Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/10

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, and perſonal liberty a little more protected, by giving an abſolute right to demand a public trial in a certain reaſonable time—and the dates 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 reformation of manners and improvement in knowledge, is it not unaccountable that the knowledge of the principles and conſtruction of free governments, in which the hpppineſs 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 different ſucceſs, by the Greeks and Romans. Repreſentations, inſtead of collections, of the people—a total ſeparation of the

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