A Defence of the Constitutions of Authorities of the US of America: Quantity II

On this second quantity of A Defence of the Constitutions of Authorities of the US of America, John Adams continues his argument towards Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot and his theories of “accumulating all authority into one heart.”

Delving into the Italian republics of the center age, Adams makes use of pure historical past, in depth extracts from the works of Italian historians, to show to the American individuals, and the world, that the identical tumult, corruption and blood that so pervaded these governments of the previous, could be the consequences of any authorities so constituted.

“It’s not simple to conceive what additional experiments will be product of a sovereignty in a single meeting, or how the results to be drawn from them will be extra decisive. Whether or not the meeting consists of a bigger or a smaller quantity, of nobles or commons, of nice individuals or little, of wealthy or poor, of considerable males or the rabble, the consequences are all the identical,—No order, no security, no liberty, as a result of no authorities of legislation.”

“There are extant a mess of explicit histories of those cities, full of wonderful warning for the individuals of America. Let me advocate it to you, my younger readers, who’ve time sufficient earlier than you, to make yourselves masters of the Italian language, and avail your nation of all of the instruction contained in them.”

Impressed by occasions in Europe and influencing occasions in America, Adams’ in depth work is a partial historical past of man’s everlasting wrestle to manage energy, and may serve all the time as a guidebook on the means to maintain a individuals free.