Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/141

Rh off coniderable gainers;—thus at length the balance is broke, and tyranny let in, from which door of the three it matters not.

The deires of men, are not only exorbitant, but endles: they grap at all; and can form no cheme of perfect happines with les. Ever ince men have been formed into governments, the endeavours after univeral monarchy have been bandied among them: the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans, and the Achaians, everal times aimed at the univeral dominion of Greece: the commonwealths of Carthage and Rome affected the univeral empire of the world: in like manner has abolute power been purued, by the everal powers in each particular tate, wherein ingle perons have met with mot ucces, though the endeavours of the few and the many have been frequent enough; yet being neither o uniform in their deigns, nor o direct in their views, they neither could manage nor maintain the power they had got, but were deceived by the popular ambition of ome ingle peron: o that it will be always a wrong tep in policy, for the nobles or commons to carry their endeavours after power o far as to overthrow the balance. With all repect for popular aemblies be it poken, it is hard to recoiled one folly, infirmity, or vice, to which a ingle man is ubject, and from which a body of commons, either collective or repreented, can be wholly exempt; from whence it comes to pas, that in their reults, have ometimes been found the ame pirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride; the ame blindnes, and obtinacy, and unteadines; the ame ungovernable rage and anger; the ame injutice, ophitry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breat of any individual. When a child grows eay by being