Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/156

118 by which they may be paid for their ervices in executive offices, or even the public ervice carried on to the detriment of the nation.

We have een, both by reaoning and in experience, what kind of equality is to be found or expected in the implet people in the world. There is not a city nor a village, any more than a kingdom or commonwealth, in Europe or America; not a hord, clan, or tribe, among the negroes of Africa, or the avages of North or South America; nor a private club in the world, in which uch inequalities are not more or les viible. There is then a certain degree of weight, in the public opinion and deliberations, which property, family, and merit will have: if Mr. Turgot had dicovered a mode of aecrtaining the quantity which they ought to have, and had revealed it to mankind, o that it might be known to every citizen, he would have deerved more of their gratitude than all the inventions of philoophers. But, as long as human nature hall have paions and imagination, there is too much reaon to fear that thee advantages, in many intances, will have more influence than reaon and equity can jutify.

Let us then reflect, how the ingle aembly in the Maachuett's, in which our great tateman wihes all authority concentered, will be compoed. There being no enate nor council, all the rich, the honourable, and meritorious, will tand candidates for eats in the houe of repreentatives, and nineteen in twenty of them obtain elections. The houe will be found to have all the inequalities in it, that prevailed among the people at large. Such an aembly will be naturally divided into three parts.—The firt is, of ome great genius, ome materly pirit, who unites in himelf all the