An idealist..........................

Power worried him: no one ever believed he possessed too much of the stuff.  His sympathies were with the man in the street, to whom he believed government answered.  A friend distilled his politics to two maxims: "Rulers should have little, the people much." And privilege should make way for genius and industry. Railing against "the odious hereditary distinction of families." 

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams