CMRivdogs Posted 1 hour ago Author Posted 1 hour ago Quote Adams’ essay is an indirect response to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which in addition to calling for independence, outlined a democratic future. The people would elect a one-house legislature; this body would appoint and hold supremacy over the executive, lest that leader rule as a tyrant. Adams has praised Paine for his “ready pen” in the service of liberty, but finds his political solutions a “crapulous mass.". He writes his own proposals at the urging of the delegation from North Carolina—the first colony to urge independence, and one seeking guidance in writing a constitution. "The happiness of society is the end of government,” Adams writes. Popular consent must be the base of the government, but how are the people to be represented? Direct representation in the form of "a single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual." The legislature should be made bicameral in the tradition of Britain's Parliament, with an upper house providing a check on the lower house's "hasty results and absurd judgments." Furthermore the executive and judiciary should be independent of the legislature as counterweights to its power. Separating the powers of making the laws, from the judicial power to interpret them, and the executive power to enforce them, is a crucial aspect of the British system that Adams defends. The assembly itself cannot exercise these functions, "for want of secrecy and despatch." "A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people," Adams writes, "and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen." Each colony should be free to write its own constitution, and together they would "be unconquerable by all the monarchies of Europe." Quote
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