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

ii it is not expresly tolerated; and the public opinion mut be repected by a miniter, or his place becomes inecure. Commerce begins to thrive: and if religious toleration were etablihed, and peronal liberty a little more protected, by giving an abolute right to demand a public trial in a certain reaonable time—and the dates inveted with a few more privileges, or rather retored to ome that have been taken away—thee 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 o general a refinement, or more properly reformation of manners and improvement in knowledge, is it not unaccountable that the knowledge of the principles and contruction of free governments, in which the hpppines of life, and even the further progres of improvement in education and ociety, in knowledge and virtue, are o deeply intereted, hould have remained at a full tand for two or three thouand years?—According to a tory in Herodotus, the nature of monarchy, aritocracy, and democracy, and the advantages and inconveniences of each, were as well undertood at the time of the neighing of the hore of Darius, as they are at this hour. A variety of mixtures of thee imple pecies were conceived and attempted, with different ucces, by the Greeks and Romans. Repreentations, intead of collections, of the people—a total eparation of the executive