I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY

CHAPTER IV

DIVISION AND CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS

A

DAMS commences his work by declaring that

since antiquity there have been three great discoveries in the constitution of a free governmentrepresentation, separation of three departments, and threefold division of the legislative department (iv. 284). These three elements in a free government he seems to regard as equally important and equally essential, the presence of any one or two without the third being ineffectual (cf. 523). But he does not consider that they call for equal emphasis in his treatment of them. On the contrary, in his treatment they are of rising importance. The first, representation, is taken as such a matter of course that very little is said about it-in fact, too little, as we shall have occasion to lament. Remain, then, two principal features in Adams's description of a free government: the separation of three departments, and within one of them what he calls the separation of three orders. To defend these two principles, he said in the midst of his labors, was the object of his writing.'

IX., 552 (cf., later, 624). Repeated reference to them: iv., 382, 398, 440, 521, 544, 559, 578, v., 89, 112, 180, 220-1, 228, 257, 426, 450, vi., 44, 50, 168, 189, 488.

20

Here again the first is regarded as a matter little in dispute, and therefore calling for little attention. Under it comes the principle, still always maintained, that the judges must have an estate in their offices during good behavior (v. 180). But as they are to be appointed by the executive, the separation of the judiciary does not seem to fulfill Adams's demand for completeness. Nor again is there completeness in the separation of the executive from the legislative, since the executive chief is made an essential branch of the legislative. The scheme is an involved one, described as existing "where the executive is in one hand, the legislative in three, and the judicial in hands different from both" (vi. 189), but in which the one executive hand is itself one of the three legislative hands. This he calls a "political trinity in unity, trinity of legislative, and unity of executive power, which in politics is no mystery." But the unity is rather inside the trinity, and at the same time outside it; which would be mysterious even in religion. The executive chief, however, both as such and as a branch of the legislative, is to be independent of the other two branches, and (if these together be called the legislature proper) independent of the legislature; yet, as we shall see, not completely even so, since through requirement of ministers and responsibility of these to the legislature, even this separation of the executive from the legislature is seriously impaired. The great principle, then, almost singly harped upon by Adams, is the "triple'

I

I

1 VI., 128, cf. v., 316. The phrase "a trinity in unity" had been used in the same connection by W. D. Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the first planting, progressive improvement, and present state, of the British Settlements in North America, Boston, 1755, vol. i., p. 214. It was later ridiculed by Bentham, To his Fellow-Citizens of France, Sect. xii., § 8.

or "tripartite" composition or combination of a "tripleheaded" legislative,' or, more simply, the division of the legislative department into three branches.

These three branches he furthermore requires to be equal and independent. Two of them are solely legislative, the one other is a single executive first magistrate, endowed with legislative power in the right of proposing or recommending laws and in the authority to veto bills passed by the legislative chambers. It is the bicameral system in close conjunction with a single independent executive; in which system, as we shall see, the saving principle is a balance, not between the two departments, but between the three branches,— a "perfect balance" (iv. 354), which requires their triplicity and their equality. The feature perhaps the most insisted upon, because the most often denied and refused, is the negative, or absolute veto, in the hands of the executive chief, the absolute negative of each chamber upon the other being in his day conceded. "The noble invention of the negative of an executive upon a legislature in two branches" (v. 44), is one description of his plan. Another is, "the necessity of a strong and independent executive in a single person, and of three branches in the legislature [= legislative] instead of two, and of an equality among the three" (iv. 559). "So simple an invention” (v. 45), so “obvious" a remedy (23), he wondered had not early been hit upon (vi. 323, cf. v. 121), instead of being reserved for the English to reduce to practice. He himself, how

1 VI., 96, 99, 108, 127, 215.

2 IV., 497, 521, 559; 371, vi., 127, cf. iv., 296.

3 IV., 296, 447, 497, 528, 559.-The Lacedæmonians came nearest, 553, the Romans next, 541; the Carthaginian government was most like our State governments, 470; also Rhodes in antiquity, and Neuchatel in his

ever, added complexity to it at times, by mixing up this with the other part of his plan, and requiring four things, "an independent executive authority, an independent senate, and an independent judiciary power, as well as an independent house of representatives" (vi. 399).

