Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/202

164 over-balance, peaks of the gentry as hotile to popular governments, and of popular governments as hotile to the gentry; which can never be proved by any one example, unles in civil war; eeing that, even in Switzerland, the gentry are not only afe, but in honour. But the balance, as I have laid it down, though uneen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, where he concludes, "That he who will go about to make a commonwealth where there be many gentlemen, unles he firt detroys them, undertakes an impoibility. And that he who goes about to introduce monarchy, where the condition of the people is equal, hall never bring it to pas, unles he cull out uch of them as are the mot turbulent and ambitious, and make them gentlemen or noblemen, not in name, but in effect; that is, by enriching them with lands, catles, and treaures, that may gain them power among the ret, and bring in the ret to dependence upon them; to the end that they, maintaining their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by them."

Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility, or gentry, over-balancing a popular government, is the utter bane and detruction of it, o I hall hew in another, that a nobility or gentry, in a popular government, not over-balancing it, is the very life and oul of it.

The public word, or right of the militia, be the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is ineparable from the over-balance in dominion.