Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/169

Rh of delirium; it hould not be called guilt, but inanity: but who would trut his life, liberty, and property, to a madman, or an aembly of them? it would be afer to confide in knaves. Five hundred or five thouand together, in an aembly, are not les liable to this extravagance than one. The nation that commits its affairs to a ingle aembly, will auredly find that its paions and deires augment as fat as thoe of a king; and therefore uch a contitution mut be eentially defective.

Others have een this quality in human nature through a more gloomy medium.

Machiavel ays, thoe who have written on civil government lay it down as a firt principle, and all hitorians demontrate the ame, that whoever would found a tate, and make proper laws for the government of it, mut preume that all men are bad by nature; and that they will not fail to hew that natural depravity of heart, whenever they have a fair opportunity; and, though poibly it may lie concealed for a while, on account of ome ecret reaon, which does not then appear to men of mall experience, yet time, which is therefore jutly called the father of truth, commonly brings it to light in the end. Machiavel's tranlator remarks, that although this eems a harh uppoition, does not every Chritian daily jutify the truth of it, by confeing it before God and the world? and are we not expresly told the ame in everal paages of the holy criptures, and in all ytems of human philoophy?

Montequieu ays, "Contant experience hews us, that every man inveted with power is apt to abue it: he puhes on, till he comes to omething that limits him. Is it not trange, "though