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Meanwhile the new condition was welcomed even by admirers of balanced government, on the ground, as explained by Mill, that there are certain contrivances for "the distribution of strength in the most popular branch of the governing body" by which "a balance of forces might most advantageously be established there." How Adams would have stood aghast, had he lived long enough to read Bagehot's declarations that "the efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers"; that "it is a remarkable peculiarity, a capital excellence of the British Constitution, that it contains a sort of upper House which is not of equal authority to the lower House, yet still has some authority"; and that "the English is the type of simple constitutions, in which the ultimate power upon all questions is in the hands of the same persons"! The irony of correction could not further go.

House the two parties are still pretty evenly matched, frequently alternating, and as the Lords are always overwhelmingly Conservative, if they had so much as a suspensive veto (forcing a dissolution and an appeal to the constituents), the balance would be uneven; which is what the Liberals recently objected to, when the prophecy referred to by Gladstone was fulfilled. Adams's system would be fair (i. e. an "equal mixture") only if the Commons were guaranteed to be always Liberal (e. g. by disfranchising the upper classes); although there would be considerable alleviation if the Lords' veto merely compelled a referendum to the people (including the upper classes) of the single question at issue. J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 1861, p. 235, cf. 129, 133 ff. (the allusion is especially to various schemes for the representation of minorities). "I set little value," Mill says, "on any check which a Second Chamber can apply to a democracy otherwise unchecked; and I am inclined to think that if all other constitutional questions are rightly decided, it is of comparatively little importance whether the Parliament consists of two chambers, or only of one," 231.

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2 The English Constitution, 1866, in Works, Hartford ed., iv., 59 (cf. 77); 129-30; 235 (similarly 230). Comparing it with the American

Yet, although the drift of the British Constitution belied his theory, and he prudently shut his eyes to it, the course of events in France confirmed his faith by carrying out the predictions he made in accordance with his principles. The anarchy of the simple democracy with all power in a single assembly (the Convention)— the dissensions and evanescence of a government with a plural executive (the Directory)—and the sinking of such defective systems in a despotism (the Empire):— these he later noticed, and found consolation in taking them for proofs of his doctrines.'

CHAPTER XVI

EARLIER SPECULATIVE AUTHORITIES, AND ADAMS'S

DEVELOPMENT

OT only the expounders of the English Constitu

NOT tion did Adams follow. He had studied the

republican theorizers of the seventeenth century, and they had made a great impression upon him in his first and revolutionary period. In the present period he retained much respect for only one of them.

By Harrington, himself considerable of an aristocrat,

(modeled upon it! cf. ib., 97-8), he says: "The English Constitution is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority and making it good: the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority," 236.

E. g. vi., 252 n., 273 n., 299 n., 300 n., 393 n., 394 n., 485. Canning, however, we have seen, and other English Tories took the French example as confirmatory of the need of restricting the representation in the lower house.

Adams had early been indoctrinated with views about
a "natural aristocracy," or nobility of wise men, who,
when well regulated by the constitution, and kept under,
but given an opening in the elective senate, become
an "ornament" of the state and indispensable for its
welfare, serving as "guides" to the "natural democ-
racy."
From the Oceana also he must have learned
of the "immortality" of an "equal commonwealth,"2
consisting of "three orders," only two of which, how-
ever, were treated as natural in society, the third being
the factitious one of executive magistrates, created in
the government3; and there he read of the tendency of
single assemblies to split into the two orders of the
deliberating few and the listening many, whence had
been deduced the necessity of separating them into two
assemblies, the one to represent the wisdom of the
commonwealth, as its council, to debate and to propose,
the other to represent the interest of the commonwealth,
as its general assembly, not to debate, but to resolve
by adopting or rejecting; which had been advocated
also on the pleasant conceit of two girls with a cake to
share between them, who find the task best performed
if the one divides and the other chooses; 5-all which
Adams quotes and appropriates for his two utterly

* Oceana, etc., 47, 134; 272; 42, 56, 135, 231; 253.
2 Ib., 100, 161, cf., 53-4, 539; 54-5, 259, 394-5.
3 Ib., 48, 55, 58, 160, 259, etc.

