A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America

Summary

John Adams wrote A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America in London, where he was serving as the first American minister to Great Britain. The occasion was a letter of 1778 from the French statesman Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot to the English minister Richard Price, published by Price in 1784, which regretted that most American states had imitated England with a governor, a council and an assembly instead of collecting all authority into one centre, the nation. Adams answered with an immense survey of governments past and present, meant to show that a single assembly would not secure liberty and that every free state needs a balance among the one, the few and the many. The first volume, dated from Grosvenor Square on January 1, 1787, was published in London by Charles Dilly that year and quickly reprinted in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, where it circulated while the Federal Convention was meeting. Volumes II and III, chiefly on the republics of medieval Italy and on Marchamont Nedham, followed in 1787 and 1788. The library text is Volume I only, as revised by Adams's grandson Charles Francis Adams for the Works of 1851, who replaced the original division into letters to a friend with chapters. Adams's Preface hails the thirteen state constitutions as governments founded on the authority of the people by reason and study, without claims of miracle, and names three modern discoveries in free government: representation, the separation of the executive from the legislature, and a balance in the legislature by three independent branches. Chapters I to III then review modern republics: the democratic Swiss cantons, San Marino and Biscay; the aristocracies of Bern, Geneva, Genoa and Venice; the United Provinces, Poland, Neuchâtel and England. Each has some first magistrate and some senate, a pattern Adams draws out in a recapitulation. Chapter IV weighs the opinions of Swift, Franklin and Price; Chapter V the writers Machiavelli, Sidney, Montesquieu and Harrington; and Chapter VI the historians and philosophers, beginning with Polybius on mixed government and including Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plato, Locke, Milton and Hume. Chapters VII to IX turn to antiquity: the democracies of Athens, Carthage and the Greek cities, the aristocracies of Rome, Sparta and Croton, and the kingly republics of the ancient Germans and Homer's Ithaca. The Conclusion restates the case: three branches of power have a foundation in nature, legislative and executive must be separated, and the executive needs a negative to defend itself. Adams ends by imagining how a single sovereign assembly would actually appoint generals, officers and ambassadors, and argues that it would drift toward aristocracy and faction. The book made Adams known as the leading American theorist of mixed and balanced government.

Plot or Argument

• Editor's preface, Turgot's letter and Adams's Preface

  Charles Francis Adams explains the occasion, the publishing history and his revisions. An extract from Turgot's letter to Price follows. Adams's own Preface celebrates progress in the arts and sciences, laments that the science of government has stood still, lists representation, separation of powers and a three-part legislature as the modern discoveries, and presents the American constitutions as governments built on reason like a palace designed after study of Vitruvius and Palladio.

• Preliminary Observations

  Adams introduces Turgot, the Abbé de Mably and Richard Price as able and well-meaning critics, quotes Turgot's objection that the states had copied England's king, lords and commons without reason, and asks what Turgot could mean by collecting all authority into one centre.

• Chapter I: modern democratic republics

  San Marino, Biscay, the democratic Swiss cantons of Appenzell, Unterwalden, Glarus, Uri and Schwyz, the Grisons and the United Provinces. Even in the smallest and simplest democracies Adams finds councils and leading families, and he explains their survival by smallness, poverty and the protection of neighbours.

• Chapter II: aristocratic republics

  Bern, Fribourg, Soleure, Lucerne, Zurich and the smaller Swiss towns, Geneva, Lucca, Genoa and Venice. Adams admires the stability that modern aristocracies have won through innumerable checks, but shows how power has drifted into a few families where no popular branch or strong magistrate balances the nobles.

• Chapter III: monarchical republics and recapitulation

  England, Poland and Neuchâtel. England's balance of king, lords and commons is the model of a free constitution; Poland shows a weak king overpowered by nobles. The recapitulation notes that every people surveyed has a first magistrate and a senate under some name.

• Chapters IV–V: philosophers and writers on government

  Swift's discourse on the dissensions of Athens and Rome, the reported opinion of Franklin in favour of a single assembly (with his image of wagoners braking a wagon downhill, which Adams turns into an argument for balance), and Price. Then Machiavelli, Algernon Sidney, Montesquieu on the English constitution, and James Harrington's Oceana, with long extracts and commentary.

