Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/144

106 which there was but one aembly: it was reported too, that the doctor had preided in the convention when it was made, and there approved it. Mr. Turgor, reading over the contitutions, and admiring that of Penylvania, was led to cenure the ret, which were o different from it.—I know of no other evidence, that the doctor ever gave his voice for a ingle aembly, but the common anecdote which is known to every body. It is aid, that in 1776, in the convention of Penylvania, of which the doctor was preident, a project of a form of government by one aembly, was before them in debate: a motion was made to add another aembly under the name of a enate or council; this motion was argued by everal members, ome for the affirmative, and ome for the negative; and before the quetion was put the opinion of the preident was requeted: the preident roe, and aid, that "Two aemblies appeared to him, like a practice he had omewhere een, of certain waggoners who, when about to decend a teep hill, with a heavy load, if they had four cattle, took off one pair from before, and chaining them to the hinder part of the waggon drove them up hill; while the pair before, and the weight of the load, over-balancing the trength of thoe behind, drew them lowly and moderately down the hill."

The preident of Penylvania might, upon uch an occaion, have recollected one of Sir Iaac Newton's laws of motion, viz. "that re-action mut always be equal and contrary to action," or there can never be any ret.—He might have alluded to thoe angry aemblies in the Heavens, which o often overpread the city of Philadelphia, fill the citizens with apprehenion and terror, threatening to et the world on fire, merely caue