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

TO THE INHABITANTS OF MACHIAS, DISTRICT OF MAINE. - 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.

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TO THE INHABITANTS OF MACHIAS, DISTRICT OF MAINE.

Gentlemen,

I have received and considered your elegant address of the 10th August. Although you reside in a remote part of the United States, it is very manifest you have not been inattentive or indifferent spectators of the dangerous encroachments of a foreign nation. You are of opinion that no connection with the present governors of that nation or their agents, ought to be sought or desired. Your country, I presume, will not meanly sue for peace, or engage in war from motives of ambition, vanity, or revenge. I presume further, that she will never again suffer her ambassadors to remain in France many days or hours unacknowledged, without an audience of the sovereign, unprotected and unprivileged, nor to enter into conferences or conversations with any agents or emissaries, who have not a regular commission of equal rank with their own, and who shall not have shown their original commission and exchanged official copies with them. While extraordinary circumstances are our apology for the past deviation from established rules, founded in unquestionable reason and propriety, the odious consequences of it will be an everlasting admonition to avoid the like for the future. At present we have only to prepare for action.

John Adams.