, Athens, Carthage, Rome, and England, and we might add Holland, for there has been, in practice and effect, a balance of three powers in that country, though not sufficiently defined by law. Moral and Christian, and political virtue, cannot be too much beloved, practised, or rewarded; but to place liberty on that foundation only would not be safe; but it may be well questioned, whether love of the body politic is precisely moral or Christian virtue, which requires justice and benevolence to enemies as well as friends, and to other nations as well as our own. It is not true, in fact, that any people ever existed who loved the public better than themselves, their private friends, neighbors, &c., and therefore this kind of virtue, this sort of love, is as precarious a foundation for liberty as honor or fear; it is the laws alone that really love the country, the public, the whole better than any part; and that form of government which unites all the virtue, honor, and fear of the citizens, in a reverence and obedience to the laws, is the only one in which liberty can be secure, and all orders, and ranks, and parties, compelled to prefer the public good before their own; that is the government for which we plead.

The first magistrate may love himself, and family, and friends better than the public, but the laws, supported by the senate, commons, and judges, will not permit him to indulge it; the senate may love themselves, their families, and friends, more than the public, but the first magistrate, commons, and judges, uniting in support of public law, will defeat their projects; the common people, or their representatives, may love themselves and partial connections better than the whole, but the first magistrate, senate, and judges, can support the laws against their enterprises; the judges may be partial to men or factions, but the three branches of the legislature, united to the executive, will easily bring them back to their duty. In this way, and in no other, can our author’s rule be always observed, “to avoid all who hate the commonwealth, and those who are neutral and indifferent about it.”

Montesquieu adds,* “a love of democracy is that of equality.” But what passion is this? Every man hates to have a superior, but no man is willing to have an equal; every man desires to be superior to all others. If the meaning is, that every citizen loves to have every other brought down to a level with himself, this is so far true, but is not the whole truth. When every man is brought down to his level, he wishes them depressed below him; and no man will ever acknowledge himself to be upon a level or equality with others, till they are brought down lower than him.

Montesquieu subjoins, “a love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality.” This is another passion not easily to be found in human nature. A passion for frugality, perhaps, never existed in a nation, if it ever did in an individual. It is a virtue; but reason and reflection prove the necessity and utility of this virtue; and, after all, it is admired and esteemed more than beloved. But to prove that nations, as bodies, are never actuated by any such passion for frugality, it is sufficient to observe that no nation ever practised it but from necessity. Poor nations only are frugal, rich ones always profuse; excepting only some few instances, when the passion of avarice has been artfully cultivated, and has become the habitual national character; but the passion of avarice is not a love of frugality

Is there, or is there not, any solid foundation for these doubts? Must we bow with reverence to this great master of laws, or may we venture to suspect that these doctrines of his are spun from his imagination? Before he delivered so many grave lessons upon democracies, he would have done well to have shown when or where such a government existed. Until some one shall attempt this, one may venture to suspect his love of equality, love of frugality, and love of the democracy, to be fantastical passions, feigned for the regulation and animation of a government that never had a more solid existence than the flying island of Lagado.

Suppose we should venture to advance the following propositions, for further examination and reflection:—

1. No democracy ever did or can exist.

2. If, however, it were admitted, for argument sake, that a democracy ever did or can exist, no such passion as a love of democracy, stronger than self-love, or superior to the love of private interest, ever did, or ever can prevail in the minds of the citizens in general, or of a majority of them, or in any party or individual of them.

3. That if the citizens, or a majority of them, or any party or individual of them, in action and practice, preferred the public to their private interest, as many undoubtedly would, it would not be from any such passion as love of the democracy, but from reason, conscience, a regard to justice, and a sense of duty and moral obligation; or else from a desire of fame, and the applause, gratitude, and rewards of the public.

4. That no love of equality, at least since Adam’s fall, ever existed in human nature, any otherwise than as a desire of bringing others down to our own level, which implies a desire of raising ourselves above them, or depressing them below us. That the real friends of equality are such from reflection, judgment, and a sense of duty, not from any passion, natural or artificial.

5. That no love of frugality ever existed as a passion; but always as a virtue, approved by deep and long reflection, as useful to individuals as well as the democracy.

