Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/215

Rh

My dear Sir,

HE generation and corruption of governments, which may in other words be called the progres and coure of human paions in ociety, are ubjects which have engaged the attention of the greatet writers; and whether the eays they have left us were copied from hitorv, or wrought out of their own conjectures and reaonings, they are very much to our purpoe, to hew the utility and neceity of different orders of men, and of an equilibrium of powers and privileges. They demontrate the corruptibility of every pecies of imple government, by which I mean a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many. It might be ufficient to hew this tendency in imple democracy alone, for uch is the government of one aembly, whether of the people collectively or repreentatively: but as the generation and corruption of all kinds of government have a imilitude with one another, and proceed from the ame qualities in human nature, it will throw the more light upon our ubject, the more particularly we examine it. I hall confine myelf chiefly to Plato, Polybius, and your nameake Sir Thomas Smith.

Polybius thinks it manifet, both from reaon and experience, that the bet form of government is not imple, but compounded, becaue of the ten-