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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. 10.

Author: John Adams
Editor: Charles Francis Adams

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO J. B. VARNUM.

Quincy, 5 January, 1813.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The foundation of an American navy, which I presume is now established by law, is a grand era in the history of the world. The consequences of it will be greater than any of us can foresee. Look to Asia and Africa, to South America and to Europe for its effects. My private opinion had been for frigates and smaller vessels, but I rejoice that the ideas of Congress have been greater. The four quarters of the world are in a ferment. We shall interfere everywhere. Nothing but a navy under Heaven can secure, protect, or defend us.

It is an astonishment to every enlightened man in Europe, who considers us at all, that we have been so long insensible and inattentive to this great instrument of national prosperity, this most efficacious arm of national power, independence, and safety.

I could give you many proofs of this, but I will confine myself to two. In June, 1779, I dined with Monsieur Thevenard, intendant of the navy at Lorient, certainly one of the most experienced, best read, and most scientific naval commanders in Europe. That excellent officer said to me, in the hearing of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, Mr. Marbois, and twenty officers of the French navy, “Your country is about to become the first naval power in the world.” My answer was, “It is impossible to foresee what may happen a hundred, or two or three hundred years hence, but there is at present no appearance of probability of any great maritime power in America for a long time to come.” “Hundred years!” said Thevenard, “It will not be twenty years before you will be a match for any maritime powers of Europe.” “You surprise me, Sir; I have no suspicion or conception of any such great things. Will you allow me to ask your reasons for such an opinion.” “My reasons!” said Mr. Thevenard, “My reasons are very obvious. You have all the materials, and the knowledge and skill to employ them. You have timber, hemp, tar, and iron, seamen and naval architects equal to any in the world.” “I know we have oak and pine and iron, and we may have hemp; but I did not know that our shipwrights were equal to yours in Europe.” “The frigate in which you came here,” said Mr. Thevenard (the Alliance, Captain Landais) “is equal to any in Europe. I have examined her, and I assure you there is not in the king’s service, nor in the English navy, a frigate more perfect and complete in materials or workmanship.” “It gives me great pleasure, Sir, to hear your opinion. I know we had or might have materials, but I had not flattered myself that we had artists equal to those in Europe.” Mr. Thevenard repeated with emphasis, “You may depend upon it, there is not in Europe a more perfect piece of naval architecture than your Alliance, and indeed several other of your frigates that have already arrived here and in other ports of France.” My reply was, “Your character forbids me to scruple any opinion of yours in naval affairs; but one thing I know, we delight so much in peace and hate war so heartily that it will be a long time before we shall trouble ourselves with naval forces. We shall probably have a considerable commerce and some nurseries of seamen, but we had so much wild land, and the most of us loved land so much better than sea, that many years must pass before we should be ambitious of power upon the ocean. We had land enough. No temptation to go abroad for conquests. If the powers of Europe should let us alone, we should sleep quietly for ages without thinking much of ships of war.”

I returned to America, and staid about three months, when Congress sent me to Europe again. We landed at Ferrol, in Spain. In a few days a French squadron of five ships of the line came in. I was soon invited to dine with the Admiral, or, as the French call him, Général or Chef d’Escadre, the Count de Sade, with all the officers of the squadron, on board his eighty gun ship. At table, in the hearing of all the company, the Count said to me, “Your Congress will soon become one of the great maritime powers.” “Not very soon, Monsieur le Comte; it must be a long time first.” “Why a long time? No people have such advantages.” “There are many causes in the way.” “What difficulties? No nation has such nurseries for seamen so near it. You have the best timber for the hulks of ships, and best masts and spars; you have pitch, tar, and turpentine; you have iron plenty, and I am informed you grow hemp; you have skilful ship-builders. What is wanting?” “The will, Monsieur le Comte; the will may be wanting and nothing else.” “We have a maxim among us mariners, that with wood, hemp, and iron, a nation may do what it pleases. If you get your independence, as I doubt not you will, the trade of all nations will be open to you, and you will have a very extensive commerce, and such a commerce will want protection.” “We must have a considerable commerce, but our lands will be so much out of proportion to our trade, that if the powers of Europe do not disturb us, it must be ages before we shall want a navy, or be willing to bear the expense of it.”

I said I would give you two anecdotes. I will add a third. In 1778 I went to France in the Boston, frigate. We took a very rich prize commanded by a captain who had served twenty years in the British navy, several of them as a lieutenant. The captain became very curious to examine the ship. Captain Tucker allowed him to see every part of her. As we lived together in the cabin, we became very intimate. He frequently expressed to me his astonishment. He said he had never seen a completer ship; that there was not a frigate in the royal navy better built, of better materials or more perfectly equipped, furnished, or armed. “However,” he added, “you are the rising country of the world, and if you can send to sea such ships as this, you will soon be able to do great things.”

TO JOHN LANGDON.

Quincy, 24 January, 1813.

I feel an irresistible propensity to compare notes with you, in order to ascertain whether your memory and mine coincide in the recollection of the circumstances of a particular transaction in the history of this country. As it lies in my mind, Captain John Manly applied to General Washington, in Cambridge, in 1775, informed him that British transports and merchant ships were frequently passing and repassing unarmed, and asked leave to put a few guns on board a vessel to cruise for them. Washington, either shrinking from the boldness of the enterprise, or doubting his authority, prudently transmitted the information to Congress in a letter. When the letter was read, many members seemed much surprised; but a motion was made, and seconded, to commit it to a special committee. Opposition was made to this motion, and a debate ensued; but the motion prevailed by a small majority. The committee appointed were John Langdon, Silas Deane, and John Adams. We met, and at once agreed to report a resolution, authorizing General Washington to fit and arm one or more vessels for the purpose. A most animated opposition and debate arose upon this report, but the resolution was carried by a small majority. Under the authority of this resolution, Washington fitted out Manly, who soon brought in several prizes, the most important of which was that transport loaded with soldiers, arms, ammunition, and that immortal mortar, which was called the Congress, and finally drove the British army out of Boston, and their fleet out of the harbor. This splendid success inspired new courage into Congress. They appointed a new committee, consisting of yourself, Governor Hopkins, Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Gadsden, and me, to purchase, arm, equip, officer, and man ships. We met every night, and, in a short time, had the Alfred, Columbus, Cabot, Andrew Doria, Providence, at sea under Commodore Hopkins. The naval enterprise of Congress increased fast. They soon appointed a committee of one from each State, of which you was one, and ordered twelve frigates to be built.

My recollection has been excited lately by information from Philadelphia, that Paul Jones has written in his journal, “My hand first hoisted the American flag,” and that Captain Barry used to say, that the “first British flag struck to him.” Both these vain boasts I know to be false, and, as you know them to be so, I wish to have your testimony to corroborate mine.

It is not decent nor just that those emigrants, foreigners of the south, should falsely arrogate to themselves merit that belongs to New England sailors, officers, and men. Wishing you a healthy, pleasant year, I remain your old friend.

JOHN LANGDON TO JOHN ADAMS.

Portsmouth, 27 January, 1813.

Respected Sir,—

I had the honor of receiving by the last mail your letter of the 24th instant, by which I see your time is taken up, and your mind continually on the stretch, for the support and honor of our beloved country. You request me to call to mind “the circumstances of a particular transaction in the history of this country,” to which I answer that, upon reading your correct statement of the proceedings of Congress on our naval matters, the appointment of Committees, of which we were a part, the struggle we had to begin our little navy, and the opposition that was made by many members of Congress, it brings to my recollection the circumstances that took place in 1775, in all which, as far as I can recollect, I most perfectly coincide with you. The appointment of Manly, and his successes, must be well known throughout the United States. As to Paul Jones, if my memory serves me, pretending to say that “his hand first hoisted the American flag,” and Captain Barry, that “the first British flag struck to him,” they are both unfounded, as it is impressed on my mind that many prizes were brought into the New England States before their names were mentioned.

I am, dear Sir, always happy to hear from you that you are in good health, and able still to continue your preëminent services to your country.

Mrs. Langdon, who, I am sorry to say, has been very unwell for some time past, joins me in our most sincere respects to yourself and your good lady, whom we have in grateful remembrance.

That your last days may be your best and happiest, is the wish of, &c.

John Langdon.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Quincy, 28 January, 1813.

Vive la bagatelle!

How shall we cure that distemper of the mind, State vanity? You know to what a degree the ancient dominion was infected with it, and how many sacrifices we have been obliged to make to it. You remember how Pennsylvania had it. Pennsylvania was “first in arts and arms!” Philadelphia was “the heart of the Union!” so said George Ross. Dr. Lyman Hall, of Georgia, readily acknowledged that she was the heart, because we know that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Now, New York is to be placed at the head. Our poor old tame, good-natured pussy Massachusetts, who has the distemper in her heart deeper than any of them, has been obliged to turn and to flatter, to dissimulate and to simulate, in plain English, as Governor Hopkins once said, or rather was accused of saying, to coax, lie, and flatter in order to carry her points, and save herself from perdition. Her distemper, however, seems to be now rising, and approaching to the delirium of a fever. These are objects too great for my genius. I dare not rise to greater things than ensigns, midshipmen, pursers, or deputy-quartermasters. My present topic is smaller than either.

Philadelphia is now boasting that Paul Jones has asserted in his journal that “his hand hoisted the first American flag!” And Captain Barry has asserted that “the first British flag was struck to him!”

Now, I assert that the first American flag was hoisted by John Manly, and the first British flag was struck to him. You were not in Congress in 1775, but you were in the State Congress, and must have known the history of Manly’s capture of the transport which contained the mortar, which afterwards, on Dorchester heights, drove the English army from Boston, and navy from the harbor. I pray you, give me your recollections upon this subject. I wish to know the number of transports and merchant ships, and their names, captured by Manly or any of his associates, in 1775-6.

As your time and thoughts must be employed upon subjects of much greater moment, I hope you will not give yourself any trouble about this little thing. Your first recollections will be sufficient.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Quincy, 11 February, 1813.

I am much obliged by your favor of the 9th, just received. Though I called the subject of my former letter a bagatelle, it is perhaps of some importance; for, as a navy is now an object, I think a circumstantial history of naval operations in this country ought to be written, even as far back as the province ship under Captain Hallowell, &c., and perhaps earlier still.

