Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/200

162 Here it would be entertaining to apply thee obervations to the force of fleets and armies, &c. applied by Great Britain in the late contet with America. The balance of land, epecially in New England, where the force was firt applied, was neither in the king nor a nobility, but immenely in favour of the people. The intention of the Britih politicians was to alter this balance, "frame the foundation to the government, by bringing the lands more and more into the hands of the governors, judges, counellors, &c. &c, who were all to be creatures of a Britih minitry. We have een the effects."—The balance detroyed that which oppoed it.

Harrington proceeds.—But there are certain other confuions, which being rooted in the balance, are of longer continuance, and of wore conequence; as, firt, where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and the people the other half; in which cae, without altering the balance, there is no remedy, but the one mut eat out the other: as the people did the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly, where a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other half, which was the cae of the Roman emperors, (planted partly upon their military colonies, and partly upon the enate and the people) the government becomes a very hambles, both of the princes and the people. It being unlawful in Turky that any hould poes land but the grand eignior, the balance is fixed by the law, and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often fell, was the throne of England known to hake, until the tatute of alienations broke the pillars, by giving way to the nobility to ell their etates. While Lacedemon held to the diviion of land made by Lycurgus,