The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams

9. THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT

Write_251-300.indd 285 3/30/12 1:32 PM THOUGHTS ON GovERNMENT Write_251-300.indd 286 3/30/12 1:32 PM IN LATE 1775, JoHN ADAMS ASSUMED A LEADING ROLE in the Continental Congress to encourage the thirteen colonies w begin designing and constructing new governments. The following May, Congress passed a resolution recommending to the various colonial assemblies that they establish new governments that would "best conduce to the happiness and Safety of their Constituents in particular and America in General." Considered by many as the one person who had thought most deeply about constitutional design, Adams was frequently called upon to recommend various plans of government . ]ust prior to the May resolution, several members of the Continental Congress approached him for advice on how to frame new constitutions for their respective states. Adams responded to their requests with his most influential writing of the Revolutionary period, Thoughts on Government. Adams also wrote the Thoughts as an antidote to the political prescriptions advanced in Thomas Paine's recently published Common Sense. This short essay stands as a distillation of Adams's most advanced political thinking. The principles that he would later put forth in his great treatise, A Defi:nce ofthe Constitutions ofGovernment ofthe United States of America, are all found in Thoughts: republican government, frequent elections , separation of powers, bicameralism, a unitary executive armed with a strong veto power, and an independent judiciary. The influence of Thoughts on Government on American constitutionmakers was widespread. The historical evidence strongly suggests that Thoughts was used as a constitutional blueprint in North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. 286 Write_251-300.indd 287 3/30/12 1:32 PM 9 THOUGHTS ON GovERNMENT: APPLICABLE TO THE PRES E NT STATE oF THE AMERICAN CoLONIES MY DEAR SIR, -If I was equal to the task of forming a plan for the government of a colony, I should be flattered with your request, and very happy to comply with it; because, as the divine science of politics is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government, which are generally institutions that last for many generations, there can be no employment more agreeable to a benevolent mind than a research after the best. Pope flattered tyrants too much when he said, "For forms of government let fools contest, That which is best administered is best." Nothing can be more fallacious than this. But poets read history to collect flowers, not fruits; they attend to fanciful images, not the effects of social institutions. Nothing is more certain, from the history of nations and nature of man, than that some forms of government are better fitted for being well administered than others. We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in Write_251-300.indd 288 3/30/12 1:32 PM THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT virtue. Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this. If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form? Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it. Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed, the former is but a part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness. The foundation ofevery government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people. The...