Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/143

Rh cities, less than many cantons of Switzerland, in times of ignorance and superstition, and when the state of poverty was such, that it was a great distinction to own a horse. "No precedents, surely, for England or American States, where the people are numerous and rich, the territory capacious, and the commerce extensive." And thus he very correctly overturns, and disallows the whole evidence upon which his two last volumes are built.

He does more; he acknowledges an erroneous mode of reasoning in defence of his theory, in having wholly omitted to estimate the influence of physical or moral circumstances upon political experiments, and in hastily concluding human nature under all to be the same; by admitting the decisive force of such circumstances.

In the quotation, extent of territory, population, wealth and commerce, are expressly stated as affecting forms of government, and such an influence is even insinuated as likely to ensue from a milk diet. Still stronger differences ought to have occurred to Mr. Adams, between his Italian cities and American states. Their relative situation as to knowledge and ignorance, superstition and religion, privileged orders and equality, are differences, infinitely stronger than those, admitted of themselves sufficiently strong to destroy evidence similar to his own.

To contend both for the propriety and absurdity of the same evidence, by arguments urged for one object, and refuted for another, discloses an impetuosity in speculation, which ought at least to awaken an apprehension, that hereditary orders are more likely to repeat the crimes which Mr. Adams allows them to have committed, than to be converted into blessings by a balance of property and power.

Had not Mr. Adams's evidence been inapplicable both to the moral and physical situation of the United States, it is brought forward in a mode better calculated to excite passion and prejudice, than reason and reflection. A mass of errour, rage and ambition; of tragical catastrophe, soliciting sympathy by naming the persons of the drama; and of