6. That, therefore, the democracy of Montesquieu, and its principle of virtue, equality, frugality, &c., according to his definitions of them, are all mere figments of the brain, and delusive imaginations.

7. That his passion of love of the democracy would be, in the members of the majority, only a love of the majority; in those of the minority, only a love of the minority.

8. That his love of equality would not even be pretended towards the members of the minority; but the semblance of it would only be kept up among the members of the majority.

9. That the distinction between nature and philosophy is not enough attended to; that nations are actuated by their passions and prejudices; that very few in any nation, are enlightened by philosophy or religion enough to be at all times convinced that it is a duty to prefer the public to a private interest, and fewer still are moral, honorable, or religious enough to practise such self-denial.

10. Is not every one of these propositions proved beyond dispute, by all the histories in this and the preceding volumes, by all the other histories of the world, and by universal experience?

11. That, in reality, the word democracy signifies nothing more nor less than a nation of people without any government at all, and before any constitution is instituted.

12. That every attentive reader may perceive, that the notions of Montesquieu, concerning a democracy, are imaginations of his own, derived from the contemplation of the reveries of Xenophan and Plato, concerning equality of goods, and community of wives and children, in their delirious ideas of a perfect commonwealth.

13. That such reveries may well be called delirious, since, besides all the other arguments against them, they would not extinguish the family spirit, or produce the equality proposed; because, in such a state of things, one man would have twenty wives, while another would have none, and one woman twenty lovers, while others would languish in obscurity, solitude, and celibacy.

Third Caution. A third caution is, “that in all their elections of any into the supreme court, or councils, they be not led by any bent of faction, alliance, or affection, and that none be taken in but purely upon the account of merit.”

This is the rule of virtue, wisdom, and justice; and if all the people were wise and just they would follow it; but how shall we make them so, when the law of God, in nature and in revelation, has not yet effected it? Harrington thinks, that advising men to be mannerly at the public table, will not prevent some from carving for themselves the best parts, and more than their shares. Putting “men in authority who have a clear reputation of transcendent honesty and wisdom, tends,” no doubt, “to silence gainsayers, and draw the consent and approbation of all the world;” but how shall we prevent some from getting in, who are transcendent only in craft, hypocrisy, knavery, or folly? The best way that can be conceived of surely is, to separate the executive power from the legislative; make it responsible to one part of the legislature, on the impeachment of another, for the use of its power of appointment to offices, and to appoint two assemblies in the legislature, that the errors of one may be corrected by the other.

“Fourth Caution. To avoid false charges, accusations, and calumniations against persons in authority, which are the greatest abuses and blemishes of liberty, and have been the most frequent causes of tumult and dissension;” though “it is the secret of liberty, that all magistrates and public officers be kept in an accountable state, liable to render an account of their behavior and actions, and that the people have freedom to accuse whom they please.”

Difficult as it is to reconcile these necessary rules in a free government, where an independent grand jury protects the reputation of the innocent, and where a senate judges of the accusations of the commons, how can it be done in a simple democracy, where a powerful majority, in a torrent of popularity, influences the appointment of grand and petit juries, as well as the opinion of the judges, and where a triumphant party in the legislature is both accuser and judge? Is there not danger that an accuser belonging to the minor party will be punished for calumniation, though his complaint is just; and that an accused of the minor party will be found guilty, though innocent; and an accused of the major party acquitted, though guilty? It is ridiculous to hope that magistrates and public officers will be really responsible in such a government, or that calumniations will be discountenanced except on one side of the house. The ostracisms and petalisms of antiquity, however well intended against suspected men, were soon perverted by party, and turned against the best men and the least suspicious; and in the same manner it is obvious, that responsibility and calumniation in a simple democracy will be mere instruments in the hands of the majority, to be employed against the best men of an opposite party, and to screen the worst in their own. The Romans, by their caution to retain in full force and virtue that decree of the senate, called Turpilianum, whereby a severe fine was set on the heads of all calumniators and false accusers, at the same time that they retained the freedom of keeping all persons accountable, and accusing whom they pleased, although they preserved their state a long time from usurpation of men in power on one side, and from popular clamor and tumult on the other side, we must remember, had a senate to check the people, as well as to be checked by them; and yet even this mixture did not prevent the Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, and Cæsar, from usurping, nor the people from being tumultuous, as soon as they obtained even an equality with the senate; so that their example cannot convince us that either of these rules can be observed in a simple democracy; on the contrary, it is a proof that the more perfect the balance of power, the more exactly both these necessary rules may be observed.

