Beschreibung:

ADAMS, JOHN, President . Autograph letter signed ("John Adams") TO DR. BENJAMIN RUSH, Braintree, Mass., 2 December 1788. 2 1/4 pages, 4to, 250 x 195mm. (10 x 7 3/4 in.), integral address leaf in Adams' hand, recipient's docket on integral address leaf, minor fold separations, slightly yellowed, remains of red wax seal, seal hole to address leaf catching the "s" in "Adams." ADAMS ON THE "BALANCED" GOVERNMENT UNDER THE RECENTLY RATIFIED CONSTITUTION, WHICH WILL SECURE "LIBERTY, PROPERTY, LIFE [AND] CHARACTER" At the date of this letter to a fellow Signer, eleven states had ratified the Constitution and the new plan of government was to go into effect on 4 March 1789. Adams, whose recently issued Defence of the Constitutions of the United States (1788) had advocated a government of three separate branches, similar to that adopted by the Convention, muses upon the possibility of his own election to office: "...Your Compliments upon my poor Volumes are consolatory, because they give me good grounds to hope that they may have done some good. It is an opinion here that they contributed Somewhat to restore a permanent Tranquility to this Commonwealth, as well as to Suppress the pestilent County Conventions, Insurrections and Rebellion...[I]f I could be flattered into the belief that they contributed to the formation or the Ratification of a ballanced National Government for the United States, I Should Sing my Nunc Dimittis with much Pleasure. [I]f any one will show me, a Single Example, where the laws were respected and Liberty, Property, Life or Character Secure, without a Ballance in the Constitution, I might venture to give up the Controversy and if any one will Shew that there ever was a Ballance, or ever can be a ballance...without three Branches...I might also give up the Point... "Whether your Expectations that I shall be in the new Government proceeds from your Partiality to your old Friend, or from your Knowledge of the Sentiments of the Nations, I know not. The Choice will be in the Breasts of Freeman, and if it falls upon me it will most certainly be a free Election. You tell me, my Labours are only beginning, Seven and Twenty years have I laboured in this rugged Vineyard and am now arrived at an Age when Man sighs for repose..." In the first election under the new form of government, held in April the following year, George Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the United States. John Adams received the second largest number of electoral votes and therefore became the first Vice President. In his Defence he advocated government with three branches: "a strong executive, and independent judiciary, and a legislative branch divided into an upper and lower house" (J.J. Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams , p. 149).