Adams doubted popular rule could succeed without civic virtue reform.

Evidence

A conservative revolutionary by nature and less optimistic than Paine or Jefferson about the prospects of popular rule, Adams commented on the coming costs in a July 3 letter to his wife. “The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement,” he wrote, “and the new Governments we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Purification from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings. The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality.” In light of all the king and Parliament had done, however, the dour New Englander duly added about addiction to corruption and venality, “as [are] the Great.” The Declaration of Independence having passed Congress, a war for independence lay ahead. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Adams’s anti-majoritarian republican skepticism contrasts with Paine’s democratic optimism - useful for the course’s competing-grounding debate over popular sovereignty.
• SHARE: The founders’ own doubts that the people - ‘extremely addicted to corruption and venality’ - could sustain republican government would interest anyone teaching founding political theory.