“The government of Poland shall be forever free, independent, _and of a republican form_: the true principle of said government consisting in the strict execution of its laws, and the equilibrium of the three estates, namely, the king, the senate, and the equestrian order.”[65] But a government thus composed cannot be recognized in this debate as “of a republican form.” At the adoption of the Constitution, the most competent persons, who disagreed on other things, agreed in discarding these examples. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams met here on common ground. The former, in the Brief of his Argument, exhibits the various forms of government to which the term “Republic” has been applied. “A Republic, a word used in various senses. Has been applied to aristocracies and monarchies. (1.) To Rome under the Kings. (2.) To Sparta, though a Senate for life. (3.) To Carthage, though the same. (4.) To United Netherlands, though Stadtholder, hereditary nobles. (5.) To Poland, though aristocracy and monarchy. (6.) To Great Britain, though monarchy, &c.”[66] John Adams, in his Defence of the American Constitutions, written immediately anterior to the National Constitution, concurs with Hamilton. “But, of all the words in all languages, perhaps there has been none so much abused in this way as the words _Republic_, Commonwealth, and Popular State. In the _Rerum-Publicarum Collectio_, of which there are fifty and odd volumes, and many of them very incorrect, France, Spain, and Portugal, the four great Empires, the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman, and even the Ottoman, are all denominated Republics.”[67] In his old age the patriarch expressed himself in the same sense, and with equal force. “The customary meanings of the words _Republic_ and _Commonwealth_ have been infinite. They have been applied to every government under heaven: that of Turkey, and that of Spain, as well as that of Athens and of Rome, of Geneva and San Marino.”[68] And then again he said:-- “In some writing or other of mine, I happened, _currente calamo_, to drop the phrase, ‘The word _Republic_, as it is used, may signify anything, everything, or nothing.’ For this escape I have been pelted, for twenty or thirty years, with as many stones as ever were thrown at St. Stephen, when St. Paul held the clothes of the stoners. But the aphorism is literal, strict, solemn truth. To speak technically, or scientifically, if you will, there are monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical republics. The government of Great Britain and that of Poland are as strictly republics as that of Rhode Island or Connecticut under their old charters.”[69] In the latter remark, Mr. Adams simply repeats his treatise, where he calls England and Poland “monarchical or regal _republics_.”[70]