Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/231

Rh honoured is purued, and what is dihonoured is neglected. Intead then of ambitious men, they will become lovers of gain. The rich they praie and admire, and bring into the magitracy, but the poor man they depie. They then make laws, marking out the boundary of the contitution, and regulating the quantity of oligarchic power, according to the quantity of wealth; more to the more wealthy, and les to the les: o that he who hath not the valuation ettled by law is to have no hare in the government. What think you of this contitution? If we hould appoint pilots according to their valuation, but never entrut a hip with a poor man, though better killed in his art, we hould make very bad navigation.—Again, uch a city is not one, but of neceity two; one, coniting of the poor, and the other of the rich, dwelling in one place, and always plotting againt one another. They are, moreover, incapable to wage war, becaue of the neceity they are under, either of employing the armed multitude, and of dreading them more than the enemy, or to appear in battle, truely oligarchic, and at the ame time be unwilling to advance money for the public ervice, through a natural dipoition of covetounes.

In uch a government almot all are poor, except the governors; and where there are poor, there are omewhere concealed thieves, and pure-cutters, and acrilegious perons, and workers of all other evils: thee the magitracy with diligence and force retrains: thee are drones in a city with dangerous tings.

This is oligarchy. Now let us confider the man who reembles it. The change from the ambitious to the oligarchic man is chiefly in this ner: