Thoughts On Government: Part I

In November of 1775 Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, asked John Adams for his opinions on the form of governance that should be adopted should independency, which both Lee and Adams staunchly advocated, be achieved by the thirteen colonies.  His answer took various forms, including a letter to two North Carolina delegates, John Penn and William Hooper, who sought advice on drawing up a constitution for North Carolina.  The result became known as Adams' essay Thoughts on Government which was eventually published in a Philadelphia newspaper in the Spring of 1776.

It is perhaps the best work produced by our nation's founders regarding the moral and political basis of a just form of governance.  I will be reproducing segments of the essay here as the basis of my own argument that it is time to dissolve Congress as it stands and reestablish a new Legislature based on ethical leadership and governance, which our present and future Congress sorely lacks.  

If of course you think that Congress is doing a kickass job just keep bending over and taking it.  But you may think twice after reading Adams (all emphasis is mine).

MY DEAR SIR,--If I was equal to the task of forming a plan for the government of a colony, I should be flattered with your request, and very happy to comply with it; because, as the divine science of politics is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government, which are generally institutions that last for many generations, there can be no employment more agreeable to a benevolent mind than a research after the best.

Pope flattered tyrants too much when he said,

"For forms of government let fools contest,
That which is best administered is best."
Nothing can be more fallacious than this. But poets read history to collect flowers, not fruits; they attend to fanciful images, not the effects of social institutions. Nothing is more certain, from the history of nations and nature of man, than that some forms of government are better fitted for being well administered than others.
We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue. Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this.