its constituents and make itself permanent or selfelective (like the Long Parliament and the Dutch States-General); and that it would contend with the executive, and, as the judiciary is not a fit mediator in this contest, another mediator must be set up in a distinct branch of the legislature itself, which should come in between the executive and the extreme popular branch. These are forecasts of his later doctrines, which amplify them.

I

The executive was to have all appointments of officials, except sheriffs, registers of deeds, and county clerks, who were to be elected in their counties (iv. 198, 207), so at first, but he yielded up even these to gubernatorial appointment (249). The governor and the judges were to have their salaries fixed, so as to be independent of the assemblies. They were to be impeachable by the house of representatives before the council or senate,3 and the judges also removable (as in England) by the governor upon addresses of both houses (iv. 255). Like Harrington he desired rotation in office, in order to educate as many as possible of the people in the duties of government and to distribute its burdens (ix. 339, cf. 426-7), recommending three years of allowable service out of six (iv. 197–8, 208);

2 IV., 186, 198, 207, 229, 251, ix., 379-80. He attached importance to salaries: the public should have too much dignity to allow itself to be served gratis; want of salaries is the beginning of corruption, etc., ix., 533-6, 538-44. In this period he probably agreed with Penn, who put into the Concessions granted in 1677 to the settlers of West New Jersey that every member of the assembly should be paid a shilling a day during the session, "that thereby he may be known to be the servant of the people." (Grahame, History of the United States, Boston ed., ii., 283.)

3 IV., 238-9, 244. At first only the judges, "before the governor and council," 198-9, 207. For the commencement of this, in imitation of the English, see ii., 329-30, x., 237-8.

and he tried to introduce this principle into the Massachusetts constitution for the governor and treasurer, but obtained it only for the latter (250-1, 254). Electors and elected were to be circumscribed by a small property-qualification, higher for the latter, and in their case rising in gradation with the importance of the office, being higher for the senators than for the representatives, and highest for the governor and lieutenantgovernor. There was also to be a religious test for eligibility, confining certain offices to Christians." In general, Adams was for religious toleration, but not for complete religious freedom and equality, not for entire separation of State and Church,3 until near the close of his life. 4

I

As for the "Continental constitution," he desired

IV., 236 n., 243, 246; 238, 242-3; 245, 251-2.

2 IV., 238, 241-2, 245, 251. (Adopted only for governor and lieutenant-governor; abolished in 1820.) But the general article on religion, iv., 221-2, alone of all the constitution, he said, was not drafted by him: see Quincy's Quincy, 379.

3 Cf. ix., 451, iv., 221.-He made the sophistical argument (also found in Harrington, Oceana and Other Works, ed. of 1747, pp. 448, 506, 517) that respect for the liberty of conscience of the people requires their being indulged with the right to impose observance of religion, if their conscience dictates this as a duty, ii., 399, iv., 96,—a duty, however, he would confine to the States, and not allow to the Congress, ix., 402.

4 I., 627-8, cf. x., 392-3.-Parsons, representing the "Essex gentlemen," in The Essex Result closely agreed with Adams on most of these points. His reasons sometimes went ahead. Thus he argued for three branches that all government, like that of the Creator, requires goodness, wisdom, and power-power in one or very few, wisdom in the few of the educated and the wealthy, goodness in the many, aiming at the general happiness: goodness in the aim of the laws, wisdom in their framing, and vigor in their execution. Therefore the legislative body should unite the wisdom and the firmness of aristocracy and the probity and regard for the interests of the whole, of democracy (in Parsons's Parsons, pp. 368-70). Hence he opposed a single representative body, thinking a second needed to furnish wisdom and firmness, independent, itself to be checked by the first (379). The executive, forming the third