The great point contended for, once more, is the division of the legislative department into "three equiponderant, independent branches" (vi. 323), the equiponderance being obtained by giving to each equal power, at least in the final disposition of any legislative matter (for in taxation he apparently would allow origination to be confined to the lower house), that is, by arming each with a negative upon the motions of the others before their enactment into laws. The executive must have this absolute veto as well as each of the chambers. Only thereby can be obtained an equalization of the three branches and a balance between them, only thereby the entrance of the executive into the legislative and so into the supreme body in the nation, only thereby what he calls "an equal, independent mixture of all" the three elemental kinds of government.'

For Adams accepts the classical division of simple government into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which he defines as the governments respectively of one, of few, and of all. And he does so in spite of

own day, he treated as fairly good, 377. The whole plan was never thought of in antiquity, 474, 497, 503, nor in the Italian republics— Genoa, vi., 102, cf. 112; Siena, v., 220-1; Florence, 121. Possibly Epaminondas might have discovered it, had he lived longer, iv., 515. Machiavelli did not think of it, v., 44, but came near to it, 67, 183.

1 VI., 272, similarly 108, 124, iv., 474, v., 108.

2 IV., 328; v., 460–2, vi., 470, 448.—Ancient writers who distinguished the three kinds without speaking of the mixture, using various terms, are Herodotus, iii., §§ 80-2; Xenophon (of Socrates), Memorabilia, IV., vi., 12; Isocrates, Panathenaicum, § 50; Æschines, Adv. Timarchum, § 4,

maintaining that no such simple governments, by themselves, have ever existed (vi. 470), or at least two of them rarely (448), but, he insists, simple democracy never, or for the briefest periods1; and most governments have been very imperfect mixtures, until the English hit upon the equal mixture. He defines simple government as "a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many" (iv. 440)—that is, a single power, in either of these three forms, entirely unchecked by either of the other two; but he does not keep strictly to this definition, and applies the term to governments in which one of the powers is very slightly checked by the others, lopsided mixtures that present the predominance of one element. These he admits to have existed, and in abundance. On the other hand, mixed governments also admit of degrees, ranging down from that in which the mixture is perfectly equal, to less

Adv. Ctesiphontem, § 6; Strabo, Geographia, p. 7 (Casaubon's ed.); Seneca, Epist., 15; Quintilian, Instit. Orat., v., 10; Plutarch, De unius in repub. domin., § 3 (with the three perversions); Pseudo-Plutarch, De vita et poesi Homeri, c. 182; Sallustius, De Diis et Mundo, c. 10.

IV., 301, 303 (not even among the gods), vi., III (the Italian the nearest). Never did or can, vi., 210; no examples of, iv., 379, v., 5, vi., 198; never has been tried, vi., 157, cf. 122; impracticable, iv., 488 (Athens but "a transient glare of glory"); commits suicide, 484 (in a later writing); merely a nation without government ( = anarchy), vi., 211.-The non-existence of truly simple governments (except at least the monarchical) had been taught before by Thomas Smith, The Commonwealth of England, 1584, I., vi. (ed. of 1640, p. 9); Harrington, Oceana, etc., pp. 48, 393; Algernon Sydney, Discourses Concerning Government, III., xxi., II., xix., cf. I., x., II., xvi.; Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, VI., vi.: and since by Dugald Stewart, Lectures on Political Economy (ed. by W. Hamilton), vol. ii., pp. 354, 355; Mackintosh (as we shall see later); Brougham, Political Philosophy, vol. ii., pp. 2-4 (Sparta and Venice the only pure aristocracies that lasted, the United States the only permanent pure democracy).

He speaks of "near two hundred simple monarchs in Europe," vi.,