“Fifth Caution. A fifth caution is, that as, by all means, they should beware of ingratitude and unhandsome returns to such as have done eminent services for the commonwealth; so it concerns them, for the public peace and security, not to impose a trust in the hands of any person or persons, further than as they may take it back again at pleasure. The reason is, honores mutant mores. Accessions and continuations of power expose the mind to temptations; they are sails too big for any bulk of mortality to steer an even course by.”

How is this consistent with what is said under the head of the second caution? “In the hands of such as have appeared most eminent and active in the establishment and love of liberty, the guardianship of liberty may be safely placed; because such men have made the public interest and their own, all one, and therefore will never betray nor desert it, in prosperity or adversity.”

In short, our author inculcates a confidence and diffidence, at the same time, that seem irreconcilable. Under this head he is diffident.

“The kingdoms of the world are baits that seldom fail; none but He that was more than man could have refused them. How many free states, by trusting their own servants too far, have been forced to receive them for their masters! Immoderate power lets in high thoughts. The spirit of ambition is a spirit of giddiness; it foxes men, makes them drunk, mere sots, non compos mentis, hurried on without fear or wit. All temptations and opportunities of ambition must be removed, or there will arise a necessity of tumult and civil dissension; the common consequence whereof hath ever been a ruin of the public freedom.”

How is it possible for a man who thinks in this manner to propose his “Right Constitution,” where the whole authority being in one representative assembly, the utmost latitude, temptation, and opportunity are given to private ambition! What has a rich and ambitious man to do, but stand candidate for an election in a town where he has many relations, much property, numerous dependents? There can be no difficulty in getting chosen. When once in, he has a vote in the disposal of every office, the appointment of every judge, and the distribution of all the public money. May not he and others join together to vote for such as will vote for them? A man once in, has twice as much power to get in again at the next election, and every day adds accessions, accumulations, and continuations of power to him.

“Cæsar, who first took arms upon the public score, and became the people’s leader, letting in ambitious thoughts, soon shook hands with his first friends and principles, and became another man, and turned his arms on the public liberty.”

And has not every nation, and city, and assembly many Cæsars in it? When private men look to the people for public offices and commands, that is, when the people claim the executive power, they will at first be courted, then deceived, and then betrayed. “Thus did Sylla serve the senate, and Marius the people;” thus every simple government is served. But where the executive appoints, and the legislative pay, it is otherwise; where one branch of a legislative can accuse, and another condemn, where both branches of the legislature can accuse before the executive, private commanders must always have a care; they may be disarmed in an instant. Pisistratus, Agathocles, Cosmo, Soderini, Savonarola, Castruccio, and Orange, all quoted by our author, are all examples in point, to show that simple democracies and unbalanced mixtures can never take a trust back again, when once committed to an ambitious commander. That this caution, therefore, may be observed, and trust taken back at pleasure, when ill managed, or in danger of being so, no government is equal to the tripartite composition.

Ninth Rule. The ninth rule is, “that it be made an unpardonable crime to incur the guilt of treason against the interest and majesty of the people.”

It was treason in Brutus’s sons to conspire the restoration of Tarquin. So their father judged it; but it was the interest and majesty of the senate, here, that was held to be the interest and majesty of the people. The treason of Mælius and Manlius, too, was against the majesty of the senate, and in favor of the majesty of the people. The treason of the Decemviri, too, was against the senate, and so was that of Cæsar. In Venice, too, it is treason to think of conspiring with the people against the aristocracy, as much as it was in Rome. It is treason to betray secrets both in Venice and in Rome; the guilty were hanged upon a gibbet, or burnt alive.