merely a single Congress, such as was established (iv. 200, 208). Although he once, in 1776, spoke of the Confederacy being designed "to form us, like separate parcels of metal, into one common mass," and to make us "become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the Confederacy" (ii. 500 n.), he later denied that he at this time thought of or ever approved a "national" and "consolidated government" for the whole country, obliterating the States (iii. 16, x. 413). He wished the authority of Congress to be "clearly defined, and limited" to the conduct of the war, regulation of trade and controversies between the States, management of the post-office, and disposal of the common lands (ii. 390-1, iv., 200, 208, ix. 380). In the Confederacy as it existed, till its final decay, besides its falling short of these powers, he found fault only with the equal representation of the States (ii. 366, ix. 435, 452, cf. 467). He had vainly urged representation according to population (ii. 499–500 n., 501 n.). With partial success he had urged the levying of contributions according to population, including the slaves (ii. 497 n.). He thus shared in the responsibility for the final partial representation of the slaves. So republican was he during the Revolution that he even wished military offices to receive from Congress only annual appointments.' branch or department, to be one, or a small number (if single, with a small privy council), for greater responsibility (382); to have power, with consent of his council, to negative all bills (397). Thus the three departments, separate, and balanced, to check each other and preserve each its own independence (373, 374). The judges were not to be removable by their appointers, nor to be dependent on the executive or legislative for their salaries: they should be appointed by the executive, and for misbehavior be removed on impeachment by one branch of the legislature before the other (382-4). Parsons drew, if not from Adams, from the same sources, especially from Harrington.

II., 263; Familiar Letters, 248.

THE SECOND PERIOD

CHAPTER III

IN

WRITINGS OF THIS PERIOD

I

N the second period, though in years a brief one, Adams composed a long three-volumed treatise and several pamphlets and letters on political science. The work entitled Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States was mostly written in England, and published in 1787 and 1788. It was followed by Three Letters to Roger Sherman on the Constitution of the United States, 1789 (vi. 427-36), and supplemented by Discourses on Davila, 1790 (vi. 227-403). Finally, some Correspondence with Samuel Adams on the Subject of Government, written in 1790, was published in 1802 (vi. 411-26). In the first he defended what he found good in the American State constitutions, and recommended what he conceived to be necessary improvements, expounding the principles that underlay both the praise and the censure. In the later ones, and in his general correspondence of the period, he applied the same treatment to the recently adopted Federal Constitution.

I Vol. i., written Oct.-Dec., 1786, published in London early in 1787 (iv., 283-588); vol. ii., published later in 1787 (v., 5–332); vol. iii., in 1788 (v., 335-496, vi., 3-220).

The immediate occasion of his putting pen to paper was Price's publication of Turgot's criticism of the American constitutions for imitating the English in setting up different bodies—a house of representatives, a council, and a governor, instead of "collecting all authority into one center, that of the nation." This Adams unwarrantably interpreted as advocacy of a government with all power vested in and exercised by a single assembly (cf. iv. 302, etc.), although Turgot in the same letter expressly referred to the need of "separating the objects of legislation from those of general administration and from those of particular and local administration," and desired the establishment of "local assemblies" that should assume the functions of detail and dispense the general assembly therefrom.2 Adams must have known of Turgot's project to set up communal, cantonal, and provincial assemblies, commencing with the lower and upon these erecting the higher, until finally reaching a national assembly, so that France would have become almost a federative republic (like what ours later became), as was popularly

"

IV., 299. Addressed to Price in 1778, the letter in which this occurs was first published in Price's Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, in America in 1784. In the first London edition, 1785, an English version was added. There, p. 113, it is so translated. The original is: 'Au lieu de ramener toutes les autorités à une seule, celle de la nation," ib., p. 92. The literal rendering is given by C. F. Adams in iv., 279: "Instead of bringing all the authorities into one. Possibly Turgot was paraphrasing Tacitus's statement: "omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit," Histor., i., I. And making a geographical application, Washington perhaps had Price's or Adams's translation in mind when, in 1788, in anticipation of the establishment of the new Federal Government, he expressed a wish that "all the advocates of the Constitution" would "combine their exertions for collecting the wisdom and virtue of the continent to one center." Writings, Sparks's ed., ix. 433. 2 In Price's work, pp. 94, 115.