I

trators. Bodin himself applied this distinction only to the three forms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (concerning which a neat use of words would be to call the governments monarchic, aristarchic, or demarchic, and the states monocratic, aristocratic, or democratic); and he did not mark off the mixed state (though he did allow compound, if not mixed governments).2 We, however, may extend the distinction. When there are two or more divisions in the government equal and collateral with each other, the government, composed of these, may properly be allowed to be mixed (and if there are three such, it may be called triarchic). And now if these divisions (at least two of them) extend down into the people, each division in the government resting upon, or representative of, a class or order in the people, (and the king himself being the greatest landlord in the country), then each of these classes is equal to another, and the sovereignty is equally possessed by each in undivided shares, and the state, consisting of the whole people, which is heterogeneous, is compounded of these three elements, and may properly be likewise allowed to be mixed (and tricratic). But if the divisions in government each rest upon or is representative of the whole people, then the government alone is mixed, the people is homogeneous, and the state is simple. This simple state differs from the simple states monocratic, aristocratic, or democratic, in that in it the sovereignty resides in the whole people (it is pantocratic), whereas in them it resides in the one, the few, or the many. In the mixed state, also, which is composed of the one, the few, and the many, and thus made up of all, the sovereignty resides in all, but differently,

• De la Republique, pp. 272, 330, 338–9, 1050.

2 Ib., pp. 339, 1013–14.

because it is shared by three separate divisions of the whole people. Thus, beside the three simple states, there is left over, not only a mixed state of all, but also another simple state, of all; and this last is properly, in modern parlance, the republican state. For example, while France before the Revolution, like every absolute one-man constitution, was both monarchic and monocratic (the Russian Czar still being both a monarch and an autocrat), England (in Adams's conception and actually at one time) was both triarchic and tricratic; but America is slightly triarchic and almost wholly pantocratic, and because of this last feature it alone of the three is republican (though England to-day hangs on the edge of being such, and the France of to-day of course is). In the mixed state the government ought likewise to be mixed; but of a republican state the government need not be mixed; and to make it truly (or equally) mixed, is to introduce a tendency to bring about a mixture also in the state, and for it a division of classes or orders among the people. And this we shall find recognized by Adams, and to be aimed at by him; for we shall find him wishing to bring the same orders into the American people that he wished to establish in our governments. And his wish being father to his thought, we shall soon find him asseverating that the American people, and all wealthy peoples, necessarily are already divided into such orders; whereby he will be enabled to turn the argument around and say that because the people is heterogeneous and mixed, the government ought to be so too. Still, before coming to this, we must notice his treatment of the simple governments so far as, in his opinion, mixed states have mistakenly tried to set them up, without ever succeeding.

CHAPTER V

BADNESS OF SIMPLE GOVERNMENTS, AND NEED OF A BALANCE

SIMP

IMPLE governments, in Adams's opinion, are bad governments; that is, governments are worse the closer they approach to the limit of simplicity, in any of its three forms. Only mixed governments are good governments; and only as they approach the proper scheme of equal mixture already sketched, do they approach perfection. All this Adams thinks he proves both by experience and by reason (cf. viii. 650).

His appeal to experience does not call for much attention, although it forms the bulk of his work. He runs through the small republics left over in Europe— "on a barren rock, a paltry fen, an inaccessible mountain, or an impenetrable forest" (iv. 290, cf. 380, vi. 109)-San Marino, Biscay, some Swiss cantons—that have been praised as models of democracy, to show that they are not simple democracies; and he devotes many pages to surveying ancient and mediæval (Italian) republics, to show that they were not properly mixed governments; in all cases endeavoring to show that the best and longest-lived were and are those that approach nearest to his model, the English (iv. 469, 542, cf. vi. 108)—almost the only one that he does not historically or analytically investigate. English history has been as tumultuous as any; but, Adams says, its civil dissensions occurred before its government received the equal balance (vi. 398-9, cf. 488-9). Exactly when the balance was instituted, he does not tell in his polemical works of this period, and so avoids the confession that its short duration is insufficient to prove the permanence

of this form of government; and yet in a later apologetical writing he says the balance was not established till the revolution of 1688, nor fully even then, and was not completed "till the present reign" (vi. 489), referring to an act in the first year of George III., less than thirty years before the composition of his principal work. The emptiness of his position becomes still more manifest, if we reflect that, as will be pointed out more fully hereafter, the very period he names for the introduction of his system into England was in reality the beginning of its extrusion. His argument is at times ludicrously lame. Though upholding a positive, he sometimes puts the burden of disproof upon his opponents, as in gravely declaring that if the Romans, upon the expulsion of the kings, had adopted his plan of government, "it is impossible for any man to prove that the republic would not have remained in vigor and in glory at this hour." In general, whenever he came across an incident that agrees with his principles, he immediately universalized it, thus jumping to his conclusions, instead of gradually building up to them. His reasoning à priori concerns us most. It is scattered throughout his works, and its parts must be assembled piecemeal. Simple governments, then, are bad, because either they are contentious, the seat of sovereignty being illdefined, or, this being settled, the ruling classes whichever they be, are intolerant, oppressive, imperious. They will not brook criticism, and therefore are hostile to the freedom of the press, to enlightenment, and to

2

IV., 521. For another instance, not quite so flagrant, see 497; and cf. v., 180. A similar assertion about the continued duration of the Roman republic, had it but observed the agrarian law of Licinius Stolo, was made by Nevill, Plato Redivivus, p. 57.

2 VI., 228, 230, 251, cf. 328, 335, 347, 392.

education, the popular party not the least (vi. 59, 88, 198, 273). They all run into tyranny-monarchy into despotism, aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy into anarchy (iv. 328, cf. v. 460–1). The diabolicalness of all "unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power," whether "in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council," or "a single emperor," he later said, was "the fundamental article" of his "political creed" (x. 174).

2

Simple democracy, or government collected in one popular assembly, he especially insisted, is as dangerous as any simple aristocracy (vi. 39), as arbitrary, aggressive, and domineering as any kings or nobles,' as full of passion-intemperance, ambition, favoritism-as any single individual or small body of individuals. Gradu-1 ally he concentrated his denunciation upon simple democracy, and in the third volume of his Defense it was described as the worst of all-the worst keeper of the public liberties (vi. 87-8, cf. 7), the most factious (50), the most corrupt (cf. 62), the least constant (157),in sum, "the most ignoble, unjust, and detestable form of government," its only excellence being that it is the quickest to pass away. In it, the majority will always maltreat the minority-confiscate their property, ex

2

3

IV., 480, vi., 252 (cf. 114), 417, 380-1 (from Aristotle).

IV., 407, 388 (from Swift), v., 39, 230, vi., 10, 484; already in 1776, X., 405.

3 VI., 70. In his last period, he set this off against its demerits, and concluded that on the whole it is not more pernicious, being briefest, though bloodiest while it lasts, vi., 477, 483. Still he is reported to have said: “No writer has ever yet displayed all the terrors of democracy in our language. . . . In the history of Naples and of the Italian republics the truest picture of its progress and fate is drawn," Quincy's Quincy, 70. In his first period he had expressed a similar opinion, but qualified: "A popular government is the worst curse to which human nature can be devoted, when it is thoroughly corrupted. Despotism is better," ix., 435.