Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/32

xxiv claimed the government in turn: and after all the turbulence, wars, and revolutions, which compoe the hitory of Europe for o many ages, we find imple monarchies etablilhed every where. Whether the ytem will now become stationary, and lat for ever, by means of a few further improvements in monarchical governments, we know not; or whether till further revolutions are to come. The mot probable, or rather the only probable change is, the introduction of democratical branches into thoe governments. If the people hould ever aim at more, they will defeat themelves; and indeed if they aim at this, by any other than gentle means, and by gradual advances; by improvements in general education, and informing the public mind. The ytems of legilators are experiments made on human life and manners, ociety and government. Zoroater, Confucius, Mithras, Odin, Thor, Mahomet, Lycurgus, Solon, Romulus, and a thouand others, may be compared to philoophers making experiments on the elements. Unhappily a political experiment cannot be made in a laboratory, nor determined in a few hours. The operation once begun, runs over whole quarters of the globe, and is not finihed in many thouands of years. The experiment of Lycurgus lated even hundred years, but never pread beyond the limits of Laconia. The proces of Solon blowed out in one century;