John Adams: Virtue Is The Foundation Of A Free Constitution

John Adams

From the desk of John Adams:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. … The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People. … [T]hey may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. … A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

John Adams On Governing A People Unbridled By Religion

 

John Adams

John Adams addressed the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts on October 11, 1798 and said:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams: Hero Of Liberty And Man Of Faith

FLAG OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

John Adams (October 30, 1735-July 4, 1826), was the 2nd President of the United States, 1797-1801, being the first president to live in the White House; established the Library of Congress and the Department of the Navy; Vice-President under George Washington, 1789-97; a member of the First and Second Continental Congress, 1774, 1775; a signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1776; distinguished for having personally urged Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration, as well as for having recommended George Washington as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army; authored the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780; U.S. Minister to France, 1783, having signed the Treaty of

John Adams

Paris, along with John Jay and Benjamin Franklin, which officially ended the Revolutionary War; U.S. Minister to Great Britain, 1784-88, during which time he greatly influenced the American states to ratify the Constitution by writing a three-volume work entitled, A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the United States.

On February 22, 1756, John Adams made the entry in his diary, his idea of a “Utopian Nation”:

Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God…What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.

On October 11, 1798, President John Adams stated in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

On June 28, 1813, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wrote:

The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite….And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young Men United, and which had United all Parties in America, in Majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence.

Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.

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