• Chapter VI: opinions of historians

  Polybius's account of the cycle of governments and of Rome's mixed constitution, Dionysius of Halicarnassus on early Rome, Plato's account in the Republic of how governments pass into one another, and shorter notes on Locke, Milton and Hume, read as witnesses to the need for balanced orders.

• Chapters VII–IX: ancient republics

  The democracies of Carthage, Athens, the Achaean League, Crete, Corinth, Argos, Elis, Thebes, Sybaris and Locris, with the Roman people; the aristocracies of Rome, Lacedaemon and Croton; and the monarchical republics of the ancient Germans and of Ithaca in Homer. Adams draws repeated lessons from factions, banishments and tyrannies where the orders were unbalanced.

• Chapter X: Conclusion

  Three branches of power have an unalterable foundation in nature; liberty depends on separating legislative and executive; the executive needs a negative. Congress under the Confederation is called a diplomatic rather than a legislative assembly, a phrase that drew a respectful objection from Jefferson, printed in a note. Adams closes by following a single all-powerful assembly through the appointment of generals, officers and envoys to show how it would breed aristocratic influence, delay and faction.

Characters

• Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, critic answered

  French economist and former controller-general whose letter to Price faulted the American states for dividing authority among separate bodies.

• Richard Price, critic and correspondent

  English Dissenting minister and friend of America who published Turgot's letter; Chapter IV examines his views.

• Benjamin Franklin, reputed advocate of a single assembly

  Presided over the Pennsylvania convention of 1776; Chapter IV discusses his reported comparison of two houses to a wagon with oxen yoked at both ends.

• Polybius, ancient authority

  Greek historian whose analysis of Rome's mixed constitution opens Chapter VI.

• James Harrington, English republican writer

  Author of Oceana, whose scheme of balanced orders Chapter V extracts at length.

• Cicero, ancient authority

  Cited in the Preface for preferring a commonwealth blended of royal, aristocratic and popular elements, with his comparison of a well-ordered city to musical harmony.

Lessons

• Balance among the one, the few and the many

  Adams argues that every society contains a first magistrate, a group of leading men and the body of the people, whatever names they bear. Liberty is secure only when each has its own branch and none can absorb the others. His survey of Swiss cantons, Italian cities and ancient Greece is meant to show what happens when one order is left without a counterweight.

  • According to the recapitulation after Chapter III, what did Adams find in every republic he surveyed?
  • Why does Adams think a balance between only two orders, nobles and people, produced the swings between tyranny and rebellion he describes in Greece?
  • Is Adams's three-part pattern a discovery about human nature or a reading of history to fit a theory? Give reasons.

• Giving ambition a place where it can be watched

  Adams believed that the rich, the well-born and the able will always gain influence over a popular assembly. Instead of pretending otherwise, he would separate them into a senate where their talents serve the public and their influence is checked by the other branches. He calls this an ostracism that honours rather than banishes.

  • Why does Adams think plain citizens in a single assembly would be overmatched by the most distinguished members?
  • What does Adams mean by calling a senate a kind of ostracism?
  • Does separating the influential into one branch protect the people or entrench the influential? How might Adams answer?

• History as the laboratory of politics

  Adams compares the framers of the state constitutions to a wise architect who studies Vitruvius, Palladio and the ruins of famous buildings before designing a palace. The Defence applies that method on a large scale, collecting the experience of dozens of republics so that Americans can adopt what has worked and avoid what has failed.

  • What does the architect comparison in the Preface suggest about how constitutions should be made?
  • Why does Adams insist that institutions made in America must begin right?
  • What are the strengths and dangers of reasoning about government chiefly from historical examples?

• A strong executive guards the people's rights

  In the Preface and the Conclusion Adams argues that the people's liberties can never be preserved without separating executive power from the legislature and giving the executive a negative. His closing sketch of a single assembly that must itself appoint every officer shows how mixing the powers produces delay, patronage and the rise of a few families.

  • Why does Adams think the executive must have a negative on the legislature?
  • In the Conclusion, how would a single assembly choose its generals and officers, and what would follow?
  • How does Adams's argument compare with the presidential veto in the Constitution adopted in 1787?

