the ensuing conditions will constitute despotism, and there is good chance that it will end in the tyranny of a single ruler. For either the nobility will subjugate the people, or the people the nobility. In the first case, the nobility will either remain united, or they will divide.' If they remain united, they will fasten upon the people an aristocratic despotism, trampling all below them into the dust. But the other alternative is the more likely (cf. v. 258); for even the nobles are apt to fall into factions, though not so fast as the people (vi. 59– 60), following different rival families, gradually narrowing down to a few, then to two, of whom the one will espouse the cause of his class, the other that of the people (38), and the one will finally overpower the other, and whichever it be, the people will applaud, because he puts a stop to the turbulence of the nobles. On the other hand, if the democracy prevail, they are themselves sure to be still more violent, and to run into anarchy; then the superior men will again come to the top, rivalries will set in anew between them, and as before one will become master, acclaimed by the people as their deliverer. In all this the people are one cause of the evil conditions, by their humility and setting up of idols; and the aristocracy are another cause, by their spirit of emulation and grasping at all power. The latter are the original disturbers of the peace,2 and all effort should be directed at bridling them. In simple aristocracy they have attempted to control themselves, by rotation of offices, giving every one a turn at the top; by blending chance with choice at the elections (iv. 381); by calling in a foreigner for chief magistrate

* IV., 406, 414-15, 466, 584-5, cf. ix., 564.

Their rivalries can account for "every despotism and monarchy in the four quarters of the globe," vi., 393.

(vi. 214); by instituting a strict inquisition into one another's affairs, and then of their subjects, to guard against any one getting ahead of the rest, especially against his courting the people'; by granting to every member of their own order an absolute veto upon all the rest "the most absurd institution that ever took place among men"2: but generally in vain, as rivalries and factions will break out and lead to final breakdown of the system. In simple democracy, too, the people have sought to protect themselves from the grandees, by excluding them from office in rotation or entirely, or by exiling them. But again to no purpose; for the great men's influence rules from privacy, even from abroad, or another set take their places,—

Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret.3

The only proper way to treat them is to acknowledge their superiority and assign them a distinct share in the government of the whole, as one element in a mixed government, taking care at the same time to provide one more element in the person of a chief executive, beside that of the people, thus, as Adams considers, "giving the natural aristocracy in society its rational and just weight" (iv. 463), and no more. Otherwise the only method of repressing the aristocrats has been to raise up a single tyrant, the people concentrating all their power upon him, placing at his command a standing army, in return for his promised protection. But then this king becomes a despot not only over the aristocracy, but over the people also; so that these two have to unite against him, which sets the aristocracy up

' In Venice, iv., 354; in Carthage, 471; in general, 381, vi., 60; cf. 74.

2 VI., 63, in Poland; in Carthage, modified, iv., 471.

3 Horace, Epist., I., x., 24; quoted in this connection, v., 151.

again, and so on almost without end, the pendulum being "forever on the swing" (285). Instead of a balance, each holding the others up, there is a knocking down of each in turn, till at last the king gets all the others under him. This remedy, therefore, though preferable to the anarchy of democracy, is but a trifle better than the despotism of aristocracy, itself being the despotism of a single ruler. The only true remedy, preservative of liberty, is the mixed government.

Now the people alone set up the monarchy to defend them against the oppression of the assembly or senate of the nobles, or against the turmoil of their own assembly, or against the rivalry of both; and this monarchy necessarily becomes an evil both to the aristocracy and to the people themselves. But the aristocrats brought this evil upon themselves by their ambition and perpetual opposition both to a limited yet powerful first magistrate and to the people. Even the successful establishment of an aristocratic or oligarchic government was inquisitorial and oppressive to themselves. Therefore it is to the interest both of the aristocracy and of the people to combine and set up an arbiter between them, endowing him with the proper amount of power for the purpose, who shall no more be master of the one than of the other, or of either only as he is master of the other and only as each of them is master of him and of each other. What is attempted to be done naturally, but with combat and confusion, because without concert, should be successfully done with concert and with science. As in nature the two

"Each of the three branches must be, in its turn, both master and servant, governing and being governed by turns," vi., 43. "Neither the poor nor the rich should ever be suffered to be [sole] masters," ix.,

classes of the people are set over against each other, and from the upper classes emerges a single ruler, and then this ruler and the people combine against the aristocracy, or also at times the aristocracy and the people combine against this ruler when he becomes too tyrannical, and this ruler and the aristocracy combine to undo democracy when a simple democracy at times has come into being; so these three classes (for the single man has his adherents) should concertedly make this same arrangement in their constitution, to be amicably carried out instead of by fighting, doing designedly what "nature herself" has been "constantly calling out for" (vi. 39), putting into execution the design of Providence, and thereby accomplishing peacefully what even bioodshed was not competent to perform, the establishment of a permanent government.

II. THE PLAN OF GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER VIII

WE

THE GENERAL STRUCTURE

E are now prepared to examine the structure of government, according to Adams's plan. We have followed him through three stages in which he endeavored to prove "that there can be no government of laws without a balance, and that there can be no balance without three orders; and that even three orders can never balance each other, unless each in its department is independent and absolute" (iv. 548). The three orders in the government, he maintains, must be equally strong and equally independent.

To be equally strong, they must, in his opinion, each be armed with a full negative or veto upon the proposals of the others. "There can be no equal mixture," he assevers, "without a negative in each branch of the legislature" (447). These three vetoing powers he seems to regard as "the three checks, absolute and independent, needed for preserving the constitution (483),-needed for enabling each branch "to defend itself" from the encroachments of the others (296), and to "balance the other two" (503), the middling by this means helping the weakest against the inroads of the strongest. As already noticed, because such negatives

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