His conversation so impressed some of his colleagues that he was
asked to put his views in a popular form. His first attempt was a short
letter to Richard Henry Lee, in November, 1775, in which he starts with
this proposition as fundamental: "A legislative, an executive, and a
judicial power comprehend the whole of what is meant and understood by
government. It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two,
that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny can alone be checked and
restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution."
[Footnote: _Works of J. Adams_, iv. 186.]
His next tract, written in 1776 at the request of Wythe of Virginia, was
printed and widely circulated, and similar communications were sent in
reply to applications from New Jersey, North Carolina, and possibly other
States. The effect of this discussion is apparent in all of the ten
constitutions afterward drawn, with the exception of Pennsylvania's, which
was a failure; but none of them passed beyond the tentative or embryonic
stage. It therefore remained for Massachusetts to present the model, which
in its main features has not yet been superseded.
A first attempt was deservedly rejected by the people, and the work was
not done until 1779; but the men who then met in convention at Cambridge
knew precisely what they meant to do.
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