Context

In the 1780s the new American states were experimenting with constitutions. Pennsylvania and Georgia had adopted single-chamber legislatures with weak executives, while Massachusetts, under a constitution largely drafted by Adams in 1779, had a governor with a veto, a senate and a house. European admirers of America, including Turgot, Mably and Price, favoured simpler forms and doubted the value of copying England. At home the Confederation was weak and, in the winter of 1786–1787, Shays's Rebellion in western Massachusetts alarmed many leaders. Adams, in London as minister to the court of George III, wrote to defend the balanced model.

Composition

According to Charles Francis Adams, the work was begun on October 4, 1786, and the three volumes were finished by the end of 1787, written in haste amid diplomatic duties. Volume I, prefaced from Grosvenor Square on January 1, 1787, was published in London by C. Dilly and reprinted in Boston, New York and Philadelphia; Volumes II and III followed in 1787 and 1788. Later editions include a French translation (Paris, 1792), John Stockdale's London edition of 1794 and William Cobbett's Philadelphia edition of 1797. The library text is Volume I as revised for the Works of 1851, where the editor corrected misprints and translations and rearranged the original letters to a friend into chapters.

Reception

The first volume reached America as the Federal Convention assembled and, the editor reports, was much read by its members. Jefferson wrote from Paris in February 1787 that he had read it with great satisfaction, while questioning its description of Congress. Admirers valued its learning; critics then and later found it disorderly and suspected it of favouring monarchy and aristocracy, a charge that followed Adams into the politics of the 1790s and was developed at length by John Taylor of Caroline in 1814. Historians continue to differ over whether the Defence looks back to classical mixed government or anticipates the American system of separated and checked powers; most agree that it is the fullest statement of Adams's political thought.

Comparisons

• adams-selected-writings

  Thoughts on Government (1776) sketches in a few pages the same plan of governor, council and assembly that the Defence supports with three volumes of history; the library's Adams selection also contains the Defence's first volume.

• the-spirit-of-the-laws

  Chapter V quotes Montesquieu's account of the English constitution from Book XI, chapter 6, and Adams builds on its separation of legislative, executive and judicial power, adding his own insistence on three branches within the legislature.

• the-federalist-papers

  Madison and Hamilton also defend a bicameral Congress and an executive veto, but they ground the design in the extended republic and in ambition counteracting ambition, while Adams relies on a natural division of society into the one, the few and the many.

• articles-of-confederation

  The Conclusion describes the single-chamber Congress of the Articles as a diplomatic assembly of state deputies, acceptable for a league but no model for a state government.

• the-histories

  Adams's Preface recalls Herodotus's story of the neighing horse of Darius, which ends the Persian debate on monarchy, oligarchy and democracy in Book III, as proof that the simple forms were understood long ago.

• politics

  Aristotle's classification of constitutions and his preference for a mixed polity stand behind the classical tradition Adams surveys through Polybius and Cicero in the Preface and Chapter VI.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The Preface's three modern discoveries in free government, and its picture of the American founders as architects consulting Vitruvius and Palladio.
• The musical comparison borrowed from Cicero: treble, tenor and bass that make harmony only when composed.
• The recapitulation after Chapter III, where Adams gathers what every republic he has surveyed has in common.
• Franklin's wagon with oxen yoked at both ends in Chapter IV, and Adams's reply from Newton's laws of motion.
• The Conclusion's step-by-step account of how a single sovereign assembly would appoint officers.

Key terms and names

Mixed or balanced government

A constitution that gives the one (a first magistrate), the few (a senate) and the many (a popular house) each a share of power and a check on the others. Adams calls it the only secure form of free government.

Collecting all authority into one centre

Turgot's phrase for vesting all power in a single national assembly. Adams treats the whole Defence as an answer to it.

Natural aristocracy

Adams's name for the rich, the well-born and the able, who gain influence in any society; he would place them in a senate where they can serve and be checked.

Negative

A veto. Adams insists the executive must have a negative on the legislature, and each house on the other, so that no branch can absorb the rest.

Diplomatic assembly

Adams's description of the Confederation Congress in the Conclusion: a meeting of state deputies rather than a true legislature, which Jefferson questioned in a letter printed in the notes.