Looking into the journal of Congress for 1775, I find on Friday, September 22, 1775, Congress resolved that a committee be appointed to take into consideration the state of the trade of America.

Monday, September 25, 1775. Congress took into consideration the letters from General Washington, Nos. 5 and 6, and two others not numbered. Resolved, that a committee of three be appointed to prepare an answer. Mr. Lynch, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Adams were chosen. But our accurate secretary has not stated whether it was Samuel or John Adams.

Thursday, October 5, 1775. Resolved, that a committee of three be appointed to prepare a plan for intercepting two vessels, which are on their way to Canada, laden with arms and powder; and that the committee proceed on this business immediately.

Our correct secretary has omitted the names of this committee; but if my memory has not created something out of nothing, this committee were Silas Deane, John Langdon, and John Adams. On the same day, the committee appointed to prepare a plan for intercepting the two vessels bound to Canada, brought in a report, which was taken into consideration.1

December 13th. Congress resolved, on the report of the committee, to build thirteen ships; five of thirty-two guns, five of twenty-eight, and three of twenty-four; and, December 12th, appointed a committee of thirteen, one from each State, to do the business. I was gone home, by leave of Congress; but I presume Barry and Jones were appointed by this committee.

General Heath, in his Memoirs, page 30, says, November 4th, (1775,) “the privateers fitted out by the Americans about this time, began to send in a few prizes.” Page 31, November 30th, he says, “intelligence was received from Cape Ann, that a vessel from England, laden with warlike stores, had been taken and brought into that place. There were on board one thirteen-inch brass mortar, two thousand stand of arms, one hundred thousand flints, thirty-two tons of leaden ball, &c., &c. A fortunate capture for the Americans! December 2d, the brass thirteen-inch mortar, and sundry military stores taken in the ordnance prize, were brought to camp.”

Pray, write to Captain John Selman, of Marblehead, and pray him to commit his recollections to writing. Broughton and Selman are important characters, and their ten prizes important events, as well as Governor Wright. Pray let me have the act and the preamble; curiosities they are. Who was Captain Burke and the other, Campbell and military stores, &c.? These facts ought all to be ascertained. Heath was mistaken; privateering was not yet authorized by Congress or the State.

P. S. What might not Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island do, at this day, had they the patriotism of 1775?

TO JAMES MONROE.

Quincy, 23 February, 1813.

I thank you for your favor of the 15th, and the able report of the committee of foreign relations, and a very conciliatory bill for the regulation of seamen. I call it conciliatory, because in theory it should appear to be so, and because I believe it was sincerely intended to be so. The views were upright and the motives pure which produced it, I have no doubt. But will the present ministry in Great Britain receive it with equal candor? Will the parliament or the nation accept it? I believe not. My reasons for this opinion are too many to be enumerated in detail; but one or two may be suggested.

1. Equality, reciprocity, and indeed the right of an independent nation require that the imperial parliament of Great Britain should pass an act forbidding the employment of American seamen, not only in their royal navy, but in their merchant service. Will ministry, parliament, or nation consent to this? I think not, at least at present, nor for a long time to come. Why? Because, if they do, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, indeed all other nations will demand a similar law relative to their seamen.

2. It is only necessary to look in the Index of the British Statutes at large, to find a number of statutes offering and promising rewards, temptations, and allurements to foreign seamen of all nations to enter the service in the royal navy and the merchant ships too, and promising them by the faith of the nation all the rights and privileges of natural-born subjects. Will they repeal all these laws?

3. Will Great Britain stipulate to renounce the power of employing American seamen? On this subject I may be deceived. And I desire to be understood to speak with diffidence. But I am suspicious, nay, persuaded, they have not only the impressed and enlisted American seamen on board their men-of-war to an amount of many thousands, but many more in their merchant ships and their transports. Among the documents attending one of their financial reports, was an article of four or five millions sterling for the pay of foreign seamen, in the merchant service, to the number of forty thousand. How came the government to pay seamen in the private service of merchants? I presume that foreign seamen have been employed not only in the transport service, but in forcing a clandestine commerce with the continent. And who were those foreign seamen? Nine tenths of them probably Americans.

The next question is, will this bill conciliate and unite the American people? It may put an argument into the mouths of some of the friends of the present administration, and take one away from some in the opposition; but it will not diminish the dread of taxes in the sordid, of whom the number is very great, nor extinguish the ambition to become the dominant party.

I hope you have by this time letters from Petersburg. We have only two since August. One containing nothing but a melancholy account of the death of the only daughter my son ever had. The other I will venture to inclose to you, in confidence, praying you to return it to me by the post. It is to his mother, and not intended to be seen by any but his family; but it contains more than usual of public affairs. We dare not correspond with him, nor he with us, upon public affairs. The times are too dangerous. Our letters have been almost all opened, many read by government in France and England; some produced in Court of Admiralty, yet all sent on at last. We have never lost but one letter. You may conclude from this that we have not offended High Mightinesses in France or England.

TO JOHN LATHROP.

Quincy, 22 March, 1813.

Reverend Sir,—

I thank you for your kind letter of the 19th, and for the valuable present of your discourse, occasioned by the death of Dr. Eliot. I had, indeed, “an acquaintance with the late Dr. Eliot,” and with his father, and “an affection” for both.

I believe them both to have been “candid, pious, learned, sincere, and amiable,” but I never had the felicity to belong to the same denomination in politics with either of them. Although I acknowledge much merit in the younger Dr. Eliot, in the labor and research discovered in his Biographical Dictionary, and its general utility, I must, nevertheless, own my regret for the numerous evidences of political prejudices. To such prejudices, however, I have found through the whole course of my life the very greatest and the very best men more or less liable.

I know nothing of the mediation, nor of the hopes of peace. I carefully avoid all secrets of government. Nothing has been presented to my mind, on which I can ground my hopes of a speedy peace. Your aspirations, my dear Doctor, after peace, are becoming your philosophical, moral, and Christian character. But you and I must remember that “sufferings become powerful means of checking the progress of folly and vice;” that “the miseries we feel or fear are the consequences of manifold abuses of Divine goodness.”

Let me add an observation which your learning and experience must have made, because all ages and nations have attested to its truth;—that mankind, in general, and our beloved country, in particular, bear adversity much better than prosperity.

When I look back upon the period which has passed since you and I settled in Boston, in 1768, upon the lawyers, the physicians, and the merchants, who have departed, though I have made no exact enumeration, I cannot perceive that the number of divines is greater in proportion than in either of those professions. I see no reason, therefore, to surmise that the clergy have been distinguished from the laity in the important article of mortality. The moment cannot be distant, my excellent friend, when you and I must follow the multitude of our acquaintance, who have gone before us to a region where we shall meet the two Dr. Eliots, and other worthies of whatever nation, sect, or party, and smile at the little passions and smaller prejudices, which divide us in this region of wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, light and darkness, ignorance and knowledge, where, however, the good predominates immensely over the evil, whatever in peevish moments we may think or say. I am, dear Sir, with high esteem and sincere respect, your friend.

TO WILLIAM PLUMER.

Quincy, 28 March, 1813.

You inquire, in your kind letter of the 19th, whether “every member of Congress did, on the 4th of July, 1776, in fact, cordially approve of the declaration of independence.”

They who were then members, all signed it, and, as I could not see their hearts, it would be hard for me to say that they did not approve it; but, as far as I could penetrate the intricate, internal foldings of their souls, I then believed, and have not since altered my opinion, that there were several who signed with regret, and several others, with many doubts and much lukewarmness. The measure had been upon the carpet for months, and obstinately opposed from day to day. Majorities were constantly against it. For many days the majority depended on Mr. Hewes, of North Carolina. While a member, one day, was speaking, and reading documents from all the colonies, to prove that the public opinion, the general sense of all, was in favor of the measure, when he came to North Carolina, and produced letters and public proceedings which demonstrated that the majority of that colony were in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out, “It is done! and I will abide by it.” I would give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the faces of the old majority, at that critical moment, than for the best piece of Raphael. The question, however, was eluded by an immediate motion for adjournment.

The struggle in Congress was long known abroad. Some members, who foresaw that the point would be carried, left the house and went home, to avoid voting in the affirmative or negative. Pennsylvania and New Jersey recalled all their delegates who had voted against independence, and sent new ones expressly to vote for it. The last debate but one was the most copious and the most animated; but the question was now evaded by a motion to postpone it to another day; some members, however, declaring that, if the question should be now demanded, they should vote for it, but they wished for a day or two more to consider of it. When that day arrived, some of the new members desired to hear the arguments for and against the measure. When these were summarily recapitulated, the question was put and carried. There were no yeas and nays in those times. A committee was appointed to draw a declaration; when reported, it underwent abundance of criticism and alteration; but, when finally accepted, all those members who had voted against independence, now declared they would sign and support it.

The appointment of General Washington to the command, in 1775, of an army in Cambridge, consisting altogether of New England men, over the head of officers of their own flesh and choice, a most hazardous step, was another instance of apparent unanimity, and real regret in nearly one half. But this history is too long for this letter.

The taxes must be laid, and the war supported.

I have nothing from my son since 28th October. I know not how we shall ever get him home, though that is the most anxious wish of my heart. Pray write him as often as you can. I regret the change of hands in New Hampshire at this juncture very much.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Quincy, 14 April, 1813.

I have received your favors of the 8th and 10th, and the volume of Benjamin Edes’s Gazettes, printed at Watertown between the 5th of June, 1775, and the 9th of December, 1776.

I am much obliged to you and to Mr. Austin for the loan of this precious collection of memorials.

I read last fall and winter The Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, and The Exiles of Siberia, and Scott’s Lay, Marmion, and Lady, I must say, with much interest and amusement; but this volume of gazettes, and the journals of Congress for the same period, which I have lately run over, have given me much more heartfelt delight. If these volumes appear to you as they do to me, how can we wonder at the total ignorance and oblivion of the revolution, which appears everywhere in the present generation? All the Boston orations on the 4th of July that I have ever read or heard, contain not so much of “the manners and feelings and principles which led to the revolution,” as these two volumes of gazettes and journals.

