Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/226

188 or a college of ten tribunes, an adequate repreentation of themelves. If Valerius had propoed, that the conul hould have been made an integral part of the legilature, and that the Roman people hould chooe another council of two or three hundred, equally repreenting them, to be another integral part, he would then have een, that the appointment of a dictator could never in any cae become neceary.

My dear Sir,

LATO has given us the mot accurate detail of the natural viciitudes of manners and principles, the uual progres of the paions in ociety, and revolutions of governments into one another.

In the fourth book of his Republic, he decribes his perfect commonwealth, where kings are philoophers, and philoophers kings: where the whole city might be in the happiet condition, and not any one tribe remarkably happy beyond the ret: in one word, where the laws govern, and jutice is etablilhed: where the guardians of the laws are uch in reality, and preerve the contitution, intead of detroying it, and promote the happines of the whole city, not their own particularly: where the tate is one, not many: where there