Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/140

102 tirred up by the harangues of their orators, were now wholly bent upon ingle and depotic lavery; ele how could uch a profligate as Anthony, or a boy of eighteen like Octavius, ever dare to dream of giving law to uch an empire and uch a people? Wherein the latter ucceeded, and entailed the vilet tyranny, that Heaven in its anger, ever inflicted on a corrupt and poioned people.

It is an error to think it an uncontroulable maxim, that power is always afer lodged in many hands than in one: for if thee many hands be made up from one of thoe three diviions, it is plain, from the examples produced, and eay to be paralleled in other ages and countries, that they are as capable of enlaving the nation, and of acting all manner of tyranny and oppreion, as it is poible for a ingle peron to be, though we hould uppoe their number not only to be four or five hundred, but three thouand. In order to preerve a balance in a mixed tate, the limits of power depoited with each party, ought to be acertained and generally known: the defect of this is the caue of thoe truggles in a tate, about prerogative and liberty; about encroachments of the few upon the rights of the many, and of the many upon the privileges of the few; which ever did, and ever will, conclude in a tyranny, firt either of the few or the many, but at lat, infallibly, of a ingle peron: for whichever of the three diviions in a tate is upon the cramble for more power than its own, as one of the three generally is (unles due care be taken by the other two); upon every new quetion that aries, they will be ure to decide in favour of themelves; they will make large demands, and canty conceion, ever ing