The act printed in the Gazette of November 13th, 1775, “In the sixteenth year of the reign of George the Third, king, &c., an act for encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend the sea-coast of America, and for erecting a court to try and condemn all vessels that shall be found infesting the same,” is one of the most important documents in history.1 The declaration of independence is a brimborion in comparison with it. Why may not the Chronicle or the Patriot reprint this law? Surely, this could be no libel. Neither editors nor printers need consult lawyers, to know whether Chief Justice Parsons could find any expression in it, to give in charge to a grand jury.

The best care shall be taken of this volume, and it shall be returned to Mr. Austin with thanks.

Commodore Williams’s “record of our earliest privateers and prizes” will be received with gratitude; but I should be glad to see them in the Chronicle and Centinel. Had I not been in Congress at the time, and as anxious as Martha about many things, I should be ashamed to acknowledge that I am unacquainted with his person, character, and residence.

I can conceive of no possible objection against the publication of these things at this time, except that they do too much honor to Vice-President Gerry and to the memory of the late Governor Sullivan. “Quorum pars magna fui” might be assumed by them with more propriety than by your assured friend.

TO BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE.

Quincy, 5 June, 1813.

I read, within a few days, an address to General and Governor Gage, from the bar, and the name of Caleb Strong among the addressers. This, to be sure, is a characteristic trait. In former parts of my life I have known somewhat of the thing called a bar—a significant word, and an important thing.

By all that I remember of the history of England, the British Constitution has been preserved by the bar. In all civil contests and political struggles, the lawyers have been divided; some have advocated the prerogatives of the crown, and some the rights of the people. All, or at least a majority, have united, at last, in restoring and improving the Constitution.

The principles, the characters, and the views of the American bar at this time are unknown or incomprehensible to me. What is the American bar? Who are the men? What are their names? Has their education been alike? Are their principles the same? Are Tucker and Story united in theory? I might proceed with my questions for half an hour. But, I will conclude with an anecdote. When Governor Hutchinson was about to leave his government and embark for England, a meeting of the bar was summoned in Boston. We met. A motion was made to “address the Governor upon his departure from the government of his native province. It was peculiarly proper for the bar, who had served under him as Chief Justice of the province, and witnessed his great abilities and integrity, to express publicly their high esteem of his character, and approbation of his conduct as Chief Justice, as Lieutenant-Governor, and as Governor.”

No opposition was made, though father Dana, William Reed,1 Samuel Swift, and Josiah Quincy, Junior, Esquires, were present. All was going on swimmingly. After some time, John Adams, whose destiny has always been to mount breaches and lead the forlorn hope, arose from his seat and modestly inquired whether the proposed address was to be presented to the Governor, and go to the public, as the address of the bar as a body, to be signed by their president or secretary, or whether it was to be signed and presented as the act of individuals. The answer from all quarters was, “by the bar as a body, to be sure.” John Adams then said, it would be unfair to send out to the world an address, as an act of the whole bar, when some of them could not approve it. He had no desire to control any man in the expression of his sentiments, but was not willing to have his own suppressed. He had no objection to an address to be drawn, signed, and presented by those gentlemen who should approve it; but the bar was not a legal corporation, and had no public authority. The minority, therefore, however small, could not be controlled, and ought not to be restrained from expressing their opinions; and ought not to be involved in a general vote. This ought to have been sufficient, but it was not. Still the cry was, “the bar!” The address must be from the bar!

Poor John was obliged, at last, to rise once more and say, “To be sure, it is in the power of the majority to vote, and to address, and to present and publish their addresses as the act of the bar; but it was not in their power to prevent the minority from publishing their dissent. He knew not whether he should be joined or countenanced by any other; but he would attend, and when the address should be discussed, he would give his opinions and his reasons, and, if an address was finally adopted by the bar, as a bar, in which any thing should be inserted to which he could not agree, he would enter his protest against it, in writing, and assign his reasons. Whether any other gentlemen would join him, he knew not. But, if not, he would stand alone.” Josiah Quincy, Junior, Esquire, and Samuel Swift, Esquire, as if appalled and astonished, sat mute. John Lowell, Esquire, said, in a kind of hurry, “This declaration does great honor to Mr. Adams.” Daniel Leonard, Esquire, said: “If there is to be a protest, and reasons assigned, and all this to be published, the whole design will be defeated, and it would be better to have no address at all.”

John Adams then said, “he neither approved the administration of Mr. Hutchinson as Lieutenant-Governor, as Chief Justice, nor as Governor, and he would not suffer his opinion to be equivocal.” Your knowledge of human nature is deep enough to infer the character of Lowell, Leonard, and Quincy, from what they said or what they said not. The plan of an address from the bar, as a body, was laid aside.

Had John Adams been compelled to produce his protest, Richard Dana, William Reed, Samuel Swift, Benjamin Kent, and Josiah Quincy, Junior, would have signed it. Auchmuty, Sewall, Fitch, Samuel Quincy, Ben. Gridley, Blowers, Cazneau, &c., &c., would have been against them.1

You have, and ought to have, a tenderness for the memories of Hutchinson and Olivers. So have I, more than you suspect. Yet you must know the truth, and nothing but the truth, from

John Adams.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 10 June, 1813.

In your letter to Dr. Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, you ask, “What an effort of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of vandalism, when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors; we were to look backward, not forward, for improvement, the President himself declaring, in one of his answers to addresses, that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science.” I shall stop here. Other parts of this letter may hereafter be considered, if I can keep the book long enough; but only four copies have arrived in Boston, and they have spread terror; as yet, however, in secret.2

“The President himself declaring that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science.” This sentence shall be the theme of my present letter. I would ask what President is meant. I remember no such sentiment in any of Washington’s answers to addresses. I myself must have been meant. Now, I have no recollection of any such sentiment ever issuing from my pen or my tongue, or of any such thought in my heart for at least sixty years of my past life. I should be obliged to you for the words of any answer of mine that you have thus misunderstood.

A man of seventy-seven or seventy-eight cannot commonly be expected to recollect promptly every passage of his past life, or every trifle he has written. Much less can it be expected of me to recollect every expression of every answer to an address, when, for six months together, I was compelled to answer addresses of all sorts, from all quarters of the Union. My private secretary has declared that he has copied fifteen answers from me in one morning. The greatest affliction, distress, confusion of my administration arose from the necessity of receiving and answering these addresses. Richard Cromwell’s trunk did not contain so many of the lives and fortunes of the English nation as mine of those in the United States. For the honor of my country I wish these addresses and answers were annihilated. For my own character and reputation, I wish every word of every address and every answer were published.

The sentiment that you have attributed to me in your letter to Dr. Priestley, I totally disclaim, and demand, in the French sense of the word, of you the proof. It is totally incongruous to every principle of my mind and every sentiment of my heart for three score years at least.

You may expect many more expostulations from one who has loved and esteemed you for eight-and-thirty years.

When this letter was ready to go, your favor of May 27th came to hand.1 I can only thank you for it at present.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 14 June, 1813.

In your letter to Dr. Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, you “tender to him the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like him, and disclaim the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which, under the form of a law, was, for some time, placed among them.” This law, I presume, was the alien law, as it was called.

As your name is subscribed to that law, as Vice-President, and mine as President, I know not why you are not as responsible for it as I am. Neither of us was concerned in the formation of it. We were then at war with France. French spies then swarmed in our cities and our country; some of them were intolerably impudent, turbulent, and seditious. To check these, was the design of this law. Was there ever a government which had not authority to defend itself against spies in its own bosom—spies of an enemy at war? This law was never executed by me in any instance.

But what is the conduct of our government now? Aliens are ordered to report their names, and obtain certificates once a month; and an industrious Scotchman, at this moment industriously laboring in my garden, is obliged to walk once a month to Boston, eight miles at least, to renew his certificate from the marshal. And a fat organist is ordered into the country, &c. All this is right. Every government has, by the law of nations, a right to make prisoners of war of every subject of an enemy. But a war with England differs not from a war with France. The law of nations is the same in both.

I cannot write volumes on a single sheet, but these letters of yours require volumes from me.

“The mighty wave of public opinion, which has rolled over!” This is in your style; and, sometimes, in mine, with less precision and less delicacy. O, Mr. Jefferson! what a wave of public opinion has rolled over the universe! By the universe here, I mean our globe. I can yet say, “there is nothing new under the sun” in my sense. The reformation rolled a wave of public opinion over the globe, as wonderful as this. A war of thirty years was necessary to compose this wave. The wars of Charlemagne rolled a wave. The Crusades rolled a wave more mountainous than the French revolution. Only one hundred years ago, a wave was rolled, when Austria, England, and Holland, in alliance, contended against France for the dominion, or rather, the alliance of Spain.

Had “the clock run down,” I am not so sanguine as you that the consequence would have been as you presume. I was determined, in all events, to retire. You and Mr. Madison are indebted to Bayard for an evasion of the contest. Had the voters for Burr addressed the nation, I am not sure that your convention would have decided in your favor.1 But what reflections does this suggest! What pretensions had Aaron Burr to be President or Vice-President?

What “a wave” has rolled over christendom for fifteen hundred years! What a wave has rolled over France for fifteen hundred years, supporting in power and glory the dynasty of Bourbon! What a wave supported the house of Austria! What a wave has supported the dynasty of Mahomet for twelve hundred years! What a wave supported the house of Hercules for so many ages in more remote antiquity! These waves are not to be slighted. They are less resistible than those in the gulf stream in a hurricane. What a wave has the French revolution spread! And what a wave is our navy of five frigates raising!

If I can keep this book, “Memoirs of Lindsey,” I shall have more to say. Meantime,

I remain, &c.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 28 June, 1813.

It is very true that the denunciations of the priesthood are fulminated against every advocate for a complete freedom of religion. Comminations, I believe, would be plenteously pronounced by even the most liberal of them, against atheism, deism,—against every man who disbelieved or doubted the resurrection of Jesus, or the miracles of the New Testament. Priestley himself would denounce the man who should deny the Apocalypse, or the prophecies of Daniel. Priestley and Lindsey have both denounced as idolaters and blasphemers all the Trinitarians and even the Arians. Poor weak man! when will thy perfection arrive? Thy perfectibility I shall not deny, for a greater character than Priestley or Godwin has said, “Be ye perfect,” &c. For my part, I cannot “deal damnation round the land” on all I judge the foes of God or man. But I did not intend to say a word on this subject in this letter. As much of it as you please, hereafter; but let me now return to politics.

