John Adams Quotes
A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
Adams, John. Thoughts on Government. Reprinted in The Works of John Adams, edited by Charles Francis Adams, vol. 4, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, p. 196.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
This was in effect a “Real Estate Promotional Document. Democracy, self government, and the right to set their own taxes were major selling points. See {611572} and {611571} for other “features.”
This constitution was written 7 years before the national constitutional convention. It shows that there was concern about the separation of powers in United States even before the Constitution was drafted. See {616750} for an even clearer statement of the separation of powers principle.
With a legislature of two houses, both have to agree to any change in order for it to take effect. This is always harder to do than to have change voted by a single legislative body.
This letter was written shortly after the Constitution had been signed by the convention delegates. This difference between Adams and Jefferson would be at the heart of the first great partisan struggle in American history. Adams, as the second President, tried to increase and use the power of the Presidency. Jefferson opposed him, especially when Adams tried to run for a second term. The Adams-led Federalists were pitted against Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans in the first, and perhaps still the most bitter partisan struggle in American political history. The Jeffersonians accused Adams and the Federalists of trying to unravel the American Revolution and revert to a monarchy. The people not only sided with the Democratic Republicans, ousting Adams, but also turned out most of the Federalists. It was the end of the Federalist Party, and a new conservative party—without monarchial tendencies—the Whigs became the new opposition party.
He was commenting on the Constitution that had come out of the 1789 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and did not yet have the Bill of Rights.
John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and he served as the first vice president of the United States. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important figures in early American history, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
