48 BC. Good 🍞

“The same political parties which now agitate U.S. have existed through all time.” Precisely. And this is precisely the complaint in the preface to the first volume of my defence. While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a Stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than 3 or 4 thousand years ago. What is the Reason? I say Parties and Factions will not Suffer, or permit Improvements to be made. As Soon as one Man hints at an improvement his Rival opposes it. No sooner has one Party discovered or invented an Amelioration of the condition of Man or the order of Society, than the opposite Party, belies it, misconstrues it, misrepresents it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated or interpolated, or prohibited Sometimes by Popes, Sometimes by Emperors, Sometimes by Aristocratical and Sometimes by democratical Assemblies and Sometimes by Mobs.

Aristotle wrote the History and description of Eighteen hundred Republicks, which existed before his time. Cicero wrote two Volumes of discourses on Government, which, perhaps were worth all the rest of his works. The works of Livy and Tacitus &c that are lost, would be more interesting than all that remain. Fifty Gospells have been destroyed, and where are St. Lukes World of Books that had been written?

If you ask my Opinion, who has committed all the havoc? I will answer you candidly; Ecclesiastical and Imperial Despotism has done it, to conceal their Frauds.

Why are the Histories of all Nations, more ancient than the Christian Æra, lost? Who destroyed the Alexandrian Library? I believe that Christian Priests, Jewish Rabbis, Grecian Sages and Roman Emperors had as great a hand in it as Turks and Mahomitans.

Democrats, Rebells and Jacobins, when they possessed a momentary Power, have Shewn a disposition, both to destroy and to forge Records, as vandalical, as Priests and Despots. Such has been and Such is the World We live in...

For John Adams' entire letter to Thomas Jefferson, see

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0230

Pay close attention to the ending analysis of the Aristocracy