We will now proceed with our quotations, to exhibit a few of the amplifications of this motto to be found throughout Mr. Adams's second and third volumes, his unqualified approbation of its doctrine, and his unsuccessful efforts to compress the policy of the United States within its tenour.
"When it is found in experience, and appears probable in theory, that so simple an invention as a separate executive, with power to defend itself, as a full remedy against the fatal effects of dissentions between nobles and commons, why should we still finally hope that simple governments, or mixtures of two ingredients only, will produce effects which they never did, and we know never can? Why should the people be still deceived with insinuations, that these evils arose from the destiny of a particular city, when we know that destiny common to all mankind?"[1]
It is obvious that Mr. Adams is here contemplating monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and not moral principles, as the only ingredients of government; and that in his division of power, he thinks it necessary to assign to the executive order (which he in other places limits to a single person) a quota, sufficient to enable him to defend himself against the plebeian order. In the United States, the executive power is dependent on the people. The quota of power cannot by his system be given, without a correspondent balance of wealth. The wealth then of Mr. Adams's executive order, must also balance the wealth of the plebeian order.
The assertion, that neither one nor two of these ingredients, can produce effects correspondent to our hopes, though exactly as true, as that a mixture of all three will equally disappoint us, positively affirms the necessity of this mixture; and when coupled with the deception into which such hopes have seduced the people, acknowledges, both that the policy of the United States did not embrace this mixture,
- ↑ "Adams's Def. v. 2. p. 53 The third. Philadelphia edition is quoted throughout this essay.
