Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/16

viii In the name of human and divine benevolence, is uch a ytem as this to be recommended to Americans, in this age of the world? Human nature is as incapable now of going through revolutions with temper and obriety, with patience and prudence, or without fury and madnes, as it was among the Greeks o long ago. The latet revolution that we read of was conduced, at leat on one ide, in the Grecian tyle, with laconic energy, and with a little attic alt; at leat, without too much patience, foreight, and prudence, on the other.—Without three orders, and an effectual balance between them, in every American contitution, it mut be detined to frequent unavoidable revolutions: if they are delayed a few years, they mut come, in time. The United States are large and populous nations, in comparion of the Grecian commonwealths, or even the Swis cantons; and are growing every day more diproportionate, and therefore les capable of being held together by imple governments. Countries that increae in population o rapidly as the States of America did, even during uch an impoverihing and detructive war as the lat was, are not to be bound long with ilken threads: lions, young or old, will not be bound by cobwebs.—It would be better for America, it is nevertheles agreed, to ring all the changes with the whole et of bells, and go through all the revolutions of the Grecian tates, rather than etablih an abolute monarchy among them, notwithtanding all the great and real