mon to confound them; and on the foundation of this error, improper conclusions have been inferred against the commons of England.

While liberty and the deputies of the people made a figure, and while the prerogative of the sovereign was restrained and directed by national councils and assemblies, in the other countries of Europe, it appears the height of wildness to conclude, as Hume has done in his History of England, and Robertson in his plausible introduction to the History of Charles V. that in Britain, the inhabitants were in a state of slavery; and that the mandate of the Prince was law. His condition, so far from being despotic, was every moment exposed to danger and insult.. He might be deposed for a slight offence....he was elected to his office....and his coronation oath expressed his subjection to the community, and bound him to protect the rights of his subjects.

The Anglo-Saxon laws are proofs, that instead of governing by his will or caprice, he was under the controul of the national assembly. In the preambles to them, we find that the wites or sapientes, were a constituent branch of the government. The expression, seniores sapientes populi mei, is a part of the prologue to the ordinations of King Ina, anno 712. And these sapientes populi, or deputies of the people, appear in the laws of other princes of the Anglo-Saxons.

By a curious testimony, it is even obvious that the word sapientes must have meant the commons.

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In the supplication del County de Devonshire to Edward III. there are these expressions: "Que luy please par l'avys des prelats, countees, barons, et autres sages in cest present parliament ordeiner, &c. The bishops, the earls, barons and other sages, in this present parliament, ordain." This supplication. is printed in the 4 Inst. p. 232, in the reign of the third Edward: from the autres sages expressing the commons, it may surely be decisively inferred that sapientes had the same meaning in older times.

In fact, the expressions that denote the AngloSaxon assemblies, allude to their nationality. "Com mune concilium, conventus omnium, concilium cleri et populi, omnium principium et omnium sapientum conventus, &c. The common council, the general assembly, the assembly of the clergy and people, the convention of all the chiefs and all the wise men," are appellations which mark forcibly the interference and assistance of the commons.

Dr. Robertson has, with more art, although not with equal force of thought and reasoning, inculcated the same opinions as Mr. Hume. The former was better versed in jesuitical intrigue, the latter deeper founded in metaphysical argument. They both employed themselves in the cause of monarchy, and their works, from beginning to conclusion, can only be regarded as plausible defences of prerogative. Mr. Adams, trusting to the undue weight of what are called great authorities,

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has put implicit confidence in their assertions, and in a theory which was framed by them, for the express purpose of complimenting royalty at the expence of their nation.

From the same cause have sprung the Senates of the United States. In England, and every other - country where the feudal system has been established, an order of men superior to the commons necessarily exist, and must remain until a total revolution in property as well as government takes place; but in America, where the distinction of superior and vassal is unknown, and where men hold their property by an equal tenure, the erection ofa senate, or house of chieftains, is a direct violation of the rights of citizens, and can serve no other purpose than to clog the wheels of government, and add to the national expence.

Mr. Adams urges as an argument in favor of the establishment of a Senate, "that the rich, the well-born and the able, acquire an influence among the people that would soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense in a House of Representatives. The most illustrious of them should, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a Senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism. A member of a Senate of immense wealth, the most respected birth and transcendant abilities, has no influence in the nation, in comparison of what he would have in a single representative assembly. When a Senate exists, the most powerful man in the State

may safely be admitted into the House of Repre-sentatives, because the people have it in their power to remove him into the Senate as soon as his influence becomes dangerous." A weaker argument, than this, could scarcely have been conceived; since it is obvious, that if the people have it in their power to remove a member from the House of Representatives into the Senate, when his power becomes dangerous, that they have it also in their power to elect another representative; which would answer a much better purpose; for, if a man's principles are such as to be dangerous in one house, they will be equally so in another.

"The Teutonic institutions described by Cæsar and Tacitus," says Mr. Adams, "are the most me. morable experiment, merely political, ever yet made in human affairs....they have spread all over Europe, and have lasted eighteen hundred years. Nothing, therefore, ought to have more weight with America, to determine her judgment against mixing the authority of the one, the few and the many, assuredly in one assembly, than the wide spread miseries and final slavery of almost all mankind, in consequence of such an ignorant policy in the ancient Germans." Mr. Adams could not possibly have expressed sentiments more hostile to the pure principles of republicanism than these. It is well known, that while the superior and the vassal, the chief and the retainer, were intimately connected, appeared in the same assembly, and were only distinguished by virtue and talents, the feudal association, was

a state of the greatest happiness....violence and corruption did not disfigure society, until the original manners which the Germans brought from their woods began to decay. The separation of the interests of the lord and the vassal, by the two Houses of Assembly, first altered the condition of society. Sufferance soon succeeded to enjoyment, oppression to freedom, and contentions arose, which terminated in the destruction of the independence of the European nations. Yet this latter state is that which Mr. Adams labours to impose upon Americans; and to divide their society, by erecting a house of noble Senators in the midst of republicans.

These having been the acknowledged sentiments of Mr. Adams, it may appear strange how he became the President of a free people, and the successor of the virtuous Washington. The services which he performed towards the establishment of American independence, by means of his intrigues at the court of Versailles, and the profuse distribution of British gold in the United States, can only account for this extraordinary election. But notwithstanding, upon strict enquiry, he does not appear to have been the choice of the real majority. The following facts related by Mr. Callender, though they may be denied by the friends of Mr. Adams, are certainly correct....the truth of them has been fully ascertained:

In Pennsylvania Mr. Adams gained a vote by the trick of a Post-master, who stopt the mail from Greene county, till the poll was closed at Philadel