Mr. Adams, who was President, and in whose name the battle was fought, fell but little if any thing short of General Hamilton in his partiality for the English system. To purge the British Constitution of its corruptions, and to give to its popular branch equality of representation, were alone necessary, he thought, to make it "the most perfect Constitution ever devised by the wit of man." The alterations or amendments he suggested, sound and creditable to himself as they were, were no more than qualifications of his general preference for the English model. If Hamilton's admiration of that model was less qualified than that of Adams, it must at the same time be admitted that the former was freest from the fault of seeking to degrade and discredit republican institutions by his writings. Without undertaking to describe the specific design of Mr. Adams's "Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," or of his "Discourse on Davila,"--a task, for obvious reasons, very difficult,--it may, I think, be safely assumed that such was their manifest tendency. Hamilton at least thought so at a time when the reciprocal prejudices which afterwards separated them so widely had not yet acquired a strong hold upon the feelings of either. In his interview with Mr. Jefferson on the 13th of August, 1791, before referred to, when the conversation was turned to the writings of Mr. Adams, Hamilton condemned them, and "most particularly Davila, as having a tendency to weaken the present Government;" and, after other remarks in relation to the existing Government and its chances of success, he added,--"Whoever by his writings disturbs the present order of things is really blamable, however pure his intentions might be, and he was sure Mr. Adams's were pure." The division by Mr. Adams of governments designated as republics, into democratic republics, aristocratic republics and monarchical, or regal republics,--embracing a minute description of each, in which the Government of the "United Provinces of the Low Countries," whose powers are held by the persons intrusted with them either by hereditary title or by the selection of associates, after the manlier of close corporations, is called a "democratic Republic," and that of England a "monarchical, or regal Republic,"--was naturally displeasing to the sense and feeling of those who regarded aristocratical or monarchical or regal features as absolutely incompatible with the true idea of republican government. The voluminous and doubtless violent attacks that were made upon his writings were scarcely necessary to satisfy those who had freely undergone the sufferings and sacrifices of a long and bloody war to secure to themselves and their posterity the blessings of republican institutions, according to their acceptation of them, that the writings of Mr. Adams were designed, as was charged, to cause the term "Republican Government" to mean "any thing or nothing."