in general selling the liberties of the people, of whom he and his children will be members. Some of the American revolutionists outside of New England, in parts where instruction of representatives was not so systematic, also made references to this source of safety; but it was especially the makers of the Federal Constitution in 1787, who deprived the state legislatures of the power to instruct their delegates to Congress (in the Senate) and left no room for a power in the people to instruct their representatives in the new lower House, especially these relied upon that English doctrine,3 thus putting their weight on thin ice. But Adams, still upholding the right of instruction, thought he did not need that other source of reliance, and said little about it. Yet, of course, all precautions are useful; and, of course again, the right of the whole

I Harrington, Oceana, etc., p. 543 (of governors in general); Sydney, Discourses, III., xliii., xlv., xlvi.; Nedham (quoted by Adams, vi., 66, 127); Blackstone, Commentaries, i., 189; Price, Additional Observations on Civil Liberty, p. 35; Godwin, Political Justice, V., xx.; Stewart, Political Economy, ii., 427. Cf., above, p. 88.-The principle was familiar to the Romans: see Eutropius, I., ix. (or viii.)

2 The Virginia Memorial and Remonstrance (this by Wythe), 1764, in Wirt's Patrick Henry, Appendix pp. ii. and iv.; Henry, in his Resolutions, 1765, ib., p. 57; Dickinson, Letters of a Farmer, vii.; Fairfax County Resolutions, 1774, drawn up by Mason (in Kate M. Rowland's Life of George Mason, i., 419); Paine, Common Sense, i.; R. Morris, Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, v., 642.

3 Elliot's Debates, v., 369 (Mason, of the executive), ii., 87 and 88 (Bowdoin), 168 (Stillman), 288 (Livingston), 293 (Lansing), 310-11 (M. Smith), 495-6 (Wilson), iii., 17-18, 99 (Nicholas), 124 (Randolph), 417 (Corbin), 485 (Mason), 647 (Z. Johnson), iv., 57 (Johnston), 103 (Davie, of the executive); and in resolutions for amendments, i., 334, iii., 658, iv., 243 (these copying the Virginia Bill of Rights, Sect. 6). So also Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in The Federalist, Nos. 35 § 10, 57 §12, and 64 §13 respectively; N. Webster, Collection of Essays, 1790, pp. 51, 67, 69, 80, 143, 146; Story, Commentaries, § 557, 586,

people to regulate the character of the representation is paramount.*

CHAPTER XII

IN

THE TWO HOUSES AND THE EXECUTIVE

spite of occasionally treating the chambers individually, beside the executive, as representing the whole people and differing merely in the purpose of their representation, and in spite of practically giving double influence to the upper classes by having them represented in the lower chamber along with the lower classes and in the upper chamber exclusively, Adams emphatically maintains, in conformity with his fundamental principles, that the two chambers of the legislature respectively represent the two great orders or classes in society, which he also identifies with the two great parties in politics. In each chamber one social class is to be represented, and in each chamber the members are to belong to one political party. The senate is the representative assembly of the upper classes of the nobles, the rich, the men of genius, the influential few: in it belongs the party of the aristocrats. The house is the representative assembly of the lower

Nor did the result of the great democratic Middlesex election dispute in England over Wilkes's candidature contravene this principle. That result settled only a constitutional question de facto, not de jure. It settled only that the house of representatives could not, in the absence of a legal restriction, itself impose a restriction and exclude a representative constitutionally elected. In other words, to exclude Wilkes would have required Commons, Lords, and King: the Commons alone could not

classes of the common people, the poor, the stupid, the impressionable many: in it belongs the party of the democrats. And as a corollary to this division of the chambers between the two classes and the two parties, is the doctrine that the executive chief, the third power, the holder of the balance, the mediator, the umpire, must be impartial, and therefore must belong to neither of the two classes, or must represent them both, must represent the whole people—be “national," as he later said"; therefore, again, must belong to neither party-must be, as we say, nonpartisan.

I

On this account, as already noted, Adams feared making the executive chief elective, since he would then be chosen by one party and would therefore be apt to side with only one party. On this account, also, he objected to our Constitution allowing the Senate to share in the appointing power, not only because he thought it would lead to the formation of two parties in that chamber and even in the other (vi. 434-5, viii. 464); but because, afterward, he attributed the partisanship of our Presidents to this senatorial interference (ix. 634, 397, cf. vi. 533-4). But only personal and temporary factions are formed in the squabbles over offices, not great and enduring parties, such as he has been dealing with. So it is difficult to see how the limitation of the President's "executive" power by the Senate can be a cause of his partisanship, especially as this is sufficiently accounted for not so much by his being elective as by his having the veto power, which brings him into the deliberative branch of the govern

all.

• What is necessary in order to permit this, we shall see later.

2 X., 397. For this, we have already seen, he must be elective by

ment, the real seat of party division. A deliberating executive cannot help being partisan.1

However this be, it is Adams's scheme of government that not only the rivalries of the great few must be composed by segregating and weakening them in an assembly by themselves, but also that the rivalry between the great few and the leaders of the many, the contention between the different interests of the rich and the poor, must be rendered innocuous by being balanced. As, apart from simple monarchy, limited monarchy or mixed government is, in his opinion, the only possible means of regulating the rivalries between the nobles and of holding them in check, so it is the only possible means of regulating the rivalries between the two great parties of the nobles and the people and of preventing the one party from swallowing up the other (iv. 588, vi. 280-1, cf. 50). "All countries under the sun," says he, "must have parties. The great secret is to control them." The defect of other governments is that these "inveterate parties" are "not legally separated from each other, nor empowered to control each other" (v. 288). Some governments have been defective even with two assemblies, because they permitted the two parties to enter each.3 "There will ever be a struggle between rich and poor"; "both rich and poor, then, must be made dependent" (vi. 68–9). The "controversy" and "rivalries" between the rich and the poor require that "these parties" shall "be repre

The nearest approach to non-partisanship possible is to make the executive bi-partisan, by means of an executive directory equally divided between the two parties. Such an executive has never proved satisfactory.

2 IV., 587-8. Cf. "The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries," vi., 280.

3 Florence, v., 18; Padua, 476.

sented in the legislature, and must be balanced, or one will oppress the other. There will never probably be found any other mode of establishing such an equilibrium, than by constituting the representation of each an independent branch of the legislature, and an independent executive authority . . . to be a third branch and a mediator or an arbitrator between them. The great art of lawgiving consists in balancing the poor against the rich in the legislature" (vi. 280). The rich and the poor "should have equal power to defend themselves; and that their power may be always equal, there should be an independent mediator between them, always ready, always able, and always interested to assist the weakest." Neither the rich, represented in "an independent senate," nor the poor, represented in “a house of representatives of the people," "can be defended by their respective guardians in the constitution, without an executive power, vested with a negative, equal to either, to hold the balance even between them' (vi. 65).

These views he held to the end. "Two such parties," he later wrote, "always will exist, as they always have existed, in all nations, especially in such as have property, and, most of all, in commercial countries [cf. 548]. Each of these parties must be represented in the legislature, and the two must be checks on each other. But, without a mediator between them, they will oppose

So in the later period: "The emulation between the rich and the poor among the people, should be made to check itself by balancing the two houses in the legislature, which represent these two classes of society," viii., 560.

2

IX., 570. Cf. his expression of desire for “giving all the executive power" to the first magistrate, and “dividing the sovereign legislature into two assemblies, giving to the nobles and people an equal share," V., 221.