No doubt a simple democracy would make it treason to introduce an aristocracy or a monarchy; but how could they punish it, when the man who commits it has the army, the judges, the bishops, and a majority of the assembly and people, too, at his devotion? How can secrecy in a simple democracy be kept, where the numbers are so great, and where constituents can call to account? or how can it be punished when betrayed, when so many will betray it; when a member of the majority betrays it, to serve the cause of the majority? “It is treason in Venice for a senator to receive gifts or pensions from a foreign prince or state.” But as, according to the heathen proverb, “the gods themselves may be taken with gifts,” how can you prevent them from being taken by the majority in a simple democracy? Thuanus, who says, “the King of France needs not use much labor to purchase an interest with any prince or state in Italy, unless it be the Venetian republic, where all foreign pensioners and compliances are punished with utmost severity, but escape well enough in other places,” might have added, that no difficulty would ever be found to purchase an interest in a simple democracy, or in any other simple, uncontrolled assembly. In a simple democracy, no great sum would would be required to purchase elections for proper instruments, or to purchase the suffrages of some already in their seats. A party pardons many crimes, as well as lesser faults. “It is treason for any Venetian senator to have any private conference with foreign ambassadors and agents; and one article of the charge, which took off Barnevelt’s head, was, for that he held familiarity and converse with the Spanish ambassador in time of war.” Although receiving bribes from foreign ambassadors ought to be punished with the utmost severity, and all uncommon familiarity with them avoided, as suspicious and dishonorable, such extremes as these of Venice and of Holland, in the case of Barnevelt, may as well be avoided. But in a simple democracy it will be found next to impossible to prevent foreign powers from making a party, and purchasing an interest. An ambassador will have a right to treat with all the members, as parts of the sovereignty, and therefore may have access to those who are least on their guard and most easily corrupted. But in a mixed government, where the executive is by itself, the ministers only can be purchased, who, being few, are more easily watched and punished; besides, that it is the executive power only that is managed by ministers; and this often cannot be completed but by concurrence of the legislature. The difficulties of corrupting such a government, therefore, are much greater, as both the legislative, executive, and judicial power must be all infected, or there will be danger of detection and punishment.

CHAPTER FOURTH.

CONCLUSION.

It should have been before observed, that the Western Empire fell in the fifth century, and the Eastern in the fifteenth.

Augustulus was compelled by Odoacer, King of the Heruli, in 475, to abdicate the Western Empire, and was the last Roman who possessed the imperial dignity at Rome. The dominion of Italy fell, soon afterwards, into the hands of Theodoric the Goth. The Eastern Empire lasted many centuries afterwards, till it was annihilated by Mahomet the Great, and Constantinople was taken in the year 1453. The interval between the fall of these two empires, making a period of about a thousand years, is called The Middle Age.* During this term, republics without number arose in Italy; whirled upon their axles or single centres; foamed, raged, and burst, like so many waterspouts upon the ocean. They were all alike ill constituted; all alike miserable; and all ended in similar disgrace and despotism. It would be curious to pursue our subject through all of them whose records have survived the ravages of Goths, Saracens, and bigoted Christians; through those other republics of Castile, Arragon, Catalonia, Galicia, and all the others in Spain; through those in Portugal; through the several provinces that now compose the kingdom of France; through those in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, &c. But, if such a work should be sufficiently encouraged by the public, (which is not probable, for mankind, in general, dare not as yet read or think upon Constitutions,) it is too extensive for my forces, and ought not to be done in so much haste. The preceding has been produced upon the spur of a particular occasion, which made it necessary to write and publish with precipitation, or it might have been useless to have published at all. The whole has been done in the midst of other occupations, in so much hurry, that scarce a moment could be spared to correct the style, adjust the method, pare off excrescences, or even obliterate repetitions, in all which respects it stands in need of an apology. The investigation may be pursued to any length.

