Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/19

Rh without an encouragement of informers and pies, throughout every part of the tate, who interrupt the tranquillity of private life, detroy the confidence of families in their own dometics and one another, and poion freedom in its weetet retirements. In a free government, on the contrary, the miniters can have no enemies of conequence but among the members of the great or little council, where every man is obliged to take his ide, and declare his opinion, upon every quetion. This circumtance alone, to every manly mind, would be ufficient to decide the preference in favour of a free government. Even ecrecy, where the executive is entire in one hand, is as eaily and urely preerved in a free government as in a imple monarchy; and as to dipatch, all the imple monarchies of the whole univere may be defied to produce greater or more examples of it than are to be found in Englih hitory.—An Alexander, or a Frederic, poeed of the prerogatives only of a king of England, and leading his own armies, would never find himelf embarraed or delayed in any honet enterprize. He might be retrained, indeed, from runing mad, and from making conquets to the ruin of his nation, merely for his own glory: but this is no argument againt a free government.—There can be no free government without a democratical branch in the contitution. Monarchies and aritocracies are in poeion of the voice and influence of every univerity and academy in Europe. Democracy, imple