Europe and the American Revolution 205
without knowing anything of them, and have echoed and re- echoed each other’s
visionary language.”^49 He suspected that Turgot’s ideas were shared by Franklin,
and he feared that other Americans might be similarly misled. There were two
points in Turgot’s letter to Price that especially irritated him: the idea that a single
elected assembly should control the whole government, and the idea that imitation
of the British constitution was something for which the Americans should be
blamed.
It was by obstinately insisting that his own ideas were really those of the British
constitution, which he called in the Defense a “stupendous fabric of human inven-
tion,” that Adams made himself misunderstood both by his own contemporaries
and by democrats and conservatives, to denounce or to praise, in later times. This
perverse New Englander, whose dislike of the England of his own day was really
very intense, considered himself as English as the English, and had even boasted,
in 1774, that America enjoyed the British constitution in greater purity than Brit-
ain itself. The idea of a British constitution more pure than the actual constitution
of Britain was a somewhat theoretical concept, reinforced in Adams’ mind by the
reading of Delolme, whom he greatly admired. Delolme, it will be recalled, was by
origin a Genevese democrat, an enemy of the patriciate there, whose theory of the
separation of powers in England, in subtle contrast to that of Montesquieu and the
English Whigs, emphasized the importance of the crown as a balance against the
nobility, not the role of the nobility as a balance against the crown.
Adams’ own ideas had significantly changed during the American Revolution.
In his Thoughts of 1776 he had favored election of an upper house by the popularly
elected assembly, and selection of a governor by the two houses together. In his
draft of the Massachusetts constitution made in 1779 he had provided for election
of all three by the whole body of voters. His purpose had been to assure the inde-
pendence of the three from each other, and, by emancipating the governor from
the two houses, to protect the integrity of the executive and judicial powers. His
emphasis on the value of a strong executive was more explicit than Delolme’s, and
was in fact his most distinctive political idea.
The fact that Adams’ European experience was mainly in Holland, where the
executive was weak and hereditary oligarchy solidly established, may have con-
firmed him in these ideas. At any rate, his reading of European history taught
him, what it never taught most democrats, Jeffersonians or Whigs, that monarchy
over the centuries had often protected the people against the nobles. “What is
the whole history of the wars of the barons but one demonstration of this truth?
What are the standing armies of Europe but another? These were all given to
kings by the people, to defend them against aristocracies.”^50 Or again, the execu-
tive “is the natural friend of the people, and the only defense which they or their
representatives can have against the avarice and ambition of the rich and distin-
guished citizens.” And it is the usual practice “of a few illustrious and wealthy
49 Defense of the constitutions of government of the United States of America, against the attack of M.
Turgot... , 3 vols. (London, 1787–1788). Reprinted in Work s, IV and V. The quotation here is from
Work s, IV, 294.
50 Work s, IV, 355.