All nations, from the beginning, have been agitated by the same passions. The principles developed here will go a great way in explaining every phenomenon that occurs in the history of government. The vegetable and animal kingdoms, and those heavenly bodies whose existence and movements we are as yet only permitted faintly to perceive, do not appear to be governed by laws more uniform or certain than those which regulate the moral and political world. Nations move by unalterable rules; and education, discipline, and laws, make the greatest difference in their accomplishments, happiness, and perfection. It is the master artist alone who finishes his building, his picture, or his clock. The present actors on the stage have been too little prepared by their early views, and too much occupied with turbulent scenes, to do more than they have done. Impartial justice will confess that it is astonishing they have been able to do so much. It is for the young to make themselves masters of what their predecessors have been able to comprehend and accomplish but imperfectly.

A prospect into futurity in America, is like contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschell. Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters, and fill us with amazement! When we recollect that the wisdom or the folly, the virtue or the vice, the liberty or servitude, of those millions now beheld by us, only as Columbus saw these times in vision,* are certainly to be influenced, perhaps decided, by the manners, examples, principles, and political institutions of the present generation, that mind must be hardened into stone that is not melted into reverence and awe. With such affecting scenes before his eyes, is there, can there be, a young American indolent and incurious; surrendered up to dissipation and frivolity; vain of imitating the loosest manners of countries, which can never be made much better or much worse? A profligate American youth must be profligate indeed, and richly merits the scorn of all mankind.

The world has been too long abused with notions, that climate and soil decide the characters and political institutions of nations. The laws of Solon and the despotism of Mahomet have, at different times, prevailed at Athens; consuls, emperors, and pontiffs have ruled at Rome. Can there be desired a stronger proof, that policy and education are able to triumph over every disadvantage of climate? Mankind have been still more injured by insinuations, that a certain celestial virtue, more than human, has been necessary to preserve liberty. Happiness, whether in despotism or democracy, whether in slavery or liberty, can never be found without virtue. The best republics will be virtuous, and have been so; but we may hazard a conjecture, that the virtues have been the effect of the well ordered constitution, rather than the cause. And, perhaps, it would be impossible to prove that a republic cannot exist even among highwaymen, by setting one rogue to watch another; and the knaves themselves may in time be made honest men by the struggle.

It is now in our power to bring this work to a conclusion with unexpected dignity. In the course of the last summer, two authorities have appeared, greater than any that have been before quoted, in which the principles we have attempted to defend have been acknowledged.

The first is, an Ordinance of Congress, of the thirteenth of July, 1787, for the Government of the Territory of the United States, Northwest of the River Ohio.

The second is, the Report of the Convention at Philadelphia, of the seventeenth of September, 1787.

The former confederation of the United States was formed upon the model and example of all the confederacies, ancient and modern, in which the federal council was only a diplomatic body. Even the Lycian, which is thought to have been the best, was no more. The magnitude of territory, the population, the wealth and commerce, and especially the rapid growth of the United States, have shown such a government to be inadequate to their wants; and the new system, which seems admirably calculated to unite their interests and affections, and bring them to an uniformity of principles and sentiments, is equally well combined to unite their wills and forces as a single nation. A result of accommodation cannot be supposed to reach the ideas of perfection of any one; but the conception of such an idea, and the deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a plan, is, without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen. That it may be improved is not to be doubted, and provision is made for that purpose in the report itself. A people who could conceive, and can adopt it, we need not fear will be able to amend it, when, by experience, its inconveniences and imperfections shall be seen and felt.1

[1 ]This work was reprinted in London, in 1767, under the direction of Thomas Hollis, in a thin octavo, containing one hundred and seventy-six pages. The copy found in the author’s library bears the following inscription:—

“Mr. Brand Hollis requests the favor of his friend, Mr. Adams, to accept benevolently this book, to be deposited among his republican tracts, which, after the pomp and pageantry of monarchy, ‘the trappings of which would maintain a moderate republic,’ will relish well.

“Chesterfield Street, 19 January, 1787.” It is not improbable that it was the presentation of the work at this time that occasioned the elaborate review of it, which constitutes the most vigorous part of the present work.

[* ]See the political pamphlets of that day, written on the side of monarchy.

[* ]Read the Harangue, vol. ii. p. 67. In this work vol. v. p. 55.

[* ]Dio. Cass. lib. xxxvii. c. 54, 55. Plutarch in Pomp. Cæsar, and Crassus.

[* ]Plutarch.