With some difficulty I have hunted up or down the “address of the young men of the city of Philadelphia, the district of Southwark, and the northern liberties,” and the answer.

The addressers say, “actuated by the same principles on which our forefathers achieved their independence, the recent attempts of a foreign power to derogate from the rights and dignity of our country, awaken our liveliest sensibility and our strongest indignation.” Huzza, my brave boys! Could Thomas Jefferson or John Adams hear these words with insensibility and without emotion? These boys afterwards add, “we regard our liberty and independence as the richest portion given us by our ancestors.” And who were these ancestors? Among them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; and I very coolly believe that no two men among these ancestors did more towards it than those two. Could either hear this like a statue? If, one hundred years hence, your letters and mine should see the light, I hope the reader will hunt up this address, and read it all, and remember that we were then engaged, or on the point of engaging, in a war with France. I shall not repeat the answer till we come to the paragraph upon which you criticized to Dr. Priestley, though every word of it is true; and I now rejoice to see it recorded, though I had wholly forgotten it.

The paragraph is, “Science and morals are the great pillars on which this country has been raised to its present population, opulence, and prosperity; and these alone can advance, support, and preserve it. Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity, or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction, that after the most industrious and impartial researches, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions, or systems of education more fit, in general, to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.”1

Now, compare the paragraph in the answer with the paragraph in the address, as both are quoted above, and see if we can find the extent and the limits of the meaning of both.

Who composed that army of fine young fellows that was then before my eyes? There were among them Roman Catholics, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants, and House Protestants,2 Deists and Atheists, and Protestants “qui ne croyent rien.” Very few, however, of several of these species; nevertheless, all educated in the general principles of Christianity, and the general principles of English and American liberty.

Could my answer be understood by any candid reader or hearer, to recommend to all the others the general principles, institutions, or systems of education of the Roman Catholics, or those of the Quakers, or those of the Presbyterians, or those of the Methodists, or those of the Moravians, or those of the Universalists, or those of the Philosophers? No. The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young men could unite, and these principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system. I could, therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present information, that I believed they would never make discoveries in contradiction to these general principles. In favor of these general principles, in philosophy, religion, and government, I could fill sheets of quotations from Frederic of Prussia, from Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, as well as Newton and Locke; not to mention thousands of divines and philosophers of inferior fame.

I might have flattered myself that my sentiments were sufficiently known to have protected me against suspicions of narrow thoughts, contracted sentiments, bigoted, enthusiastic, or superstitious principles, civil, political, philosophical, or ecclesiastical. The first sentence of the preface to my Defence of the Constitution, vol. i., printed in 1787, is in these words: “The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation, and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world, and the human character, which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity,” &c. I will quote no farther, but request you to read again that whole page, and then say whether the writer of it could be suspected of recommending to youth “to look backward instead of forward,” for instruction and improvement. This letter is already too long. In my next, I shall consider “the terrorism of the day.”

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 30 June, 1813.

Before I proceed to the order of the day, which is “the terrorism of a former day,” I beg leave to correct an idea that some readers may infer from an expression in one of your letters. No sentiment or expression in any of my answers to addresses was obtruded or insinuated by any person about me. Every one of them was written with my own hand. I alone am responsible for all the mistakes and errors in them. To have called council to deliberate on such a mass of—would have taken all the time, and the business of the State have been suspended. It is true, I was sufficiently plagued by P’s and T’s, and S’s. These, however, were puppets danced upon the wires of two jugglers behind the scene; and these jugglers were Hamilton and Washington. How you stare at the name of Washington! But to return, for the present, to “the sensations excited in free yet firm minds by the terrorism of the day.” You say, “none can conceive them who did not witness them, and they were felt by one party only.”1

Upon this subject I despair of making myself understood by posterity, by the present age, and even by you. To collect and arrange the documents illustrative of it, would require as many lives as a cat. You never felt the terrorism of Shays’s rebellion in Massachusetts. I believe you never felt the terrorism of Mr. Gallatin’s insurrection in Pennsylvania. You certainly never realized the terrorism of Fries’s most outrageous riot and rescue, as I call it,—treason, rebellion, as the world and great judges and two juries pronounced it. You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet, in 1793, when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution in the government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French revolution and against England. The coolest and the firmest minds, even among the Quakers in Philadelphia, have given their opinions to me, that nothing but the yellow fever, which removed Dr. Hutchinson and Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant from this world, could have saved the United States from a fatal revolution of government. I have no doubt you were fast asleep, in philosophical tranquillity, when ten thousand people, and, perhaps, many more, were parading the streets of Philadelphia on the evening of my Fast Day; when even Governor Mifflin himself thought it his duty to order a patrol of horse and foot to preserve the peace; when Market street was as full as men could stand by one another, and, even before my door; when some of my domestics, in frenzy, determined to sacrifice their lives in my defence; when all were ready to make a desperate sally among the multitude, and others were, with difficulty and danger, dragged back by the rest; when I, myself, judged it prudent and necessary to order chests of arms from the war-office to be brought through by-lanes and back-doors, determined to defend my house at the expense of my life and the lives of the few, very few domestics and friends within it. What think you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson? I shall investigate the causes, the motives, the incentives to these terrorisms. Shall I remind you of Philip Freneau, of Lloyd, of Ned Church, of Peter Markoe, of Andrew Brown, of Duane, of Callender, of Tom Paine, of Greenleaf, of Cheetham, of Jennison at New York, of Benjamin Austin at Boston? But, above all, shall I request you to collect the circular letters from members of Congress, in the middle and southern States, to their constituents? I would give all I am worth for a complete collection of those letters. Please to recollect Edward Livingston’s motions and speeches, and those of his associates, in the case of Jonathan Robbins.

The real terrors of both parties have always been, and now are, the fear that they shall lose the elections, and, consequently, the loaves and fishes, and that their antagonists will get them. Both parties have excited artificial terrorism, and, if I were summoned as a witness to say, upon oath, which party had excited1 the most terror, and which had really felt the most, I could not give a more sincere answer than in the vulgar style, “put them in a bag and shake them, and then see which will come out first.”

Where is the terrorism now, my friend? There is now more real terrorism in New England than there ever was in Virginia, the terror of a civil war à la Vendée, a division of the States, &c., &c., &c. How shall we conjure down this damnable rivalry between Virginia and Massachusetts? Virginia had recourse to Pennsylvania and New York. Massachusetts has now recourse to New York. They have almost got New Jersey and Maryland, and they are aiming at Pennsylvania. And all this in the midst of a war with England, when all Europe is in flames!

I will give you a hint or two more on the subject of terrorism. When John Randolph, in the House, and Stephens Thompson Mason, in the Senate, were treating me with the utmost contempt; when Ned Livingston was threatening me with impeachment for the murder of Jonathan Robbins, the native of Danvers in Connecticut; when I had certain information that the daily language in the insurance office in Boston was, even from the mouth of Charles Jarvis, “We must go to Philadelphia and drag that John Adams from his chair,” I thank God that terror never seized on my mind. But I have had more excitements to it, from 1761 to this day, than any other man. Name the other, if you can. I have been disgraced and degraded, and I have a right to complain. But, as I have always expected it, I have always submitted to it, perhaps with too much tameness.

The amount of all the speeches of John Randolph, in the House, for two or three years, is that himself and myself are the only two honest and consistent men in the United States; himself eternally in opposition to government, and myself as constantly in favor of it. He is now in correspondence with his friend Quincy. What will come of it, let Virginia and Massachusetts judge. In my next, you may find something upon correspondences, whig and tory, federal and democratic, Virginian and Novanglian, English and French, Jacobin and despotic. Meantime, &c.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 9 July, 1813.

Lord! Lord! what can I do with so much Greek? When I was of your age, young man, that is, seven or eight years ago, I felt a kind of pang of affection for one of the flames of my youth, and again paid my addresses to Isocrates and Dionysius Halicarnassensis, &c., &c., &c. I collected all my lexicons and grammars, and sat down to Περὶ συνϑέσεως ὀνοματων. In this way I amused myself for some time, but I found that if I looked a word to-day, in less than a week I had to look it again. It was to little better purpose than writing letters on a pail of water.

Whenever I sit down to write to you, I am precisely in the situation of the wood-cutter on Mount Ida. I cannot see wood for trees. So many subjects crowd upon me, that I know not which to begin. But I will begin at random with Belsham, who is, I have no doubt, a man of merit. He had no malice against you, nor any thought of doing mischief; nor has he done any, though he has been imprudent. The truth is, the dissenters of all denominations in England, and, especially, the Unitarians, are cowed, as we used to say at college. They are ridiculed, insulted, persecuted. They can scarcely hold their heads above water. They catch at straws and shadows to avoid drowning. Priestley sent your letter to Lindsey, and Belsham printed it from the same motive, i. e. to derive some countenance from the name of Jefferson. Nor has it done harm here. Priestley says to Lindsey, “You see he is almost one of us, and he hopes will soon be altogether such as we are.” Even in our New England I have heard a high federal divine say, your letters had increased his respect for you.

“The same political parties, which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time.” Precisely; and this is precisely the complaint in the preface to the first volume of my Defence. While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a stand; little better understood, little better practised now than three or four thousand years ago. What is the reason? I say, parties and factions will not suffer improvements to be made. As soon as one man hints at an improvement, his rival opposes it. No sooner has one party discovered or invented any amelioration of the condition of man, or the order of society than the opposite party belies it, misconstrues it, misrepresents it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated or interpolated or prohibited; sometimes by Popes, sometimes by Emperors, sometimes by aristocratical, and sometimes by democratical assemblies, and sometimes by mobs.

Aristotle wrote the history and description of eighteen hundred republics which existed before his time. Cicero wrote two volumes of discourses on government, which, perhaps, were worth all the rest of his works. The works of Livy and Tacitus, &c., that are lost, would be more interesting than all that remain. Fifty gospels have been destroyed. Where are St. Luke’s world of books that were written?

If you ask my opinion, who has committed all the havoc? I will answer you candidly. Ecclesiastical and imperial despotisms have done it to conceal their frauds.

