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

TO WILLIAM WOODFALL. - 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 WILLIAM WOODFALL.

Boston, 14 May, 1774.

I had the pleasure of receiving your favor of the 12th of March yesterday, for which I thank you. Your plan of a newspaper to profess itself a general channel of American intelligence, is happily calculated, I think, to serve the interest both of the British and the American public.1

If it should be in my power at any time to communicate to you any material intelligence, I shall be glad of the opportunity; but I have very little connection with public affairs, and I hope to have less.

Indeed, the treatment we receive from our mother country, as we have always fondly called her, begins to discourage persons here from making any applications to her, upon any occasion or for any purpose. Intelligence, evidence, petitions, are sent continually, and have been sent for ten years, to no purpose. We begin almost to wish that Europe could forget that America was ever discovered, and America could forget that Europe ever existed.

The unexampled blockade of Boston is received here with a spirit of martyrdom. It will produce effects such as were not foreseen by the minister of State who projected it, or by the abandoned men in America, who suggested the project to him.

Nero wished that the inhabitants of Rome had but one neck, that he might have the pleasure of cutting it off with his own hand at one blow. This, as it would have speedily terminated their misery, was humanity in comparison of the minister’s project of turning famine into a populous city to devour its devoted inhabitants by slow torments and lingering degrees.

P. S. The commerce of this town of itself has been an essential link in a vast chain, which has made New England what it is, the southern provinces what they are, the West India islands what they are, and the African trade what that is, to say no more. The world will very soon see with horror, that this chain is broken by one blow.

[1 ]Mr. Woodfall had sent out a copy of his proposals to publish a newspaper, designed to be a general channel of American intelligence, and to be called the London Packet.