ty of one hundred ayes
to ninety nays, and the resolution itself passed by a majority of
ninety-eight ayes to ninety nays; but the constitution, in such cases,
requiring two thirds majority, it was of consequence rejected.

In November, 1842, Mr. Adams delivered a lecture before the Franklin
Lyceum, at Providence, Rhode Island, on the Social Compact, in which he
enters into "an examination of the principles of democracy, aristocracy,
and universal suffrage, as exemplified in a historical review of the
present constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with some
notice of the origin of human government, and remarks on the theories of
divine right, as maintained by Hobbes and Sir Robert Filmer, on one
side, and by Sydney, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, on the other."

He shows, from the history of Massachusetts, that the fundamental
principle asserted in the fifth article of our declaration of rights,
that all power resides originally in _the people_, is derived from the
above-named writers, and explains how this power has been practically
exercised by the people of that state. The assertion of Rousseau, that
the social compact can be formed only by unanimous consent, because the
rule itself that a majority of votes shall prevail can only be
established by agreement, that is, by compact, Mr. Adams controverts,
maintaining in opposition to it that the social compact constituting
the body-politic is, and by the law of nature must be, a compact not
merely of individuals, but of families. On this view of the subject he
largely animadverts. The philosophical examination of the foundations
of civil society, of human governments, and of the rights and duties of
man, he views as among the consequences of the Protestant Reformation.
The question raised by Martin Luther involved the whole theory of _the
rights_ of individual man, paramount to all human authority. The
talisman of _human rights_ dissolved the spell of political as well as
of ecclesiastical power. The Calvinists of Geneva and the Puritans of
England contested the right of kings to prescribe articles of faith to
their people, and this question necessarily drew after it the general
question of the origin of all human government. In search of its
principle, Hobbes, a royalist, affirmed that the state of nature
between man and man was a state of war, whence it followed that
government originated in _conquest_. This theory is directly opposite
to that of Jesus