Why are the histories of all nations, more ancient than the Christian era, lost? Who destroyed the Alexandrian library? I believe that Christian priests, Jewish rabbis, Grecian sages, and Roman emperors, had as great a hand in it as Turks and Mahometans. Democrats, rebels, and Jacobins, when they possess a momentary power, have shown a disposition both to destroy and to forge records, as Vandatical as priests and despots. Such has been and such is the world we live in.

I recollect, near thirty years ago, to have said carelessly to you, that I wished I could find time and means to write something upon aristocracy. You seized upon the idea, and encouraged me to do it with all that friendly warmth that is natural and habitual to you. I soon began, and have been writing upon that subject ever since. I have been so unfortunate as never to be able to make myself understood. Your ἄριστοι are the most difficult animals to manage of any thing in the whole theory and practice of government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own subtilty, industry, and courage, but they employ the commonalty to knock to pieces every plan and model that the most honest architects in legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both patricians and plebeians are as furious as the workmen in England to demolish labor-saving machinery.

But who are these ἄριστοι? Who shall judge? Who shall select these choice spirits from the rest of the congregation? Themselves? We must find out and determine who themselves are. Shall the congregation choose? Ask Xenophon. Perhaps, hereafter I may quote you Greek; too much in a hurry at present; English must suffice. Xenophon says, that the ecclesia always choose the worst men they can find, because none others will do their dirty work. This wicked motive is worse than birth or wealth. Here I want to quote Greek again, but the day before I received your letter of June 27th, I gave the book to George Washington Adams, going to the academy at Hingham. The title is, ΗΘΙΚΗ ΠΟΙΗΣΙΣ, a collection of moral sentences from all the most ancient Greek poets. In one of the oldest of them I read, in Greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet, the sense of which was: “Nobility in men is worth as much as it is in horses, asses, or rams; but the meanest-blooded puppy in the world, if he gets a little money, is as good a man as the best of them.” Yet birth and wealth together have prevailed over virtue and talents in all ages. The many will acknowledge no other ἄριστοι. Your experience of this truth will not much differ from that of your old friend.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 13 July, 1813.

Let me allude to one circumstance more, in one of your letters to me, before I touch upon the subject of religion in your letter to Priestley. The first time that you and I differed in opinion on any material question was after your arrival from Europe; and that point was the French revolution. You was well persuaded in your own mind that the nation would succeed in establishing a free republican government. I was well persuaded in mine, that a project of such a government, over five-and-twenty millions of people, when four-and-twenty millions and five hundred thousand of them could neither read nor write, was as unnatural, irrational, and impracticable as it would be over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, and bears, in the royal menagerie at Versailles. Napoleon has lately invented a word, which perfectly expressed my opinion at that time and ever since. He calls the project ideology; and John Randolph, though he was, fourteen years ago, as wild an enthusiast for equality and fraternity as any of them, appears to be now a regenerated proselyte to Napoleon’s opinion and mine, that it was all madness.

The Greeks, in their allegorical style, said that the two ladies, ἄριστοκρατία and δημοκρατία, always in a quarrel, disturbed every body in the neighborhood with their brawls. It is a fine observation of yours that whig and tory belong to natural history. Inequalities of mind and body are so established by God Almighty in his constitution of human nature, that no art or policy can ever plane them down to a level. I have never read reasoning more absurd, sophistry more gross, in proof of the Athanasian creed, or transubstantiation, than the subtle labors of Helvetius and Rousseau to demonstrate the natural equality of mankind. Jus cuique, the golden rule, do as you would be done by, is all the equality that can be supported or defended by reason or common sense.

It is very true, as you justly observe, I can say nothing new on this or any other subject of government. But when Lafayette harangued you, and me, and John Quincy Adams, through a whole evening, in your hotel in the Cul de Sac, at Paris, and developed the plans now in operation to reform France, though I was silent as you was, I then thought I could say something new to him. In plain truth, I was astonished at the grossness of his ignorance of government and history, as I had been for years before, at that of Turgot, Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, and Franklin. This gross ideology of them all first suggested to me the thought and the inclination, which I afterwards executed in London, of writing something upon aristocracy. I was restrained for years by many fearful considerations. Who and what was I? Why, a man of no name or consideration in Europe. The manual exercise of writing was painful and distressing to me, almost like a blow on the elbow or the knee; my style was habitually negligent, unstudied, unpolished; I should make enemies of all the French patriots, the Dutch patriots, the English republicans, dissenters, reformers, call them what you will; and, what came nearer home to my bosom than all the rest, I knew I should give offence to many, if not all, of my best friends in America, and, very probably, destroy all the little popularity I ever had in a country where popularity had more omnipotence than the British parliament assumed. Where should I get the necessary books? What printer or bookseller would undertake to print such hazardous writings? But, when the French assembly of notables met, and I saw that Turgot’s “government in one centre, and that centre the nation,” a sentence as mysterious or as contradictory as the Athanasian creed, was about to take place; and when I saw that Shays’s rebellion was breaking out in Massachusetts; and when I saw that even my obscure name was often quoted in France as an advocate for simple democracy; when I saw that the sympatheis in America had caught the French flame, I was determined to wash my own hands as clear as I could of all this foulness. I had then strong forebodings that I was sacrificing all the emoluments of this life; and so it has happened, but not in so great a degree as I apprehended.

In truth, my “Defence of the Constitutions” and “Discourses on Davila,” were the cause of that immense unpopularity which fell like the tower of Siloam upon me. Your steady defence of democratical principles, and your invariable favorable opinion of the French revolution, laid the foundation of your unbounded popularity. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Now, I will forfeit my life, if you can find one sentiment in my Defence of the Constitutions, or the Discourses on Davila, which, by a fair construction, can favor the introduction of hereditary monarchy or aristocracy into America. They were all written to support and strengthen the Constitution of the United States.

The wood-cutter on Mount Ida, though he was puzzled to find a tree to drop at first, I presume knew how to leave off when he was weary. But I never know when to cease when I begin to write to you.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 17 July, 1813.

Your letters to Priestley have increased my grief, if that were possible, for the loss of Rush. Had he lived, I would have stimulated him to insist on your promise to him to write him on the subject of religion. Your plan I admire.

In your letter to Priestley, of March 21st, 1801, dated at Washington, you call the Christian philosophy “the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system, that ever shone on man.” That it is the most sublime and benevolent, I agree; but whether it has been more perverted than that of Moses, of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Numa, of Mahomet, of the Druids, of the Hindoos, &c., &c., &c., I cannot as yet determine, because I am not sufficiently acquainted with these systems, or the history of their effects, to form a decisive opinion of the result of the comparison.

In your letter, dated Washington, April 9th, 1803, you say, “in consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the years 1798-99, I had promised him, some day, to write him a letter, giving him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected upon it since, and even sketched the outlines in my own mind. I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the ancient philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an estimate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antoninus. I should do justice to the branches of morality they have treated well, but point out the importance of those in which they are deficient. I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, and doctrines of Jesus, who, sensible of the incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice, and philanthropy, and to inculcate a belief in a future state. This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, and even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark the disadvantages his doctrines have to encounter, not having been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him, when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, and presented in very paradoxical shapes. Yet such are the fragments remaining as to show a master-workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime, probably, that has ever been taught, and more perfect than any of the ancient philosophers. His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that has ever been exhibited to man. This is the outline!”

“Sancte Socrate! Ora pro nobis!” Erasmus. Priestley, in his letter to Lindsey, inclosing a copy of your letter to him, says, “he is generally considered as an unbeliever. If so, however, he cannot be far from us, and I hope in the way to be not only almost, but altogether what we are. He now attends public worship very regularly, and his moral conduct was never impeached.”

Now, I see not but you are as good a Christian as Priestley and Lindsey. Piety and morality were the end and object of the Christian system, according to them and according to you. They believed in the resurrection of Jesus, in his miracles and inspirations. But what inspirations? Not all that is recorded in the New Testament or the Old. They have not yet told us how much they believe or disbelieve. They have not told us how much allegory, how much parable they find, nor how they explained them all in the New Testament or Old.

John Quincy Adams has written, for years, to his sons, boys of ten and twelve, a series of letters, in which he pursues a plan more extensive than yours, but agreeing in most of the essential points. I wish these letters could be preserved in the bosoms of his boys. But women and priests will get them; and I expect, if he makes a peace, he will have to retire, like Jay, to study prophecies to the end of his life.

I have more to say upon this subject of religion.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 18 July, 1813.

I have more to say on religion. For more than sixty years I have been attentive to this great subject. Controversies between Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Unitarians, Deists and Christians, Atheists and both, have attracted my attention, whenever the singular life I have led would admit, to all these questions. The history of this little village of Quincy, if it were worth recording, would explain to you how this happened. I think I can now say I have read away bigotry, if not enthusiasm.

What does Priestley mean by an unbeliever, when he applies it to you? How much did he unbelieve himself? Gibbon had him right when he denominated his creed “scanty.” We are to understand, no doubt, that he believed the resurrection of Jesus, some of his miracles, his inspiration; but in what degree? He did not believe in the inspiration of the writings that contain his history. Yet he believed in the Apocalyptic beast, and he believed as much as he pleased in the writings of Daniel and John. This great and extraordinary man, whom I sincerely loved, esteemed, and respected, was really a phenomenon; a comet in the system, like Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and Hume. Had Bolingbroke or Voltaire taken him in hand, what would they have made of him and his creed?

I do not believe you have read much of Priestley’s “Corruptions of Christianity,” his History of early opinions concerning Jesus Christ, his predestination, his no soul system, or his controversy with Horsley. I have been a diligent student for many years in books whose titles you have never seen. In Priestley’s and Lindsey’s writings, in Farmer, Cappe, in Tucker, or Edward Search’s Light of Nature Pursued, in Edwards and Hopkins, and, lately, in Ezra Stiles Ely, his reverend and learned panegyrists, and his elegant and spirited opponents. I am not wholly uninformed of the controversies in Germany, and the learned researches of universities and professors, in which the sanctity of the Bible and the inspiration of its authors are taken for granted or waved, or admitted or not denied. I have also read Condorcet’s Progress of the Human Mind. Now, what is all this to you? No more than if I should tell you that I read Dr. Clarke, and Dr. Waterland, and Emlyn, and Leland’s View or Review of the Deistical writers, more than fifty years ago, which is a literal truth.

