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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO A. J. DALLAS. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO A. J. DALLAS.

I return you my hearty thanks for the obliging present of your reports, in three very handsome volumes, which I received on Saturday. I prize them highly, not only in the light in which you present them, but on account of their intrinsic merit and worth to a profession, which after a divorce of more than a quarter of a century I still hold in affection and veneration.

Candor obliges me to say that I have made a singular observation relative to this work. Although, in the times which have passed since its first publication, the spirit of party has been disposed to call in question the integrity of every man and every action, I have never heard an insinuation against the fidelity of these reports. As the year books, and the reporters who have followed, have fixed the laws of England upon such permanent principles of equity and humanity, I hope these volumes will be the beginning of a series which will prove still more beneficial to mankind.1

John Adams.

[1 ]Mr. Dallas had addressed the following note to Mr. Adams:

Philadelphia, 30 November, 1799.

Sir,

Permit me to request, that you will honor a set of my reports with a place in your library. If your political cares have not extinguished the professional ardor which you displayed in the early period of your life, the volumes will afford you some amusement.

But I particularly beg you to accept them as a mark of the sincere respect with which I am, Sir, &c.

A. J. Dallas.