Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/130

92 In every form of government, we have een a enate, or little council, a compoition, generally, of thoe officers of tate, who have the mot experience and power, and a few other members elected from the highet ranks, and mot illutrious reputations. On thee leer councils, with the firt magitrate at their head, generally rets the principal burden of adminitration, a hare in the legilative, as well as executive and judicial authority of government. The admiion of uch enates to a participation of thee three kinds of power, has been generally oberved to produce in the minds of their members an ardent aritocratical ambition, graping equally at the prerogatives of the firt magitrate, and the privileges of the people, and ending in the nobility of a few families, and a tyrannical oligarchy: but in thoe tates, where the enates have been debarred from all executive power, and confined to the legilative, they have been oberved to be firm barriers againt the encroachments of the crown, and often great upporters of the liberties of the people. The Americans then, who have carefully confined their enates to the legilative power, have done wiely in adopting them.

We have een, in every intance, another and a larger aembly, compoed of the body of the people, in ome little tates; of repreentatives choen by the people in others; of members appointed by the enates, and uppoed to repreent the people, in a third ort; and of perons appointed by themelves or the enate, in certain aritocracies; to prevent them from becoming oligarchies. The Americans then, whoe aemblies are the moft adequate, proportional, and equitable repreentations of the people, that are known