John Adams

DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE
UNITED STATES (1787
)

Excerpts from LETTER LII on

ROME.

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Instructor's Introduction: John Adams was one of the leading founders of the United States and served as the second President of the United States.  He was an expert on the history of politics, and through his book Defence of the Constitutions influenced the thinking of the Constitutional Convention which wrote the U.S. constitution.  In the excerpt below, Adams explains what he thinks Americans can learn from Roman history.  More specifically, he believed he knew the reasons why the Roman republic failed, and how to prevent the U.S. from suffering a similar fate. Three questions to ponder here are 1) In what circumstances was the political system of Rome successful? 2) Who is most to blame for wrecking the Roman constitution, and in what way? 3) What does Adams suggest is the solution to this threat to stability?

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Power [in Rome] was lodged with the senate, a body which, though by the emulation of its members too much disposed to war, and ambitious of conquest, was never surpassed in magnanimity, ability, or in steadiness, by any council of state whatever. The people had submitted to the senate, as possessed of an authority which was founded in the prevailing opinion of their superior worth; and even the most aspiring of the commons allowed themselves to be governed by an order of men, amongst whom they themselves, by proper efforts and suitable merit, might hope to ascend.

 . . . The nobles began to avail themselves of the high authority and advantages of their station, and to accumulate property as well as honours. Citizens contended for offices in the state, as the road to lucrative appointments abroad; and when they had obtained this end, and had reigned for a while in some province, they brought back from their government a profusion of wealth ill acquired, and the habit of arbitrary and uncontrolled command. When disappointed in the pursuits of fortune abroad, they became the leaders of dangerous factions at home; or, when suddenly possessed of great wealth, they became the agents of corruption, to disseminate idleness and the love of ruinous amusements in the minds of the people.

The city was gradually crowded with a populace, who, tempted with the cheap or gratuitous distribution of corn, by the frequency of public shows, by the consequence they enjoyed as members of the popular assemblies, flocked to Rome. There they were corrupted by idleness and indigence; and the order itself was continually [augmented] by the frequent accession of emancipated slaves. A turbulent populace tyrannized, in their turn, over the masters of the world, and wreaked on the conquerors of so many nations the evils which they themselves had so freely inflicted on mankind. Citizens of this extraction . . . became a part of that faction, who are ever actuated by envy to their superiors, by mercenary views, or by abject fear; who are ever ready to espouse the cause of any leader, against the restraints of public order; disposed to vilify the more respectable ranks of men, and, by their indifference on the subjects of justice or honour, to frustrate every principle that may be employed for the government of mankind, besides fear and compulsion.

Although citizens of this description were yet far from being the majority at Rome, yet it is probable that they were in numbers sufficient to contaminate the whole body of the people. . . While the inferior people sunk in their characters, or were debased by the circumstances mentioned, the superior ranks, by their application to affairs of state, by their education, by the ideas of high birth and family distinction, by the superiority of fortune, began to rise in their estimation, in their pretensions, and in their power; and they entertained some degree of contempt for persons, whom the laws still required them to admit as their fellow-citizens and equals.

In this disposition of parties, so dangerous in a commonwealth, and amidst materials so likely to catch the flame, some sparks were thrown, that soon kindled up anew all the popular animosities which seemed to have been so long extinguished. Tiberius Gracchus, born of a plebeian family, but ennobled by the honours of his father, by his descent, on the side of his mother, from the first Scipio Africanus, and by his alliance with the second Scipio, who had married his sister, being now a tribune of the people, and possessed of all the accomplishments required in a popular leader, great ardour, resolution, and eloquence, formed a project in itself extremely alarming, and in its consequences dangerous to the peace of the republic. Being called to account for his conduct as quæstor in Spain, the severity he experienced from the senate, and the protection he obtained from the people, filled his breast with animosity to the one, and a prepossession in favour of the other. Actuated by these dispositions, or by an idea not uncommon to enthusiastic minds, that the unequal distribution of property, so favourable to the rich, is an injury to the poor, he proposed a revival of the law or Licinius, by which Roman citizens had been restrained from accumulating estates in land above the value of five hundred jugera, little more than half as many acres.

This was impracticable, and even dangerous, in the present state of the republic. The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary, in states of considerable extent, as labour and good government. The poor are destined to labour; and the rich, by the advantages of education, independence, and leisure, are qualified for superior stations. The empire was now greatly extended, and owed its safety, and the order of its government, to a respectable aristocracy, founded on the possession of fortune, as well as personal qualities and public honours. The rich were not, without some violent convulsion, to be stripped of estates which they themselves had bought, or which they had inherited from their ancestors. The poor were not qualified at once to be raised to a state of equality with persons inured to a better condition. The project seemed to be as ruinous to government as it was to the security of property, and tended to place the members of the commonwealth, by one rash and precipitate step, in situations in which they were not at all qualified to act. For these reasons, as well as from motives of private interest affecting the majority of the nobles, the project of Tiberius was strenuously opposed by the senate; and, from motives of envy, interest, or mistaken zeal for justice, as warmly supported by the opposite party. Acting in concert with Appius Claudius, whose daughter he had married, a senator of the family of Crassus, who was then at the head of the priesthood, and Mutius Scævola the consul, he exhausted all his art, and displayed all his eloquence in declamation; but when he came to propose that the law should be read, he found that his opponents had procured M. Octavius, one of his colleagues, to interpose his negative, and forbid any further proceeding in the business. Here, according to the law and the constitution, the matter should have dropped: but inflamed and unbalanced parties are not to be restrained by laws and constitutions. . .  The constitution thus violated, Gracchus next violated the sacred character of his colleague the tribune. The senate were transported with indignation; violence ensued, and the two Gracchi fell. Afterwards Marius carried the popular pretentions still higher; and Sylla might, if he would, have been emperor. Cæsar followed, and completed the catastrophe.

 

This [Roman] commonwealth, by the splendor of its actions, the extent of its empire, the wisdom of its councils, the talents, integrity, and courage of a multitude of characters, exhibits the fairest prospect of our species, and is the most signal example, excepting England, of the wisdom and utility of a mixture of the three powers in a commonwealth: on the other hand, the various vicissitudes of its fortune, its perpetual domestic contests, and internal revolutions, are the clearest proofs of the evils arising from the want of complete independence in each branch, and from an ineffectual balance.