I blame you not for reading Euclid and Newton, Thucydides and Theocritus, for I believe you will find as much entertainment and instruction in them as I have found in my theological and ecclesiastical instructors, or even, as I have found, in a profound investigation of the life, writings, and doctrines of Erastus, whose disciples were Milton, Harrington, Selden, St. John, the Chief Justice, father of Bolingbroke, and others, the choicest spirits of their age; or in La Harpe’s history of the philosophy of the eighteenth century; or in Vanderkemp’s vast map of the causes of the revolutionary spirit, in the same and preceding centuries. These things are to me the marbles and nine-pins of old age; I will not say the beads and prayer-books. I agree with you as far as you go, most cordially, and, I think, solidly. How much farther I go, how much more I believe than you, I may explain in a future letter. Thus much I will say at present. I have found so many difficulties that I am not astonished at your stopping where you are; and, so far from sentencing you to perdition, I hope soon to meet you in another country.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, August, 1813.

Κριοὺς μὲν καὶ ὄνοὺς διζημεϑα, Κύρνε, καὶ ἵππους
Εὐγενέας. καί τις βούλεται ἐξ ἀγαϑῶν
Κτήσασϑαι· γὴμαι δὲ κακήν κακοῦ οὐ μελεδαίνει
Ἐσϑλος ἀνὴρ, ἤν οἱ χρήματα πολλα διδῷ.

Behold my translation!

“My friend Curnis, when we want to purchase horses, asses, or rams, we inquire for the well-born, and every one wishes to procure from the good breeds. A good man does not care to marry a shrew, the daughter of a shrew, unless they give a great deal of money with her.”1

What think you of my translation? Compare it with that of Grotius, and tell me which is the nearest to the original in letter and in spirit.

Grotius renders it,—

Nobilitas asinis et equis simul, arietibusque
Dat pretium: nec de semine degeneri
Admissura placet. Sed pravæ e sanguine pravo,
Si dos sit, præsto est optima conditio.

This flower of Greek poetry is extracted from the

ΘΕΟΓΝΙΛΟΣ ΜΕΓΑΡΕ′ΩΣ ΠΑΡΑΙΝΕΣΕΙΣ.

Theognis lived five hundred and forty-four years before Jesus Christ. Has science, or morals, or philosophy, or criticism, or Christianity, advanced, or improved, or enlightened mankind upon this subject, and shown them that the idea of the “well-born” is a prejudice, a phantom, a point-no-point, a Cape Flyaway, a dream?

I say it is the ordinance of God Almighty, in the constitution of human nature, and wrought into the fabric of the universe. Philosophers and politicians may nibble and quibble, but they never will get rid of it. Their only resource is to control it. Wealth is another monster to be subdued. Hercules could not subdue both or either. To subdue them by regular approaches and strong fortifications, by a regular siege, was not my object in writing on aristocracy, as I proposed to you in Grosvenor-Square. If you deny any one of these positions, I will prove them to demonstration by examples drawn from your own Virginia, and from every other State in the Union, and from the history of every nation, civilized and savage, from all we know of the time of the creation of the world.

Whence is the derivation of the words generous, generously, generosity, &c.? Johnson says, “Generous—a generosus, Latin, not of mean birth; of good extraction; noble of mind; magnanimous; open of heart; liberal; munificent, strong, vigorous,” and he might have added, courageous, heroic, patriotic.

Littleton happens to be at hand. “Generosus—ἐυγενὴς, γενναῖος. Nobilis; ex prœclaro genere ortus; qui a genere non deflectit. Born of a noble race, a gentleman born.” See his examples.

What is the origin of the word gentleman?

It would be a curious critical speculation for a learned idler to pursue this idea through all languages.

We may call this sentiment a prejudice, because we can give what names we please to such things as we please; but, in my opinion, it is a part of the natural history of man, and politicians and philosophers may as well project to make the animal live without bones or blood, as society can pretend to establish a free government without attention to it.

Quincy, 16 August, 1813.

I can proceed no further with this letter, as I intended.

Your friend, my only daughter, expired yesterday morning in the arms of her husband, her son, her daughter, her father and mother, her husband’s two sisters, and two of her nieces, in the forty-ninth year of her age, forty of which she was the healthiest and firmest of us all. Since which she has been a monument to suffering and to patience.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 20 August, 1813.

I can, at length, furnish you with a copy of the proceedings of the Congress, held at New York, in 1765; it is inclosed herewith. After diligent inquiry, I had not been able to procure a single copy, either in manuscript or print, done in the United States, but fortunately met one published by J. Almon, in London, in 1767, with a collection of American tracts, in four octavo volumes, from which I caused the present one to be printed. It may be of some use to the historian at least.

The Marquis de Casa Yrujo, with my daughter, their children and servants, made me a visit on his return from an embassy to the prince regent of Portugal, at Rio Janeiro, in Brazil, last June was a year, and remained here until a few weeks ago, owing to the embargo, war, blockades, &c., when they sailed for Cadiz. The above circumstances, with others, will, I trust, be some apology for my long delay in answering your last esteemed letter.

In the Congress of 1765, there were several conspicuous characters. Mr. James Otis appeared to me to be the boldest and best speaker. I voted for him as our President, but Brigadier Ruggles succeeded by one vote, owing to the number of the committee from New York, as we voted individually. When the business was finished, our president would not sign the petitions, and peremptorily refused to assign any reasons, until I pressed him so hard that he at last said, “it was against his conscience,” on which word I rung the change so loud, that a plain challenge was given by him and accepted, in the presence of the whole corps; but he departed the next morning before day, without an adieu to any of his brethren. He seemed to accord with what was done during the session so fully and heartily, that Mr. Otis told me frequently it gave him surprise, as he confessed he suspected his sincerity.

There was less fortitude in that body than in the succeeding Congress of 1774; indeed, some of the members seemed as timid as if engaged in a traitorous conspiracy. Mr. Ogden, then speaker of the New Jersey assembly, following the example of the president, declined to sign the petitions, though warmly solicited by myself in private, and also by my father-in-law, Colonel Borden, his colleague. The consequence of my mentioning this fact, as I returned to Newcastle through New Jersey, was to Mr. Ogden a burning in effigy in several of the counties, and his removal from the office of speaker, at the next meeting of the general assembly; and to me, menaces of another challenge. The great mass of the people were at that time zealous in the cause of America. Other incidents of that day are recollected, but they are of trivial import.

In the year 1778, and afterwards, until the preliminaries of peace were signed, the members of Congress varied yearly in point of talents and exertions in favor of the revolution. They seemed to be considerably governed by the prospects before them, as they were promising or the contrary; however, a great majority were staunch whigs at all times.

Whatever may be the fate of our government in the United States, I decidedly think with you, for the reason you assign, that a democratic form in France, in the present age, was preposterous. I entertain the same opinion of the Spanish provinces in South America. The form established last year by the Cortes of Spain is admirably adapted to the state of civilization in the peninsula. It is a capital performance, but will be attacked and resisted by the inquisitors, Jesuits, monks, and all the bigots and petty tyrants.

It does not seem to me, that either of your successors enjoys more ease than your predecessor. Mr. Madison has paid too great a deference to the recommendations to office by low and designing men, who stood very much in need of recommendations themselves, though excellent democrats, if they were to be credited. Mr. Jefferson split on the same rock. Many of their appointments have been exceedingly improper. Though General Washington conferred offices on some tories, yet they were capable, and only undeserving.

My paper is drawing to a close; so is my life. I am now in my eightieth year, therefore more than a year older than you. Had you not noticed the quiveration of your hand (an expressive word, though newly used) I should not have discovered it; mine quivers very much when feverish, or agitated by severe exercise; my eyes grow dimmer, my hearing duller, and I have other symptoms of age; but why repeat grievances that cannot be redressed? May you not only continue to enjoy, but increase your health and otium cum dignitate with every other blessing.

Dear Sir, your friend,

Tho’s McKean.

TO THOMAS McKEAN.

Quincy, 31 August, 1813.

Your friendly letter of the 20th, with the authentic account of the proceedings of the Congress held at New York, ad 1765, on the subject of the American stamp act, though they found me in the deepest affliction for the loss of my daughter, were very acceptable, and deserve my thanks.

There was a prior Congress held at Albany in 1754 or 1755, in which Franklin, Hutchinson, Wells, and Brattle, with others, assisted. Where is any account of that to be found?

Can you account for the apathy, the antipathy of this nation to their own history? Is there not a repugnance to the thought of looking back? While thousands of frivolous novels are read with eagerness and got by heart, the history of our own native country is not only neglected, but despised and abhorred.

You may conjecture my suspicions from what follows. Were I a man of fortune, I would offer a gold medal to the man who should produce the most instances of the friendship of Great Britain toward this country from 1600 to 1813.

I have had knowledge enough of the Marquis de Casa Yrujo and his lady, your lovely daughter, and notwithstanding all political flickerings, to esteem them both, and wish them all the felicity that you can desire for them. They live, as you and I have lived, in times of confusion and uncertainty more distressing than the ordinary lot of humanity.

In times like those in which you and I have lived, we are not masters, we can scarcely be said to be fathers, of our own families. I have three children born in Quincy, one in Boston. I have one grandson born in London, another on Long Island, another in Berlin, several in Quincy, several in New York, several in Boston, one born and died in St. Petersburg. Is this a desirable history of a family? I trow not.

I will not tell you what I would prefer. You would think me a dunce or an hypocrite.

Your history of Otis and Ruggles is familiar to me. I knew them both. Ruggles was my cousin; Otis, my friend and one of my patrons. I could not have drawn the character of either with more precision than you have done. Both high-minded men, exalted souls, acting in scenes they could not comprehend, and acting parts, whose effects and consequences will last longer than their names will be remembered.

You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, “The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America.” “The great mass of the people” is an expression that deserves analysis. New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided, if their propensity was not against us, that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British. Marshall, in his life of Washington, tells us, that the southern States were nearly equally divided. Look into the Journals of Congress, and you will see how seditious, how near rebellion were several counties of New York, and how much trouble we had to compose them. The last contest, in the town of Boston, in 1775, between whig and tory, was decided by five against two. Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.

A letter from you will always console your old friend.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 2 September, 1813.

