A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America

Volume III

John Adams, Will Butts

• Publisher: Liberty's Lamp Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780991117598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Constitutions

In this third and final volume of A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, John Adams brings to a close his lengthy argument against "collecting all authority into one center."

By first continuing his exposition of the Italian republics of the middle age, Adams acutely demonstrates the disharmony and upheaval that result from governments being improperly balanced. He then turns to theory, beginning with the letter of Padua and extending into a detailed refutation of the writings of Marchamont Nedham.

Against this backdrop of history and human experience, Adams is at his very best, pouring forth his timeless wisdom in defense of mixed and balanced governments and of the American constitutions.

"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."

"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."

Inspired by events in Europe and influencing events in America, Adams' extensive work is a partial history of man's eternal struggle to control power, and can serve for all time as a guidebook on the means to keep a people free.

letter vi.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined

Dear Sir,

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 forever 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, Edition: current; Page: 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 “Short Treatise of Political Power, and of the True Obedience which Subjects owe to Kings and other Civil Governors, with an Exhortation to all True Natural Englishmen, compiled 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 countries they were content to be governed and have the laws executed by one king or judge; in some places by many of the best sort; in some places by the people of the lowest sort; and in some places also by the king, nobility, and the people all together. And these diverse kinds of states, or policies, had their distinct names; as where one ruled, a monarchy; where many of the best, aristocracy; and where the multitude, democracy; and where all together, that is a king, the nobility, and commons, a mixed state; and which men by long continuance have judged to be the best sort of all. For where that mixed state was exercised, there did the commonwealth 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 Vindiciae 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 defense 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.” 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 coordinate 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 center,” and that center 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 worthwhile 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 everything 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 Edition: current; Page: 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 pow...