Adams doubted the people could rule virtuously but preferred them to kings

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.” — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Adams’s republican skepticism about popular virtue and corruption speaks directly to course themes about competing conceptions of freedom and the design of popular government vs. monarchy. — connects to: Adams doubted popular rule could succeed without civic virtue reform. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 228
• DEEPTHINKING: Juxtaposition of the Declaration’s egalitarian founding language against a key drafter’s private fear that the people are ‘extremely addicted to corruption and venality’ captures the tension between first principles and their empirical doubters — worth sitting with for a course on founding values.

Broader Connections

• Adams doubted popular rule could succeed without civic virtue reform. #expands (0.85) — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 228