Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/23

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, 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 under the immediate protection of the god war, from which their leaders are always choſen. There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it mere than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the firſt example of govern-

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