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

TO ARTHUR LEE. - 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 ARTHUR LEE.

London, 6 September, 1785.

I received yesterday your favor of 27th July, and wish it were in my power to relieve your anxiety by giving you any comfortable hopes from this country.

The national sense and public voice is decidedly against us in the whale-trade and ship-trade, and there are as yet but feeble parties for us in the West India trade and colony trade. I may say to you, that if Ireland had not escaped from the snare, we should have had a very dull prospect. I see no resource for us but in a navigation act, and this will not relieve us soon. Our merchants have enslaved themselves to this country by the debts they have contracted. They are afraid to explore new channels of commerce, lest they should offend the British merchants and be sued. But there is no choice left us. Our country must not be ruined, in tenderness to those who have run imprudently too far into debt.

As far as I can penetrate the hearts of the ministers, they are very far from being as they should be relative to us. Those of them who have acquired immense popularity, reputation, and influence, by former professions of attachment to the American cause, as Camden and Richmond, are much changed; in short, we have no party for us here. Yet, indeed, there is no party at present that dares declare very explicitly against us. All sides are as silent and mysterious as you can conceive them to be, and when I shall get any answer, I cannot guess; but I can confidently guess that when it does come, it will not be what it must finally be, in order to relieve us, and bring the two countries together in good humor.

Ireland, I think, stands between us and evil. Her indocility may have changed the plans of the cabinet in many particulars. In short, I do not believe there is any fixed plan, or will be any, until the next budget shall be opened. The debt stands between Ireland and harm. This country is in a more critical situation than ours. Yet it may take two years to decide its fate. Many persons express anxious fears of distractions and anarchy; others think they cannot stand under the burden of the debt; but must lower the interest.

The policy of our country is not perfect, neither. The most fatal and egregious fault of all is leaving their debt in Holland and France unfunded. This error is so easily rectified that it is astonishing it is not done. This single step may protect us from a war, and confute forever the numberless calumnies which circulate now, and will never cease until that is done. I have hitherto paid the interest in Holland out of the principal; but this will by and by be impracticable, and then such a clamor and obloquy will succeed as will make us all ashamed of ourselves. How will it be possible to vindicate the faith or the honor of our country?

You give me great pleasure by your approbation of my son’s conduct, and I am under great obligation to your brother for the notice he took of him. Count Sarsfield, who has just now left me, is rejoiced at your appointment to the treasury, and desires me to present his regards to you. He leads the life of a peripatetic philosopher here, has done so since May, and will stay till October. He rambles with Lord Shelburne and Lord Harcourt, and is the happiest man I know. I have seen him two summers in Holland. Observation and reflection are all his business, and his dinner and his friend all his pleasure. If a man was born for himself alone, I would take him for a model.