the van of the battle, and gives it all the credit of conscious
victory.
Turgot's idea of "collecting all authority into one centre," "that of the nation," might possibly have extended to national sovereignty only, without condemning a distribution of power among publick functionaries by a moderate scale; but Mr. Adams, by making that centre to consist of one house of representatives, seized upon the strongest ground for exhibiting representative government in distortion. To render monarchy most hateful, all power ought to be exhibited in the hands of a single man; so to render representation hateful, the best exhibition, is all power in the hands of a single house. We caricature what we wish to make odious, and adorn what we wish to recommend. Thus Mr. Adams contrasts republicanism in its most hideous, with monarchy, in its most becoming dress. One he adorns with his cheeks and balances, his jealousy among orders, and his publician virtues; and tells no tale of woe produced by its vices: the other he places in a centre of monopoly, from whence she is made to hurl legislative, executive and juditial destruction on friends and enemies. It is admitted that the object of his embellishment, might possibly be some relief against the monster disfigured for its foil.
But the question so important to America, is not to be thus eluded. Because Mr. Turgot has charged us with having established governments, bottomed upon the English system of balancing classes of power, and creating orders of men; and because Mr. Adams has defended our governments against this charge, not by denying it, but by endeavouring to prove that system to be the best: it does not follow that our political policy is really that of the English. It only results from the charge and defence, that Mr. Turgot condemned and Mr. Adams approved of the English policy. And although Mr. Adams has been pleased to engage that policy in hostilities with Turgot’s phantasm, of concentrating all power in one chamber of representatives, (if such an opinion is justly ascribed to him) a victory on
