Adams’ Conception of Liberty

Abstract

John Adams vigorously resisted Rousseau’s diversion of the republican tradition, and the French embrace of unicameralism, resting on Spartan discipline.¹ Adams denied Montesquieu’s claim that climate and soil decide political institutions, and Rousseau’ s belief that “celestial virtue” will be necessary to preserve liberty. For Adams, republican virtue and liberty were products of republican institutions, not their cause, so that a republic may exist “even among highwaymen,” by setting one rogue to watch another, making them honest men by the struggle.² The secret of avoiding tyranny lay in “equal laws made by common consent,” enforced by “three different orders of men in equilibria.”³ Machiavelli had recognized this “eternal principle”, without which every government must be “imperfect” and every commonwealth “essentially defective.”⁴ Adams insisted that Americans needed different orders of offices, not of men: “Out of office all men are of the same species, and of one blood”⁵