Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/189

Rh Sidney, p. 147. § 18. It is confeed, that a pure democracy can never be good, unles for a mall town, &c.

Sidney, p. 160. § 19. As to popular government in the trictet ene, that is, pure democracy, where the people in themelves, and by themelves, perform all that belongs to government, I know of no uch thing; and, if it be in the world, have nothing to ay for it.

Sidney, p. 161. If it be aid, that thoe governments, in which the democratical part governs mot, do more frequently err in the choice of men, or the means of preerving that purity of manners which is required for the well-being of a people, than thoe wherein aritocracy prevails, I confes it, and that in Rome and Athens, the bet and wiet men did for the mot part incline to aritocracy. Xenophon, Plato, Aritotle, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, and others, were of this ort. But if our author there eek patrons for his abolute monarchy, he will find none but Phalaris, Agathocles, Dionyius, Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, with the corrupted crew of mercenary racals who did, or endeavoured to et them up: thee are they, quibus ex honeto nulla et pes: they abhor the dominion of the law, becaue it curbs their vices, and make themelves ubervient to the luts of a man who may nourih them.

Sidney, p. 165. § 21, Being no way concerned in the defence of democracy, &c. I may leave our knight, like Don Quixote, fighting againt the phantams of his own brain, and laying what he pleaes againt uch governments as never were, unles in uch a place as St. Marino, near Siniglaglia in Italy, where a hundred clowns govern a bar-