Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/182

144 affairs, with aiduity and moderation; whilt the remembrance of their pat ufferings continued freh upon their minds. But this authority afterwards devolving upon their ons, who had not een thee changes, nor experienced the mieries of tyranny, they began to grow o diatisfied with that ort of civil equality, that they cat off all retraint, and giving themelves up to rapine, ambition, and lut, oon changed the government again from aritocracy into an oligarchy. Their adminitration, however, becoming as inupportable, in a while, as the tyranny of the other had formerly been, the people naturally began to look out for ome deliverer; and, having fixed upon a leader, they put themelves under his banners, and etablihed oligarchy. But when they had done this, and came to reflect upon the oppreions they utained under a tyrant, they reolved never to be again governed by any one man, and therefore agreed to et up a popular government; which was contituted in uch a manner, that the chief authority was not veiled either in a prince or in a junto of the nobility.

Now, as all new etablihments are held in ome degree of reverence and veneration at firt, this form ubited for ome time; though no longer than thoe people lived, who had been the founders of it: for, after their death, their decendants degenerated into licentiounes, and uch a contempt for all authority and ditinction, that, every man living after his own caprice, there was nothing to be een but confuion and violence: o that, either by the advice of ome good and repectable man, or compelled by the abolute neceity of providing a remedy for thee diorders and enormities, they at lat determined once more to ubmit to the dominion of one: from which tate they fell again in time, through the ame gradations, and from the above-