entitled "Discourses on Davila." These were an analysis of Davila's
_History of the Civil Wars in France_ in the sixteenth century; and the
aim of Mr. Adams was to point out to his countrymen the danger to be
apprehended from factions and ill-balanced forms of government. In these
essays he maintained that as the great spring of human activity,
especially as related to public life, was self-esteem, manifested in the
love of superiority and the desire of distinction, applause, and
admiration, it was important in a popular government to provide for the
moderate gratification of all of them. He therefore advocated a liberal
use of titles and ceremonial honors for those in office, and an
aristocratic senate. To counteract any undue influence on the part of
the senate, he proposed a popular assembly on the broadest democratic
basis; and to keep in check the encroachment of each upon the other, he
recommended a powerful executive. He thought liberty to all would be
thus secured. From the premises which formed the basis of his reasoning,
Mr. Adams concluded that the French constitution, which disavowed all
distinctions of rank, which vested the legislative authority in a single
assembly, and which, though retaining the office of king, divested him
of nearly all actual power, must, in the nature of things, prove a
failure.

In the publication of these essays, Adams was most unfortunate. He
appears not to have presented his ideas concerning his political system
with sufficient clearness to be understood. He was, indeed, greatly
misunderstood, and was charged with advocating a monarchy and a
hereditary senate and presidency; with the greatest inconsistency,
because, in 1787, he had written and published in London an excellent
"Defence of the American Constitution;" and with political heresy, if
not actual apostasy, because of that inconsistency. Twenty years later,
when speaking of these essays, Mr. Adams said: "This dull, heavy volume
still excites the wonder of its author--first, that he could find, amid
the constant scenes of business and dissipation in which he was
enveloped, time to write it; secondly, that he had the courage to oppose
and publish his own opinions to the universal opinion of America, and
indeed of all mankind." Others were no less astonished, for the same
reasons.

These essays were published in 1790, and filled Jefferson with disgust.
He already began to suspect Hamilton of anti-republican schemes, and he