Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/201

Rh Lycurgus, it was immoveable; but, breaking that, could tand no longer. This kind of law, fixing the balance in lands, is called Agrarian, and was firt introduced by God himelf, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by let.

The public word, without a hand to hold it, is but cold iron. The hand which holds this word is the militia of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field, or ready for the field upon occaion. But an army is a beat that has a great belly, and mut be fed; wherefore this will come to what patures you have, and what patures you have will come to the balance of property, without which the public word is but a name. He that can graze this beat with the great belly, as the Turk does his timariots, may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant. But if the property of the nobility, tocked with their tenants and retainers, be the pature of that beat, the ox knows his mater's crib; and it is impoible for a king, in uch a contitution, to reign otherwie than by covenant; or, if he breaks it, it is words that come to blows.

Aritotle is full of this balance in divers places, epecially where he ays, that immoderate wealth, as where one man, or the few, have greater poeions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will bear, is an occaion of edition, which ends, for the greater part, in monarchy; and that, for this caue, the otracim has been received in divers places, as in Argos and Athens; but that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to eek the remedy of uch an evil.

Machiavel, not perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry, it is by their over-