The Republican journal., 1922-01-05
A Balanced Government
BY JOHN ADAMS, IN 1889


We should remember that the perfec-
liability of man is only human and terres.
trial perfecta bility. Cold will still freeze,
and fire will never cease to burn; disease
and vice will continue to disorder, anc
death to terrify mankind. Emulation
next to self preservation will forever be
the great spring of human actions, and
+ the balance of a we'll ordered govern
ment will alone be able to prevent that
emulation from degenerating into dam
qerous ambition, irregular rivalrIes de-
/ structive factions, wasting sedItions, and
! bloody civil wars.
/ The great question will forever remain,
who shall work2 Our species cannot all
/ be idle Leisure Ior study must ever be
/ the portion of a few. The number EN-
ployed in government must forever be
very small Food, raiment, and habita-
lions, the indispensable wants of all, are
not to be obtained without the continual
toll of ninety-nine in hundred OF man.
kind. As rest is rapture to the weary
man, those who labor little will always
be envied by those who labor much,
though the latter in reality be probably
the most enviable. With all the encour-
agements, public and private, which can
ever be given to general education, ana
it is scarcely possible they should be too
MANY or too great, the laboring part of
the people can never be learned. The
controversy between the rich and the
poor, the laborious and the idle, the learn
ed and the ignorant, distinctions as old as
the creation, and as extensive as the
globe, distinctions which no art or policy,
no degree of virture or philosophy can
ever wholly destroy, will continue, and
rivalries will spring out of them. These
parties will be represented IN the leglsia-
ture, and must be balanced, or one VIII
Cypress the other. There will never prob
ably be found any other mode OF estao-
fishing an equilibrium than by constltu-
ting the representation OF each an Inde-
pendent branch of the legislature, and an,
independent executive authority, such as
that in our government to be a third
branch and a mediator or an arbitrator
between them. Property must De Sc
cured, or liberty cannot exist. But II
unlimited or unbalanced power of dis
posing property, be put in the hands OF
those who have no property, France will
find, as we have found, the lamb COM
mitted to Il of the wolf. In
sue c heuc exnortaLons
and .londl assembly TO
the property, will be
req he MARBLES of the
son, The great art of
law llancing the poor
aqai gislature, and in
cons We perfect Ddi-
ance he executive power, at the
same time that no individual or party
can become its rival. The essence or
free government consists in an etfectual
control of rivalries. The executive and
the legislative powers are natural rivals;
and if each has not an effectual control
over the other, the weaker will ever be
the lamb in the paws of the wolf. The
nation which will not adopt an equilio-
rum of power must adopt despotlsm.
There is no other alternative. Rivairies
must be controlled, or they will throw
all things into confusion; and there is
nothing but despotism or balance OF
power which can control them. Even IN
the simple monarchies, the nobility and
the iudicatures constitute a balance,
though very imperfect one, against the
ROYALTIES