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

TO EDWARD BIDDLE. 1 - 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 EDWARD BIDDLE.1

Braintree, 12 December, 1774.

I received your kind favor of 16th ultimo, with great pleasure, last week, at Cambridge. I rejoice at the proofs your city has given of her inflexible attachment to the public cause, and determination to support it. There are many names in your list of committee men, which I had not the pleasure of knowing; but there are abilities, virtues, and spirit enough, in those whom I know very well, to secure the good behaviour of any committee which could, I think, be chosen in your and my beloved city.

The letter to Quebec shall be faithfully and speedily forwarded. Our provincial Congress, and the committee of correspondence in Boston, have had under consideration various plans for opening a communication with several parts of that province.

You kindly inquire what we are doing or suffering. You will see by a printed pamphlet, which I will send you as soon as it is out, what our provincial congress has been doing—that is, you will see in part, not all. Our people, through the province, are everywhere learning the military art—exercising perpetually; so that, I suppose, if occasion should require, an army of fifteen thousand men, from this province alone, might be brought into the field in one week.

The difficulties we suffer, however, for want of law and government, are innumerable; a total stagnation of law and commerce almost. No man can pay his just debts, because he can get no business to do, by which he can earn any money, and if he has ever so much due to him, he cannot get a shilling of it from his debtors. We are trying, by a thousand experiments, the ingenuity as well as virtue of our people. The effects are such as would divert you. Imagine four hundred thousand people without government or law, forming themselves in companies for various purposes, of justice, policy, and war! You must allow for a great deal of the ridiculous, much of the melancholy, and some of the marvellous. I must not be particular, because my letter may miscarry.

I have sometimes wished, since my return, that we had fallen in, totis viribus, with the motion made by Mr. Ross, and seconded by Mr. Galloway, that this province should be left to her own discretion with respect to government and justice, as well as defence. Our provincial Congress had in contemplation some sublime conceptions, which would in that case have been carried rapidly into execution.

Your account of the General’s intended journey to Maryland, gave me great pleasure.1 I hope the continent will provide themselves, at this time, with arms and skill. No country ought ever to be without either.

The intuitive, the holy, the decisive spirits mentioned in a late Philadelphia paper, cannot avoid recollecting at this time, my friend, that the Grecian commonwealths were the most heroic confederacy that ever existed; the politest, bravest, and wisest of men. Their sculptors, painters, architects, poets, physicians, critics, historians, philosophers, orators, warriors, and statesmen, were the brightest ornaments of their whole species, and examples for imitation to all succeeding generations. The period of their glory was from the defeat of Xerxes to the rise of Alexander. Let us not be enslaved, my dear friend, either by Xerxes or Alexander.

The town of Boston is like Zion in distress. Seneca’s virtuous man struggling with adversity.

Spectaculum dignum ad quod respiciat Deus.

Suffering amazing loss, but determined to endure poverty and death, rather than betray America and posterity.

Be pleased to present my most respectful compliments and grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Dickinson, Thomson, &c. I have not time to name them all. I mean almost the whole city of Philadelphia.

I should have written to you long before this, if I had not been prevented by an inflammation in my eyes, so violent that I have not been able to write or read. Pray write me as often as possible, and let me know how the fourth resolution in our bill of rights is relished and digested among the choice spirits along the continent. I had more anxiety about that, than all the rest. But I find it is extremely popular here. Our provincial Congress have approved and adopted it in strong terms. They consider it as a great point gained. They think it has placed our connection with Great Britain on its true principles, and that there is no danger from it to us, and there is quite as much allowed to her as either justice or policy requires.

[1 ]The address of this letter does not appear upon the imperfect draught that has been preserved. It is now given by conjecture from the context. That the person must have been one of the seven delegates of Pennsylvania to the first Congress, is obvious. Of these it could not have been Galloway, or Ross, or Dickinson, for they are mentioned in the third person. The reason for selecting Mr. Biddle from the four remaining is, that he was on the committee which reported the bill of rights alluded to in the last paragraph, and therefore familiar with the writer’s relation to the fourth article; and that the business not completed by the Congress, seems to have been left in his care. He was chairman, with Messrs. Dickinson and Thomson, herein alluded to together, to superintend the publication of the journal; and probably likewise had charge of the distribution of the letter to Quebec. It must have been in this capacity that he addressed the letter to Mr. Adams, to which this is the reply; as the Congress had recommended that the delegates of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, should assist in the dispersion of that document. By a memorandum inserted in the American Archives, it appears that three hundred copies had been forwarded to Boston on the 16th of November.

[1 ]This must have been General Charles Lee.