Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/142

132 though the projector should declare himself to be an ambassaador from God.

Nothing can more evidently display an imagination heated beyond the temperature of impartial reason, than a resort to contradiction in supporting a project.

Mr. Adams tells us that "there were in Italy, in the middle age, one hundred or two of cities, all independent republicks, and all constituted in the same manner. The history of one is, under different names and various circumstances, the history of all." He addresses two volumes of examples, drawn from republicks consisting of single cities, as evidence to extensive countries; and, rejecting even the idea, that extensive territory, national strength, and national safety, would alone have obviated many misfortunes to which these little republicks were liable, he positively assures us, that human nature is always the same, and that therefore governments consisting of single cities, furnish correct precedents for the direction of numerous nations and extensive countries. Only premising, that the same argument would prove the propriety of teaching a great and free people how to govern themselves, by examples drawn from armies, crowded in dangerous garrisons, under their general, officers and chaplains, we will proceed directly to the alleged inconsistency.

Nedham, in his "right constitution of a commonwealth," had drawn arguments from the democratical cantons of Switzerland, which Mr. Adams thus disposes of. "There is not even a colour in his favour in the democratical cantons of Switzerland—narrow spots or barren mountains, where the people live on milk; nor in St. Marino or Ragusa: no precedents, surely, for England or American States, where the people are numerous and rich, the territory capacious, and commerce extensive."

All Mr. Adams's evidence, in his two last volumes, is drawn (Nieuchattel excepted, a narrow principality in Switzerland itself,) out of little republicks, composed of single