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A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, against the attack of M. Turgot in his letter to Dr. Price, dated the twenty-second day of March, 1778, 3 vols (Philadelphia, 1787); “Letter LIV. LOCKE, MILTON, and HUME,”; selection from vol. 1, pp. 369–71.
John Adams
John Adams (1735–1826), in the 1760s and 1770s in essays published in the Boston Gazette, had frequently quoted with approval from Hume’s History of England (see Part III below). In the Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Hume was also referred to approvingly. But in the passage reprinted below, Adams struck an attitude of American exceptionalism when he took aim at Hume and a string of other European thinkers. Adams’s criticisms of Hume’s “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” have added importance coming as they do on the eve of the Constitutional Convention. On Adams as a political thinker see C. Bradley Thompson, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty (Kansas, 1998); and Richard Alan Ryerson’s entry on Adams in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 6–17.
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Americans in this age are too enlightened to be bubbled out of their liberties, even by such mighty names as Locke, Milton, Turgot, or Hume; they know that popular elections of one essential branch of the legislature, frequently repeated, are the only possible method of forming a free constitution, or of preserving the government of laws from the domination of men, or of preserving their lives, liberties, or properties in security; they know, though Locke and Milton did not, that when popular elections are given up, liberty and free government must be given up. Upon this principle, they cannot approve the plan of Mr. Hume, in his “Idea of a perfect Commonwealth.” — “Let all the freeholders of twenty pounds a year in the country, and all the householders worth five hundred pounds in the town parishes, meet annually in the parish church, and choose, by ballot, some freeholder of the county for their member, whom we shall call the county-representative. Let the hundred county-representatives, two days after their election, meet in the county-town, and choose by ballot, from their own body, ten county-magistrates, and one senator. There are therefore, in the whole commonwealth, one hundred senators, eleven hundred county-magistrates, and ten thousand county-representatives; for we shall bestow on all senators the authority of county-magistrates, and on all county-magistrates the authority of county-representatives. Let the senators meet in the capital, and be endowed with the whole executive power of the commonwealth; the power of peace and war, of giving orders to generals, admirals, and ambassadors, and, in short, all the prerogatives of a British king, except his negative. Let the county representatives meet in their particular counties, and possess the whole legislative power of the commonwealth; the greater number of counties deciding the question; and where these are equal, let the senate have the casting-vote. Every new law must first be debated in the senate; and, though rejected by it, if ten senators insist and protest, it must be sent down to the counties: the senate, if they please, may join to the copy of the law their reasons for receiving or rejecting it,” &c. — The senate, by the ballot of Venice or Malta, are to choose a protector, who represents the dignity of the commonwealth, and presides in the senate; two secretaries of state, and a council of state, a council of religion and learning, a council of trade, a council of laws, a council of war, a council of the admiralty — each of five persons, all senators; and seven commissioners of the treasury.
If you compare this plan, as well as those of Locke and Milton, with the principles and examples in the foregoing letters, you will soon form a judgment of them; it is not my design to enlarge upon them. That of Hume is a complicated aristocracy, and would soon behave like all other aristocracies. It is enough to say, that the representatives of the people may by the senators be deprived of a voice in the legislature; because the senate have their choice of sending the laws down, either to the county-magistrates or county-representatives. It is an ingenious device, to be sure, to get rid of the people and their representatives; besides that the delays and confusions would be endless, in sending the laws to be debated in as many separate commonwealths as there are counties. But the two decisive objections are, 1. Letting the nobility or senate into the management of the executive power; and, 2. Taking the eyes of the people off from their representatives in the legislature. The liberty of the people depends entirely on the constant and direct communication between them and the legislature, by means of their representatives.
The improvements to be made in the English constitution lie entirely in the house of commons. If county-members were abolished, and representatives proportionally and frequently chosen in small districts, and if no candidate could be chosen but an established long settled inhabitant of that district, it would be impossible to corrupt the people of England, and the house of commons might be an immortal guardian of the national liberty. Instead of projects to abolish kings and lords, if the house of commons had been attended to, wild wars would not have been engaged in nor countless millions thrown away, nor would there have remained an imperfection perhaps in the English constitution. Let the people take care of the balance, and especially their part of it: but the preservation of their peculiar part of it will depend still upon the existence and independence of the other two; the instant the other branches are destroyed, their own branch, their own deputies, become their tyrants.