Οὐδὲ γυνὴ κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀναίνεται εἶμαι ἄκοιτις
Πλουσίου, ἀλλ’ ἀϕνεὸν βούλεται ἀντ’ ἀγαϑοῦ.
Χρήματα γὰρ τιμῶσι καὶ ἐκ κακοῦ ἐσϑλὸς ἔγημε
Καὶ κακὸς ἐξ ἀγαϑοῦ πλοῦτος ἔμιξε γένος.

Grotius renders this into Latin thus:

Nec dedignetur ditemque malumque maritum
Femina: divitiæ præ probitate placent.
In pretio pretium est: genus et prænobile vili,
Obscurum claro, miscet avaritia.

I should render the Greek into English thus:

“Nor does a woman disdain to be the wife of a bad rich man. But she prefers a man of property before a good man; for riches are honored, and a good man marries from a bad family, and a bad man from a good one. Wealth mingles races.”

Now, please to tell me, whether my translation has not hit the sense of Theognis as exactly as that of Grotius?

Tell me, also, whether poet, orator, historian, or philosopher, can paint the picture of every city, county, or State, in our pure, uncorrupted, unadulterated, uncontaminated federal republic, or, in France, England, Holland, and all the rest of Christendom or Mahometanism, in more precise lines or colors? Another translation of the whole passage of Theognis is this:

Arietes quidem et asinos quærimus, Cyrne, et equos,
Generosos, et quisque vult ex bonis admittere; ducere autem malam (filiam)
Mali, non renuit generosus vir, si ei pecunias multas dederit.
Nulla (femina) mali viri recusat esse uxor divitis; sed divitem vult
Pro bono. Opes quidem æstimat, et ex malo (natam) bonus ducet
Et malus ex bono ortam. Divitiæ miscent genus

Now, my friend, who are the ἄριστοι? Philosophers may answer, “the wise and good.” But the world, mankind, have, by their practice, always answered, “the rich, the beautiful, and well-born.” And philosophers themselves, in marrying their children, prefer the rich, the handsome, and the well-descended, to the wise and good.

What chance have talents and virtues, in competition with wealth and birth and beauty?

- Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstant
- Res angustæ domi.
- One truth is clear, by all the world confessed,
- Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

The five pillars of aristocracy are beauty, wealth, birth, genius, and virtue. Any one of the three first can, at any time, overbear any one or both of the two last.

Let me ask again, what a wave of public opinion, in favor of birth, has been spread over the globe by Abraham, by Hercules, by Mahomet, by Guelphs, Ghibellines, Bourbons, and a miserable Scottish chief, Stuart, by Zengis, by —, by —, by a million of others. And what a wave will be spread by Napoleon and by Washington! Their remotest cousins will be sought, and will be proud, and will avail themselves of their descent. Call this principle, prejudice, folly, ignorance, baseness, slavery, stupidity, adulation, superstition, or what you will, I will not contradict you. But the fact in natural, moral, political, and domestic history, I will not deny, or dispute, or question.

And is this great fact in the natural history of man, this unalterable principle of morals, philosophy, policy, domestic felicity, and daily experience from the creation, to be overlooked, forgotten, neglected, or hypocritically waved out of sight, by a legislator, by a professed writer upon civil government, and upon constitutions of civil government?

Thus far had I written, when your favor of August 22d was laid on my table from the post-office. I can only say at present that I can pursue this idle speculation no further, at least till I have replied to this fresh proof of friendship and confidence. Mrs. A. joins in cordial thanks with

J. A.

You may laugh at the introduction of beauty among the pillars of aristocracy. But Madame du Barry says, “la véritable royauté c’est la beauté,” and there is not a more certain truth. Beauty, grace, figure, attitude, movement, have, in innumerable instances, prevailed over wealth, birth, talents, virtues, and every thing else, in men of the highest rank, greatest power, and, sometimes, the most exalted genius, greatest fame, and highest merit.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 14 September, 1813.

I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d, and its inclosures, and for Doctor Priestley’s “Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation.” Your letter to Dr. Rush, and the syllabus, I return inclosed with this, according to your injunction, though with great reluctance. May I beg a copy of both? They will do you no harm, me and others, much good. I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce a work much more valuable than Priestley’s, though that is curious, and, considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history. The motion was made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams. I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.

The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity or infidelity here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestial communication. This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature’s God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or prophecies might frighten us out of our wits, might scare us to death, might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make five, but we should not believe it; we should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and admitted to behold the divine Shechinah, and there told that one was three and three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it. The thunders and lightnings and earthquakes, and the transcendent splendors and glories, might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement, but we could not have believed the doctrine. We should be more likely to say in our hearts—whatever we might say with our lips—, This is chance. There is no God, no truth. This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or it is all chance. But what is chance? It is motion; it is action; it is event; it is phenomenon without cause. Chance is no cause at all; it is nothing, and nothing has produced all this pomp and splendor, and nothing may produce our eternal damnation in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness, and power; he created the universe; his duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post. His presence is as extensive as space. What is space? An infinite spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory; and with the deliberate design of making nine tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one. Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me that infinite benevolence, wisdom, and power, created, and preserves for a time, innumerable millions, to make them miserable for ever, for his own glory? Wretch! What is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance? Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere. The love of God and his creation—delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence—though but an atom, a molécule organique in the universe—are my religion.

Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines, if you will; ye will say I am no Christian; I say ye are no Christians, and there the account is balanced. Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word.

When I was at college, I was a mighty metaphysician, at least I thought myself such, and such men as Locke, Hemmenway, and West thought me so too, for we were forever disputing, though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an attorney in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in Braintree, I was in a low state of health, thought in great danger of a consumption, living on milk, vegetables, pudding, and water, not an atom of meat or a drop of spirit; my next neighbor, my cousin, my friend, Dr. Savil, was my physician. He was anxious for me, and did not like to take upon himself the sole responsibility of my recovery. He invited me to a ride. I mounted my horse, and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and then pronounced his oracle: “Persevere, and as sure as there is a God in Heaven you will recover.” He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy, metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me and see if there was any thing in me besides hectic fever. I was young and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since. I gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when he got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape. “Sir, it will follow, from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal.” “Very true,” said Dr. Hersey; “your inference is just; the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite.” Here I was brought up. I was defeated. I was not prepared for this answer. This was fifty-five years ago. When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of many friends. In some of our most unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me: “I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite: it seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause; and an infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, that could have been induced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it from eternity. It seems to me, the effect must flow from the cause.”

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago conceiving the benevolent project of creating a universe! I have no more to say at present. It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, ever will be, and ever was, but one being who can understand the universe, and that it is not only vain but wicked for insects to pretend to comprehend it.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 15 September, 1813.

My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material to my design. Dr. Price “was inclined to think,” that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.

Plato’s system was, ἀγαϑος was eternal, self-existent, &c. His idea, his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or, in one word, his “Logos” was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity.

Now, as far as you and I can understand Hersey, Price, and Plato, are they not of one theory, of one mind? What is the difference? I own, an eternal solitude of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful, and good, is to me altogether incomprehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the Athanasian creed. You will ask me, what conclusion I draw from all this. I answer, I drop into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool. No mind but one can see through the immeasurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties, in my little infinitesimal circle, I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel; but I trust the ruler with his skies.

Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.

This world is a mixture of the sublime and beautiful, the base and contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous (according to our narrow sense and trifling feelings). It is a riddle and an enigma. You will not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to an egregious trifle. But first, let me say, I asked you in a former letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since Theognis’s stallions, jacks, and rams. Have not Chancellor Livingston and Major-General Humphreys introduced a hereditary aristocracy of merino sheep? How shall we get out of this aristocracy? It is entailed upon us forever. And an aristocracy of land-jobbers and stock-jobbers is equally and irremediably entailed upon us to endless generations.

Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my last letter to you, upon Theognis’s doctrine of wellborn stallions, jacks, and rams, when they brought me from the post-office a packet, without post-mark, without letter, without name, date, or place. Nicely sealed, was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, in large, full octavo, entitled,—Section first. Aristocracy.

I gravely composed my risible muscles, and read it through. It is, from beginning to end, an attack upon me, by name, for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence, &c. The conclusion of the whole is, that an aristocracy of bank-paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will not controvert this point, with this man. Who he is, I cannot conjecture. The Honorable John Taylor, of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first occurred to me.

Is it Oberon, is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little beings? I thought my books, as well as myself, were forgotten. But, behold! I am to become a great man in my expiring moments. Theognis and Plato, and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity together; and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better company. I wish to add Vanderkemp, who has been here to see me after an interruption of twenty-four years. I could and ought to add many others, but the catalogue would be too long.

Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.? Because no man ever expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives, a confusion of families, a total extinction of all relations of father, son, and brother. Did the French revolutionists contrive much better against the influence of birth?

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 22 September, 1813.

Considering all things, I admire Dr. Priestley’s last effort, for which I am entirely indebted to you. But, as I think it is extremely imperfect, I beg of you to pursue the investigation according to your promise to Dr. Rush, and according to your syllabus. It may be presumptuous in me to denominate any thing of Dr. Priestley’s imperfect; but I must avow, that among all the vast exertions of his genius, I have never found one that is not imperfect, and this last is egregiously so. I will instance, at present, in one article. I find no notice of Cleanthes, one of whose sayings alone ought to have commanded his attention. He compared “philosophers to instruments of music, which made a noise without understanding it or themselves.” He was ridiculed by his brother philosophers, and called “an ass.” He owned he was the ass of Zeno, and “the only one whose back and shoulders were stout enough to carry his burdens.” Why has not Priestley quoted more from Zeno and his disciples? Were they too Christian? Though he lived two centuries and a half before Christ.

If I did not know it would be sending coals to Newcastle, I would, with all my dimness of eyes and trembling of fingers, copy in Greek the hymn of Cleanthes, and request you to compare it with any thing of Moses, of David, of Solomon. Instead of those ardent oriental figures, which are so difficult to understand, we find that divine simplicity, which constitutes the charm of Grecian eloquence in prose and verse. Pope had read, if Priestley had not, the

ΚΛΕΑΝΘΟΥΣ ΥΜΝΟΣ ΕΙΣ ΔΙΑ.
- Κύδιστ’ ἀϑανάτων, πολυώνυμε, πανκρατὲς αἰεὶ
- Ζεῦ, ϕύσεως ἀρχηγε, νόμου μετα πάντα κυβερνῶν
- Χαῖρε.

