Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/245

Rh Such, and much wore, is the tyrant in his tyrannical city,—envious, faithles, cowardly, unjut, unfriendly, unholy, and a ink and breeder of all wickednes.

Now tell me which is the firt and which the lat, as to happines, the regal, the ambitious, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannic man and city. The bet and jutet is the happiet.

Thus, Sir, you have ome of Plato's entiments of morals and politics, how much they are to Mr. Turgot's purpoe, we may hew in another letter; mean time I am, &c.

My dear Sir,

Promied you to add to the reearches of Polybius and Plato, concerning the mutability of governments, thoe of Sir Thomas Smith, who, as he cells us, on the 28th of March, 1565, in the 7th of Eliz. and 51t year of his age, was ambaador from that queen to the court of France, and then publihed "The Commonwealth of England," not as Plato made his Republic, Xenophon his Kingdom of Peria, or Sir Thomas Moore his Utopia, feigned commonwealths, uch as never were nor hall be, vain imaginations, phantaies of philoophers, but as England tood, and was governed at that day.

In his 7th chapter, and the two following, he gives us his opinion of the origin of a kingdom, an