Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/60

22 Even in this happy country, where there is more equality than in almot any other, there are noble families, who, although they live like their neighbours by the cultivation of the earth, and think it no digrace, are very proud of the immene antiquity of their decent, and boat of it, and value themelves upon it, as much as Julius Cæar did, who was decended from a goddes.

are in Frieland and Overyell, and perhaps in the city of Dort, certain remnants of democratical powers, the fragments of an ancient edifice, which may poibly be re-erected; but as there is nothing which favours Mr. Turgot's idea, I hall pas over this country for the preent.

My dear Sir,

T is commonly aid, that ome of the cantons of Switzerland are democratical, and others aritocratical: and if thee epithets are undertood only to mean, that one of thee powers prevails in ome of thoe republics, and the other in the ret, they are jut enough; but there is neither a imple democracy, nor a imple aritocracy, among them. The governments of thee confederated tates,