Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/227

Rh there are no parties of the poor and the rich at war with each other: where, if any decendant of the guardians be vicious, he is dimied to the other claes, and if any decendant of the others be worthy, he is raied to the rank of the guardians: where education, the grand point to be attended to, produces good geniues, and good geniues, partaking of uch education, produce till better than the former: where the children, receiving from their infancy an education agreeable to the laws of the contitution, grow up to be worthy men, and obervant of the laws: where the ytem, both of laws and education, are contrived to produce the virtues of fortitude, temperance, widom, and jutice, in the whole city, and in all the individual citizens: where, if among the rulers, or guardians of the laws, there be one urpaing the ret, it may be called a monarchy, or kingly government, if there be everal, an aritocracy.

Although there is but one principle of virtue, thoe of vice are infinite; of which there are four which deerve to be mentioned. There are as many pecies of foul as there are of republics: five of each. That which is above decribed is one.

In the eighth book of his Republic he decribes the other four, and the revolutions from one to another. The firt he calls the Cretan, or Spartan, or the ambitious republic; the econd, oligarchy; the third, democracy; and the fourth, tyranny, the lat dieae of a city.

As republics are generated by the manners of the people, to which, as into a current, all other things are drawn, of neceity there mut be as many pecies of men, as of republics. We have already, in the fourth book, gone over that which we have pronounced to be good and jut. We are