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

TO JONATHAN MASON. - 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 JONATHAN MASON.

Philadelphia, 18 July, 1776.

Your agreeable letter from Boston the 7th July was handed me on Tuesday last by the post.

The confusions in America, inseparable from so great a revolution in affairs, are sufficient to excite anxieties in the minds of young gentlemen just stepping into life. Your concern for the event of these commotions is not to your dishonor. But let it not affect your mind too much. These clouds will be dispersed, and the sky will become more serene.

I cannot advise you to quit the retired scene of which you have hitherto appeared to be so fond, and engage in the noisy business of war. I doubt not you have honor and spirit and abilities sufficient to make a figure in the field; and if the future circumstances of your country should make it necessary, I hope you would not hesitate to buckle on your armor. But at present I see no necessity for it. Accomplishments of the civil and political kind are no less necessary for the happiness of mankind than martial ones. We cannot all be soldiers; and there will probably be in a very few years a greater scarcity of lawyers and statesmen than of warriors.

The circumstances of this country from the years 1755 to 1758, during which period I was a student in Mr. Putnam’s office, were almost as confused as they are now, and the prospect before me, my young friend, was much more gloomy than yours.1 I felt an inclination, exactly similar to yours, for engaging in active martial life, but I was advised, and, upon a consideration of all circumstances, concluded, to mind my books. Whether my determination was prudent or not, it is not possible to say, but I never repented it. To attain the real knowledge which is necessary for a lawyer, requires the whole time and thoughts of a man in his youth, and it will do him no good to dissipate his mind among the confused objects of a camp. Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurnâ, must be your motto.

I wish you had told me particularly what lawyers have opened offices in Boston, and what progress is made in the practice, and in the courts of justice. I cannot undertake to advise you, whether you had better go into an office in Boston or not. I rather think that the practice at present is too inconsiderable to be of much service to you. You will be likely to be obliged to waste much of your time in running of errands, and doing trifling drudgery, without learning much. Depend upon it, it is of more importance that you read much than that you draw many writs. The common writs upon notes, bonds, and accounts, are mastered in half an hour. Common declarations for rent, and ejectment, and trespass, both of assault and battery and quare clausum fregit, are learned in very nearly as short a time. The more difficult special declarations, and especially the refinements of special pleadings, are never learned in an office. They are the result of experience and long habits of thinking. If you read Plowden’s Commentaries, you will see the nature of special pleadings. In addition to these, read Instructor Clericalis, Mallory, Lilly, and look into Rastall and Coke. Your time will be better spent upon these authors than in dancing attendance upon a lawyer’s office and his clients. Many of our most respectable lawyers never did this at all. Gridley, Pratt, Thacher, Sewall, Paine, never served regularly in any office.

Upon the whole, my young friend, I wish that the state of public affairs would have admitted of my spending more time with you. I had no greater pleasure in this life than in assisting young minds possessed of ambition to excel, which I very well know to be your case. Let me entreat you not to be too anxious about futurity. Mind your books. Sit down patiently to Plowden’s Commentaries; read them through coolly, deliberately, and attentively; read them in course; endeavor to make yourself master of the point on which the case turns; remark the reasoning and the decision; and tell me a year hence whether your time has not been more agreeably and profitably spent than in drawing writs and running of errands. I hope to see you ere long. I am obliged to you for this letter, and wish a continuance of your correspondence. I am anxious, very anxious, for my dear Mrs. Adams and my babes. God preserve them. I can do them no kind office whatever.

[1 ]Mr. Mason had been entered as a student in Mr. Adams’s office.