[1 ]Niebuhr dismisses the whole story of Cincinnatus found at his plough, as a fable.

[* ]Plebis concursus ingens fuit; sed ea nequaquam tam læta Quinctium vidit, et imperii nimium, et virum in ipso imperio vehementiorem rata. Liv. lib. iii. c. 26.

[† ]Summo patrum studio, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, pater Cæsonis, consul creatur, qui magistratum statim occiperet. Perculsa erat plebs, consulem habitura iratum, potentem favore Patrum, virtute suâ, tribus liberis, &c.

[* ]Val. Max. iv. 5. Cic. De Senec. 16. Senec. Epist. v. Cic. pro Plancio, 25. Plin. Nat. xviii. 4.

[1 ]There is great difficulty in understanding the position of Curius, from the absence of all accounts of the period. Niebuhr considers his unpopularity with the senators to grow out of his advocacy of a further assignment of lands to the people, which formed one of the principal subjects of party divisions in early Roman times. In that case the preference of Rufinus is not surprising.

[* ]Quid se jam senem, ac perfunctum laboribus laborumque præmiis, sollicitarent? Nec corporis, nec animi vigorem remanere eundem; et fortunam ipsam vereri, ne cui deorum nimia jam in se, et constantior, quam velint humanæ res, videatur. Et se gloriæ seniorum succrevisse, et ad gloriam suam consurgentes alios lætum adspicere. Nec honores magnos viris fortissimis Romæ, nec honoribus deesse fortes viros. Liv.

[† ]Jam regi leges, non regere.

[* ]Excellentibus ingeniis citius defuerit ars quâ civem regant, quam quâ hostem superent. Liv. ii. 43.

[1 ]“A third reason why the people, in their supreme assemblies successively chosen, are the best keepers of their liberty is, because, as motion in bodies natural, so succession in civil, is the grand preventive of corruption.” Nedham, p. 4.

[* ]“Who is this man? without nobility, without honors, without merit, to open for him a way to the monarchy! Claudius, indeed, and Cassius, had their souls elevated to ambition by their consulships and decemvirates, by the honors of their ancestors, and the splendor of their families.” Is there an old maiden aunt Eleanor, of seventy years of age, in any family, whose brain is more replete with the haughty ideas of blood, than that of the magnanimous Cincinnatus appears in this speech? Riches are held in vast contempt! The equestrian order is no honor nor nobility; that, too, is held in sovereign disdain! Beneficence and charity, in a most exalted degree, at a time when his brother aristocrats were griping the people to death by the most cruel severities, and the most sordid and avaricious usury, were no merit in Mælius; but consulships, decemvirates, honors, and the splendor of family, have his most profound admiration and veneration! Every circumstance of this appears in this speech; and such was the real character of the man. And whoever celebrates or commemorates Cincinnatus as a patron of liberty, either knows not his character, or understands not the nature of liberty.

This judgment passed upon Cincinnatus is entirely confirmed by Niebuhr, as follows:—

“It is obvious that Cincinnatus has undeservedly been deified by posterity. In the time of the decemvirs and tyrants, he did nothing; and twenty years after this occurrence, he acted completely in the interest of a faction, and shed the innocent blood of Mælius.” Lectures on the History of Rome, edited by Dr. L. Schmitz, vol. i. p. 157.

[† ]Livii Hist. lib. iv. cc. 13-16.

“It is a melancholy reflection, that a man like Cincinnatus, a hoary veteran, now at the goal of a virtuous and illustrious life, should have lent himself, as is probable, to the commission of a murder, in the service of a faction; yet such we must deem to have been his conduct. Nowhere have characters been more cruel; nowhere has the voice of conscience against the views of faction been so defied, and yet, consistently with great virtues, as in aristocratic republics; and not those of antiquity only. Men, otherwise of spotless conduct, have frequently shed the purest and noblest blood, influenced by fanaticism, and often without any resentment, in the service of party. The seditious demagogue was often less sanguinary; but usually, if he murdered, he was less purely a fanatic than the former; because he acted more for his own, and less for the interests of his order. Yet the former were only the nobler beasts of prey.”

Niebuhr, Roman History, translated by F. A. Walter, vol. ii. p. 192.