Ostracism

In Athens, the banishing of an overly powerful citizen. Adams uses the word for removing the most influential men from the popular house into a senate.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did Turgot object to in the American state constitutions, according to the Preliminary Observations?
2. Comprehension Which three discoveries in the constitution of a free government does the Preface name?
3. Comprehension What story about Franklin does Chapter IV report, and how does Adams answer it?
4. Interpretation Why does Adams praise the thirteen governments for being founded without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and how does that fit with his appeal to nature and history?
5. Interpretation Adams says the rich, the well-born and the able will overpower simple honesty in a single house. Is his remedy a protection for ordinary citizens or a concession to the powerful? Use the Preface.
6. Interpretation How does the musical image of treble, tenor and bass shape Adams's idea of what a good constitution does with social differences?
7. Big Question Can institutions make up for the faults of human nature, or do they only work among a virtuous people?
8. Big Question Is it wiser to design a government by studying the history of many nations, or by reasoning from first principles about what people deserve?

Faith Connections

• Augustine, City of God II.21 (Great Conversation)

  Augustine preserves Cicero's comparison of a well-ordered commonwealth to the harmony of high, low and middle voices, the passage Adams quotes in the Preface. Augustine goes on to ask whether Rome ever had the justice that Cicero's definition of a commonwealth requires, a question Adams's appeal to reason, morality and the Christian religion also raises.

• 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 (Scripture)

  Paul describes one body with many members, none of which can say to another that it has no need of it. Adams's argument that the one, the few and the many each have a proper place in the commonwealth offers a political parallel that students can weigh against Paul's spiritual teaching.

• James 4:1-2 (Scripture)

  James traces quarrels and wars to desires that war within us. Adams's historical chapters on Greek and Italian factions assume a similar realism about ambition, which he answers with institutional checks rather than with exhortation alone.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Every society naturally contains a first magistrate, a few leading men and the body of the people. History shows that where one or two of these orders hold all power, liberty is lost through tyranny, aristocratic usurpation or faction. Where all three have their own branch, with the executive separate and armed with a negative, each checks the others and the laws are secure. Turgot's single assembly would mix the powers and let the influential few dominate. Therefore the American states were right to adopt a governor, a senate and a house, and they should keep and strengthen that balance.

Rhetorical device: analogy. In the Preface Adams compares the orders of society to the treble, tenor and bass, which exist in nature and make either rapture or noise depending on whether they are arranged (quote 4). Elsewhere he compares the framers to an architect and answers Franklin's wagon with Newton's law of action and reaction (quote 7).

Debate: Resolved: That a legislature divided into two houses protects liberty better than a single assembly.

Memory Work

Corruption in elections is the great enemy of freedom.

The institutions now made in America will not wholly wear out for thousands of years. It is of the last importance, then, that they should begin right.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Using the Preface, the recapitulation after Chapter III and the Conclusion, explain why Adams believed that every free government needs three branches and an independent executive, and evaluate whether his survey of history supports the conclusion he draws.

Comparison with The Federalist Papers: Adams defends balance among social orders; Madison in Federalist 10 and 51 defends a large republic in which ambition counteracts ambition. Compare their accounts of why power must be divided, and argue which better explains the Constitution of 1787.

Medical Lens

The Defence has no medical subject. Its few medical touches are figures of speech or passing references: the Preface warns that executive power lodged in an assembly will corrupt the legislature as rust corrupts iron or arsenic poisons the body, and lists Zabdiel Boylston's practice of inoculation beside Franklin's electricity among American achievements in the arts and sciences.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Assign each student one republic from Chapters I–III or VII–IX. Each prepares a one-page report naming its first magistrate, its senate or council, and its popular body, then the class tests Adams's recapitulation against the reports.

• Dialogue

  Write an exchange of letters in 1787 between Adams in London and Franklin in Philadelphia about the wagon with oxen at both ends, each defending his view of one house or two.

• Essay

  Adams says the institutions made in America will last for thousands of years and must begin right. Choose one feature of the Constitution of 1787 and argue whether Adams's Defence helps explain it.

• Adaptation

  Turn the Conclusion's imagined single assembly into a short play in which the members try to choose a general, a navy captain and an ambassador in one afternoon.

Further Reading

• The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, Gordon S. Wood

  Includes a chapter on the Defence and its place in American constitutional thought.

• John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty, C. Bradley Thompson

  A sympathetic study of Adams's political philosophy with extended attention to the Defence.

• The Changing Political Thought of John Adams, John R. Howe

• John Adams and the Prophets of Progress, Zoltán Haraszti

  Reads Adams's marginal notes in the books of Turgot, Condorcet and others.

• John Adams, David McCullough