Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/50

12 whom they chooe for three years, and maintain out of the public tock. He mut be a doctor of law, and a man of known integrity. He is joined in commiion with the capitaneos, and acts omething like the recorder of London under the lord mayor. The fourth man in the late is the phyician: another peron, who makes no ordinary figure in the republic, is the choolmater. Few in the place but have ome tincture of learning.

The people are eteemed very honet, and rigorous in the execution of jutice, and eem to live more happy and contented among their rocks and nows, than others of the Italians do in the pleaantet vallies in the world. Nothing indeed can be a greater intance of the natural love mankind has for liberty, and of their averion to arbitrary government, than uch a avage mountain covered with people, and the Campania of Rome, which lies in the ame country, almot detitute of inhabitants.

This is the account of St. Marino. Yet, if all authority is here collected in one center, that center is not the nation. Although the original repreentation in the arengo was of houes, that is to ay, of property, rather than of the perons of the citizens, and conequently not very equal, as it excluded all peronal property, as well as all who had no property; yet even uch an agrarian, it eems, was not a ufficient check to licentiounes, and they found it neceary to intitute a enate of forty men. Here, at leat, commenced as complete an aritocracy as that of ancient Rome; or, to expres it more exactly, as complete a eparation of the aritocratical from the democratical part of the community: and there are two remarkable circumtances in mation