[1 ]This seems to be a mistake, as the title was not original with him in his family.

[2 ]This view of the career and fate of Manlius is much more clearly and strongly taken than that in the first volume. (See volume iv. p. 533.) It is very much the same with that since adopted by Niebuhr. Lectures, edited by Dr. Schmitz, vol. i. p. 280.

[* ]Liv. Hist. l. ii. c. 41.

[1 ]Niebuhr has thrown great light upon the subject of the agrarian laws since this was written; but his views, instead of weakening, very much corroborate the argument of the text.

[1 ]“Cassius was a very important man; otherwise he would not have been thrice consul, which for those times was something unheard of. With the exception of P. Valerius Poplicola, no one had been so often invested with the consulship. The manner in which Cassius concluded his treaties affords proof of a great soul; it is, therefore, very possible that he had the purest intentions of wisdom and justice. A great man, unquestionably, he was, whether he was guilty or not guilty, and the faction which condemned him was detestable.” Niebuhr, Lectures, edited by Dr. Schmitz, vol. i. p. 159.

[* ]Quod æquabile inter omnes, atque unum omnibus esse potest. Cic. pro Cœcin. cap. 25.

[† ]Hoc vinculum est hujus dignitatis, quâ fruimur in republicâ, hoc fundamentum libertatis, hic fons æquitatis. Mens, et animus, et consilium, et sententia civitatis, posita est in legibus. Ut corpora nostra sine mente; sic civitas sine lege, suis partibus, ut nervis ac sanguine et membris, uti non potest. Legum ministri, magistratus; legum interpretes, judices; legum denique idcirco omnes servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus. Cic. pro Cluent. 146.

[‡ ]Lex nihil aliud est, nisi recta et a numine Deorum tracta ratio, imperans honesta, prohibens contraria. Cic. xi. in Anton. 28. Illa Divina mens summa lex est. De Leg. ii. 5. Magistratum legem esse loquentem; legem autem mutum magistratum. De Leg. iii. 1.

[* ]See vol. ii. p. 94. (Of this work, vol. v. p. 74.)

[* ]See vol. ii. pp. 96-99. (Of this work, vol. v. pp. 77-79.)

[* ]Sallust. in Frag.

[* ]When the city of Athens was rebuilt, the people, finding themselves in a state of tranquillity, endeavored by every means to get the whole government into their own hands. Aristides, perceiving that it would be no easy matter to restrain a people with arms in their hands, and grown insolent with victory, studied methods to appease them. He passed a decree, that the government should be common to all the citizens; and that the archons, who were the chief magistrates, and used to be chosen only out of those who received at least five hundred medimni of grain from the product of their lands, should for the future be elected from among all the Athenians, without distinction. Plut. Arist.

[* ]Hume’s Essays, vol. i. p. 98.

[* ]El Justicia de Arragon.

[* ]Nos que valemos tanto como vos os hazemos nuestro rey y segnor con tal que guardeis nuestros fueros y libertades, si no, no.

[† ]Los ricos hombres.

[* ]Letters, 13-16.

[1 ]The personal history of Nedham sufficiently proves that his work was written for no other reason. He was one of that numerous class of writers, bred in the contests of all free countries, who are ever ready to defend the strongest side for pay.

[1 ]M. de Marbois. See the anecdote in the Diary, vol. iii. p. 222.

[* ]État de la France. Lettres sur les anciens Parlemens de France.

[† ]Observations sur l’Histoire de France.

[‡ ]Discours sur l’Histoire de France.

[* ]Upon this head a judgment may be formed, by consulting Geddes’s History of the Wars of the Commons of Castile, and his View of a Cortes assembled at Toledo, in 1406. Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i.

[* ]C’est le portefeuille d’un homme d’esprit, qui a été jeté par la fenêtre et ramasse par des sots, said Voltaire.

[* ]Spirit of Laws, book ii. c. 1.

[† ]B. ii. c. 2.

[‡ ]B. iii. c. 2.

[§ ]B. iii. cc. 3 and 4.

[∥ ]B. iii. c. 3.

[* ]Book v. cc. 2, 3.

