Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO BENJAMIN KENT. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Return to Title Page for The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

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

TO BENJAMIN KENT. - 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 BENJAMIN KENT.

Philadelphia, 22 June, 1776.

Your letters of April 24th1 and May 26th are before me; both dated at Boston; a circumstance which alone would have given pleasure to a man who has such an attachment to that town, and who has suffered so much anxiety for his friends in their exile from it.

We have not many of the fearful, and still less of the unbelieving among us, how slowly soever you may think we proceed. Is it not a want of faith, or a predominance of fear, which makes some of you so impatient for declarations in words, of what is every day manifested in deeds of the most determined nature and unequivocal signification?

That we are divorced a vinculo, as well as from bed and board, is to me very clear. The only question is concerning the proper time for making an explicit declaration in words. Some people must have time to look around them; before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left; then to think, and, after all this, to resolve. Others see at one intuitive glance into the past and the future, and judge with precision at once. But remember you cannot make thirteen clocks strike precisely alike at the same second.

I am for the most liberal toleration of all denominations of religionists, but I hope that Congress will never meddle with religion further than to say their own prayers, and to fast and give thanks once a year. Let every colony have its own religion without molestation.

The Congress ordered Church1 to the Massachusetts Council to be let out upon bail. It was represented to them that his health was in a dangerous way, and it was thought he would not now have it in his power to do any mischief. Nobody knows what to do with him. There is no law to try him upon, and no court to try him. I am afraid he deserves more punishment than he will ever meet.

[1 ]Printed in vol. ii. p. 291, note.

[1 ]Dr. Church.