quoted, but he completely ignored the fact that part of what Adams quoted Sydney as saying was:
And if I should undertake to say, there never was a good government in the world, that did not consist of the three simple species of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, I think I may make it good. This at the least is certain, that the government of the Hebrews, instituted by God, had a judge, the great Sanhedrim, and general assemblies of the people.
WAIT!!! STOP THE PRESSES!!! Did Adams just reference the divinely inspired Law of Moses? Why, yes. Indeed he did, or at least, he quoted someone else in a favorable light who did so. And that’s not all.
One of the other names on the list was James Harrington who was renowned for his studies of the Law of Moses. In fact, the second volume of his work The Art of Lawgiving was entitled “Containing the Commonwealths of the Hebrews; Namely, Elohim, Or the Commonwealth of Israel; and Cabala, Or the Commonwealth of the Jews.” And in another of Harrington’s books, The Commonwealth of Oceana, he claimed that the Greeks and Romans attempted to implement the same principles of government which were “first discovered to mankind by God himself in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel.” Adams quoted from Harrington extensively and even included the statement that:
This kind of law, fixing the balance in lands, is called Agrarian, and was first introduced by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lot.
This gives us at least two instances in which Adams favorably quoted statements about the Law of Moses in regards to crucial points of the American legal system. The first was in regards to the three branches of government and the second in regards to the agrarian origin of private property rights. Carrier claims that Adams made “No mention of Moses,” but here we see two very important references to him which prove that Carrier is either insanely ignorant of his subject matter, or he is intentionally deceiving his readers.
As long as this article already is, I cannot close it without offering this parting shot across Carrier’s bow. If you recall, the primary claim that Carrier was attempting to prove was that the founders did not base our legal system upon the Ten Commandments of the Bible. In his effort to do so, it was Carrier who suggested that we search for any reference to these Commandments in John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America. We have seen that, in that book, Adams was critical of Solon, and he spoke favorably of the Law of Moses. But the clearest example of Carrier’s error is found in the fact that Adams actually mentions the Ten Commandments themselves in this book. In the fourth chapter, Adams wrote the following:
If, as Harrington says, the ten commandments were voted by the people of Israel, and have been enacted as laws by all other nations; and if we should presume to say, that nations had a civil right to repeal them, no nation would think proper to repeal the fifth, which enjoins honor to parents.
Here we have Adams recognizing the probability that the Ten Commandments were adopted by Israel through a popular vote, that those same Commandments have been part of the foundation of all other legal codes, and that it would be presumptuous to say that any nation had a right to repeal those Commandments. In short, this one sentence, from the very source that Carrier recommends, disproves everything that Carrier sought to establish about the founding of our great nation.