[* ]Spirit of Laws, book v. chap. 3.

[* ]Barbeyrac’s Preface to his History of Ancient Treaties. Corps Dipl. tom. xxii. Harris’s Philological Inquiries, part iii. chap. 1.

[* ]Barlow’s Vision of Columbus.

[1 ]Dr. Price, whose publication gave rise to this work, seems to have been convinced by it. In a letter addressed to the author, he says,—

“I cannot be sorry that I have given occasion for your book, by the publication of M. Turgot’s Letter. At the time of this publication, I was entirely ignorant that you had delivered any opinion, with respect to the sentiment in the passage to which you have objected. I have lately written several letters to America, and in some of them I have taken occasion to mention your publication, and to say that you have convinced me of the main point which it is intended to prove; and that I wish I had inserted a note to signify the difference of opinion between M. Turgot and me on that point. The subject of civil government, next to religion, is of the highest importance to mankind. It is now, I believe, better understood than ever it was. Your book will furnish a help towards further improvement, and your country will, I hope, give such an example of this improvement as will be useful to the world.”

Inner Circle.			Outer Circle.
Zug,	11	Upper Aegeri,	5
Cham and Hüneberg,	9	Lower Aegeri,	4
Steinhausen,	2	Menzingen,	9
Risch,	2	Baar,	9
Walchwyl,	3
	27		27

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John Adams and the French Debate the American Constitution

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Table of Contents

1: 1. The Declaration of Independence (1776)

2: 2. The Articles of Confederation (1781)

3: 3. The U. S. Constitution (1788)

4: 4. The Bill of Rights (1791)

5: 5. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part I

6: 6. De Lolme on the English Constitution (1775) - Part II

7: 7. Turgot’s Letter to Richard Price on the Importance of the American Revolution (1778)

A MonsieurPrice,

Votre très humble, et très obeissant serviteur,

TRANSLATION. To Dr. Price,London.

Sir, Your most humble, and most obedient Servant,

8: 8. John Adams’s Defence of the American Constitution (1787-88)- Part I

THE DEFENCE.

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER OF M. TURGOT TO DR. RICHARD PRICE.

PREFACE.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

OF MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICS.

SAN MARINO.

BISCAY.

SWITZERLAND.

DEMOCRATICAL CANTONS.

APPENZEL.

UNDERWALD.

GLARUS.

ZUG.

URI.

SCHWITZ.

THE GRISONS.

THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.

CHAPTER II.

ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLICS.

THE CANTON OF BERN.

FRIBOURG.

SOLEURE.

LUCERNE.

ZURICH.

SCHAFFHAUSE.

THE CITY OF MULHOUSE.

THE CITY OF BIENNE.

THE REPUBLIC OF ST. GALL.

GENEVA.

LUCCA.

GENOA.

VENICE.

THE REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.

CHAPTER III.

MONARCHICAL OR REGAL REPUBLICS.

ENGLAND.

POLAND.

NEUCHATEL.

RECAPITULATION.

CHAPTER IV.

OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS.

DR. SWIFT.

DR. FRANKLIN.

DR. PRICE.

CHAPTER V.

WRITERS ON GOVERNMENT.

MACHIAVEL. Discourses upon the First Decade of Livy.*

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

MONTESQUIEU. Spirit of Laws.† —Of the Constitution of England.

HARRINGTON.

CHAPTER VI.

OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS.

DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS.

PLATO.

LOCKE.

MILTON.

HUME.

CHAPTER VII.

ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

The Online Library of Liberty
A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Votre très humble,
et très obeissant serviteur,

TRANSLATION.

To Dr. Price,London.

Sir,
Your most humble,
and most obedient Servant,

PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR.

MACHIAVEL.

*Discourses upon the First Decade of Livy.**

MONTESQUIEU.

Spirit of Laws.† —Of the Constitution of England.

ROME.

Plebeians scrambling after Patricians; or Democracy hunting down Aristocracy; or Tribunes in chase of a Senate.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

THE RIGHT CONSTITUTION OF A COMMONWEALTH EXAMINED.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

ERRORS OF GOVERNMENT AND RULES OF POLICY.