John Adams to Alexander Jardine, June 1, 1790
New York June 1 st 1790
Sir
I take the opportunity by General Mansell to acknowledge the
receipt of your polite letter of the 29 of May 1789 and to present you my thanks for the
valuable present of your entertaining travels. 1 Your compliments upon so hasty a production as
my book are very flattering. It would give me pleasure to pursue the subject through all
the known governments, and to correct or rather new make the whole work. But my life is
destined to labor of a much less agreable kind.— I know not how it is but mankind have
an aversion to the study of the science of government. Is it because the subject is dry?
To me, no romance is more entertaining. Those who take the lead in revolutions are
seldom well informed, and they commonly take more pains to inflame their own passions,
and those of society than to discover truth: and very few of those who have just ideas,
have the courage to pursue them. I know by experience that in revolutions the most fiery
spirits and flighty genius’s frequently obtain more influence than men of sense and
judgment: and the weakest men may carry foolish measures in opposition to wise ones
proposed by the ablest. France is in great danger from this quarter. The desire of
change in Europe is not wonderful Abuses in religion and government are so numerous and
oppresive to the people, that a reformation must take place or a general decline. The
armies of monks, soldiers and courtiers were become so numerous and costly that the
labor of the rest was not enough to maintain them. Either reformation or depopulation
must come.
I am so well satisfied of my own principles, that I think them as
eternal and unchangeable as the earth and its inhabitants. I know mankind must finally adopt a ballance between the executive and legislative powers,
and another ballance between the poor and the rich in the legislature; and quarrel till
they come to that conclusion— But how long they must quarrel before they agree in the
inference I know not—
John Adams