4 Ib., 47, 253. Since, and independently, H. Carnot has borne witness to this, saying that in a large assembly "the major part play the rôle of jurymen: they judge by yes or no if what the élite propose is good or bad" (quoted from V. Pierre's Histoire de la République de 1848, p. 98; cf. J. S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, Boston, 1865, vol. iii., p. 36).

5 Oceana, 46-8; similarly 252-3. Note the pregnant words: "The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind,” 48.

different chambers (iv. 410-13, cf. 440, 585). Harrington, of course, had taken these two bodies, with their peculiar correlative functions, from the Roman Senate and Comitia and the systems of some other ancient republics. Such two bodies, so functioning, had once been contemplated for use on this side the Atlantic in the Carolinas, and actually had an ephemeral existence in Pennsylvania. Probably through Harrington's influence had furthermore come into American politics the use of the ballot, which he got from Venice,3 and, if not the principle of rotation and compulsory vacations of representatives and magistrates, for which he assigns no authority, yet the other rotation of the members of the council or senate by a third part being elected every year for three years or the like, which he may

1 Ib., 51, etc. Cf. Thucydides, vi., § 39.

2 They were embodied by Locke in his unapplied Carolina Constitutions, art. 51, and by Penn in his Frames of Government of 1682, art. 16, and of 1683, art. 15, which were superseded in 1696.—It may be added that, probably not from Harrington, but from his Roman model, this division of functions, between the Tribunate and the Legislative Body, was adopted in the French constitution of 1799, arts. 28, 34, and continued, with some modifications, in Napoleon's of 1804, arts. 82-3, 96-7.

3 Oceana, 55, III, etc. This also was used by Locke in his Constitutions, art. 32, and by Penn in his Frames, art. 20 and art. 18 respectively. But already in 1638-9 Connecticut in its Fundamental Orders, art. 2, had improved upon the ballot proper (a ball, still used in social clubs) by the voting paper, borrowing it from its use in church elections.

4 Oceana, 54, 303, 394, etc. It was not Harrington's own invention, as it had been employed in Genoa for the Doge and the "governors" in the Signiory, and but recently adopted in the Connecticut Fundamental Orders, art. 4, for the Governor. For the occasional retention, in some of our States, of this rotation, the object of which was to exercise many citizens in office and to have many ex-officials among the public, see above, pp. 147-8.

5 Oceana, 98-9, including the representatives in the popular assembly -so again, 439, 622-3; also in the case of the councils and other elective bodies, 124-5.

have taken from the Venetian Senate or the Dutch Provincial Estates.1

The author who appears to have influenced Adams most in his second period, was far away from a republican, being the turncoat Swift. From Swift's satirical Discourse of the Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome he quotes long passages, and remarks that, but for the style, they might be taken for his own (iv. 388-9). Swift, indeed, had written of a single assembly "naturally" dividing into three parts (of the one, the few, and the many),2 and of a balance between them; and had developed the idea of the balance as supposing "three things," to wit: the holding hand and the two scales. "The balance," he wrote, "must be held by a third hand, who is to deal the remaining power with the utmost exactness into the several scales." But he added a truth which we have criticized Adams for neglecting: "it is not necessary, that the power should be equally divided between these three; for the balance may be held by the weakest, who, by his address and conduct, removing from either scale, and adding of his own, may keep the scales duly poised"3; and again, though not so clearly, in another

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1 Cf. ib., 43, 98-9, 139, 394, 439. Harrington was one of the founders of the Rota Club in 1659, which practiced these measures, ib., p. xxix. (Cf. the Tribunal of the Rota in the Papal and several other Italian states.) This rotation was borrowed by Penn in his Frames of 1682, art. 3 (with vacations also, art. 4), and of 1683, art. 2 (vacations, art. 3), and was restored in the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 for the council (with vacations), art. 19 (and vacations for the delegates to Congress, art. 11), and simultaneously in the Delaware constitution of 1776, art. 4, as already in the Virginia constitution of 1776, and afterward in the New York constitution of 1777, art. 11, and the South Carolina constitution of 1778 (with vacations), art. 9.

2 Swift's Discourse, ch. i., Works, vol. iii., p. 10 (quoted by Adams, iv., 3 Ib., iii., 17 (quoted by Adams, iv., 387).

383).