Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/96

58

My dear Sir,

HE republic of Venice has exited longer than thoe of Rome or Sparta, or any other that is known in hitory. It was at firt democratical; and their magitrates, under the name of tribunes, were choen by the people in a general aembly of them. A tribune was appointed annually, to ditribute jutice on each of thoe ilands which this people inhabited. Whether this can be called collecting all authority into one center, or whether it was not rather dividing it into as many parcels as there were ilands, this imple form of government ufficed, in o mall a community, to maintain order for ome time; but the tyrannical adminitration of the tribunes, and their eternal dicords, rendered a revolution neceary; and after long altercations, and many projects, the people, having no adequate idea of the only natural balance of power among three orders, determined that one magitrate hould be choen, as the center of all authority—the eternal reource of every ignorant people, harraed with democratical ditractions or aritocratical encroachments. This magitrate mut not be calked king, but duke, and afterwards doge; he was to be for life, but at his death another was to be choen; he was to have the nomination of all magitrares, and the power of peace and war. The unbounded popularity and great real merit of Paul Luc Anafete, added to the preure of tribunary tyranny, and the danger of a foreign enemy,