“Most glorious of immortal beings! Though denominated by innumerable names and titles, always omnipotent! Beginning and end of nature, governing the universe by fixed laws, blessed be thy name!”

What think you of this translation? Is it too Jewish or too too Christian? Pope did not think it was either, for the first sentence in his universal prayer is more Jewish and more Christian still. If it is not a literal translation, it is a close paraphrase of this simple verse of Cleanthes,—

Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

But it may be said, for it has been said, that Pope was a Deist, and Swift too, as well as Bolingbroke. What will not men say? But is the existence, the omnipotence, the eternity, the alpha and omega, and the universal Providence of one Supreme Being governing by fixed laws, asserted by St. John, in his Gospel, or in the Apocalypse, whether his or not, in clearer or more precise terms? Can you conjecture a reason why Grotius has not translated this hymn? Were Grotius and Priestley both afraid that the stoics would appear too much like Unitarians, Jews, and Christians? Duport has translated the sentence thus:—

Magne Pater divùm, cui nomina multa, sed una
Omnipotens semper virtus, tu. Jupiter, auctor
Naturæ, certâ qui singula lege gubernas,
Rex, salve!

Bougainville has translated it,—

Père et maître des dieux, auteur de la nature,
Jupiter, O Sagesse! O loi sublime et pure!
Unité Souveraine, à qui tous les mortels,
Sous mille noms divers, élèvent des autels;
Je t’ adore, nos cœurs te doivent leur hommage,
Nous sommes tes enfans, ton ombre, ton image;
Et tout ce qui respire, animé par tes mains,
A célébrer ta gloire, invite les humains.
Béni sois à jamais!

I am so awkward in Italian, that I am ashamed to quote that language to you; but Pompeius, a gentleman of Verona, has translated it thus, and you will understand it.

O Glorioso fra gli eterni, in guise
Molte nomato, omnipossente ognora,
Tu che, tutto con legge governando,
De la natura sei principio e duce,
Salve, O Giove.

It appears to me that the great principle of the Hebrews was the fear of God; that of the Gentiles, honor the gods; that of Christians, the love of God. Could the quiveration of my nerves and the inflammation of my eyes be cured, and my age diminished by twenty or thirty years, I would attend you in these researches with infinitely more pleasure than I would George the Fourth, Napoleon, Alexander, or Madison. But only a few hours, a few moments remain for your old friend.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 28 September, 1813.

With sincerity I condole with you on the death of your daughter. I had five children who have died, three of whom have been married and left a numerous offspring. By these events we have sustained the deprivation of great comforts; but our loss is their ineffable gain. They are in the bosom of their father and their God. These are among the common calamities of life; resignation to the dispensations of Providence, and gratitude for all the blessings left us, are indispensable duties.

Your favor of the 31st last month would have been acknowledged before now, but from a hope I entertained of giving you some account of the Congress at Albany, in 1754. However, after considerable inquiry, I have been disappointed.1 I have a faint recollection, that it was appointed by the British ministry for the ostensible purpose of ascertaining the boundaries of the several colonies to the eastward of Delaware; but in reality to propose the least offensive plan for raising a revenue in America. In 1739, Sir William Keith, a Scotch gentleman, who had been a lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, proposed such an assembly to the ministry. He also proposed the extension of the British stamp-duties to the colonies. He was then, I believe, in the Fleet prison. The hints he gave were embraced, the first in 1754, the second in 1764.

It has been long a matter of surprise to me, that no gentleman of talents and character has undertaken to write a history of the former British colonies, now United States of America, at least from 1756 to 1806, a period of fifty very important years. Such a work would not only be a great benefit to posterity, but also to the author. It would sell well.

To form an opinion, that a majority of the people of Pennsylvania were against the American revolution at its commencement, was not uncommon, especially by strangers. The mistake arose from the circumstance of a large majority of their representatives and civil officers being in the opposition. This State was first settled by a colony of Quakers, their proprietor and governor, William Penn, being at the head of the sect. They had the entire government or rule of Pennsylvania from 1682 until 1776, by the following means. The province was in the beginning divided into three counties, Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, and when the three lower counties on Delaware (now State of Delaware) separated from them in 1700, each county had eight members in the legislature, and the city, having been incorporated and inhabited chiefly by that sect, was allowed two. Eight other counties were erected prior to the revolution, and were allowed, some two, some but one representative, so that in all they had but ten; although, if they had founded the representation according to the number of human beings in each district or county, the Quakers would have been greatly overruled, even adding all the tories or enemies of the revolution to their number. The voice of the representatives was not the voice of the people, as is the case with the British parliament; the three Quaker counties, having twenty-four members in assembly, made all the laws. They gave great trouble to the whigs, but they were kept under by fear as well as by superior numbers. From that day, the people called “Friends,” have ceased to rule Pennsylvania. They foresaw the consequences of an equal representation, as it would affect themselves, and this was a principal cause of their aversion to a change in the form of our government as a body, though many individuals of their society differed with them, and became active and good citizens.

In the marriage of our children, their, not our happiness, is to be chiefly consulted. I confess, my wish is to have them established in their native country.

On reflection, I cannot refer to a single instance of disinterested or evident friendship of Great Britain towards this country during the period you mention. Every act which might bear such an aspect, has been performed for the interest of the administration alone, although coupled in some cases with that of their own island.

I shall be always pleased with your correspondence, and happy in contributing to your amusement. Your able talent for writing history, and your eminent public stations, induced a hope that we should be favored with an account of the transactions in America, for at least the last sixty years, from your pen.

Tho’s McKean.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 4 October, 1813.

Σὲ γὰρ πάντεσσι ϑέμις ϑνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν

“It is not only permitted, but enjoined upon all mortals to address you.” Why should not our divines translate it,

“It is our duty and our privilege to address the throne of thy grace, and pray for all needed lawful blessings, temporal and spiritual”?

θεμις was the goddess of honesty, justice, decency, and right; the wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations, and councils. She commanded all mortals to pray to Jupiter for all lawful benefits and blessings. Now, is not this (so far forth) the essence of Christian devotion? Is not this Christian piety? Is it not an acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being, of his universal Providence, of a righteous administration of the government of the universe? And what can Jews, Christians, or Mahometans do more? Priestley, the heroic Priestley, would not have dared to answer or to ask these questions, though he might have answered them consistently enough with the spirit of his system. I regret, that Grotius has not translated this hymn, and cannot account for his omission of it. Duport translates the above line only by,—

“Te nempe licet mortalibus ægris,
Cunctis compellare.”

Where he finds his ægris, I know not; no such idea is in the Greek. All mortals, sick or well, have a right, and it is their duty, to pray, as far as I can understand the Greek. Bougainville translates it,—

“Et tout ce qui respire animé par tes mains,
A célébrer ta gloire, invite les humains.
Béni sois à jamais!”

This translation is Christian with a witness. None but a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Christian could ever have translated that simple line in this manner. Yet, the idea, the sentiment, translated into Christianity, is very well; well enough. The gentleman of Verona, Girolamo Pompei translates it thus, after “Salve, O Giove,” for “Χαῖρε”

“Però che gli uomin tutti,
Dritto é ben, che a te volgan le parole.”

Now, tell me what resemblance of the Greek you can find in this Italian version? In this manner are the most ancient Greek theologians rendered and transmitted to our youth by the Christians!

Ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμὲν, ἰῆς μίμημα λαχόντες
Μοῦνον, ὁσα ζώει τε καὶ ἕρπει ϑνήτ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν.

Ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμὲν, I presume, is the phrase quoted by Saint Paul, when he says to the Athenians, “one of your own poets hath said, we are all his offspring.” Acts, xvii. 28. “For in Him we live and move and have our being; as certain, also, of your own poets have said, ‘for we are also his offspring.’ Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto silver, or gold, or stone graven by art and man’s device.” This reasoning is irresistible; for what can be more mad than to represent the eternal, almighty, omnipresent cause and principle of the universe by statues and pictures, by coins or medals!

Duport renders these two lines by,—

“Omnes tua namque propago
Nos sumus, æternæ quasi imago vocis et echo
Tantum, quotquot humi spirantes repimus”

Bougainville translates them thus:—

Nous sommes tes enfans, ton ombre, ton image,
Et tout ce qui respire, animé par tes mains,
A célébrer ta gloire invite les humains.
Béni sois à jamais!

Pompei renders them:—

Che siam tua stirpe, e solo noi, fra quanti
Vivon mortali e muovon su la terra,
Lo imitar de la voce abbiam sortito.

Moses says, Genesis i. 27: “God created man in his own image.” What, then, is the difference between Cleanthes and Moses? Are not the being and attributes of the Supreme Being, the resemblance, the image, the shadow of God in the intelligence and moral qualities of man, and the lawfulness and duty of prayer, as clearly asserted by Cleanthes as by Moses? And did not the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians, the Chinese, believe all this, as well as the Jews and Greeks?

Alexander appears to have behaved to the Jews as Napoleon did to the Mahometans in the pyramid of Grand Cairo. Ptolemy, the greatest of his generals, and a greater man than himself, was so impressed with what he learned in Judea, that he employed seventy learned men to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, nearly three hundred years before Christ. He sent learned men to collect books from all nations, and deposited them in the Alexandrian library. Will any man make me believe that Cæsar, that Pompey, that Cicero, that Seneca, that Tacitus, that Dionysius Halicarnassensis, that Plutarch, had never seen or heard of the Septuagint? Why might not Cleanthes have seen the Septuagint? The curiosity of Pompey to see the interior of the temple shows that the system of the Jews was become an object of speculation. It is impossible to believe that the Septuagint was unknown and unheard of by Greeks or Romans at that time, at least by the great generals, orators, historians, philosophers, and statesmen, who looked through the then known world for information of every thing. On the other hand, how do we know how much Moses, Samuel, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Esdras, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah learned in Babylon, Egypt, and Persia? The destruction of the library at Alexandria is all the answer we can obtain to these questions. I believe that Jews, Grecians, Romans, and Christians all conspired or connived at that savage catastrophe. I believe Cleanthes to be as good a Christian as Priestley.

But enough of my school-boy criticisms and crude philosophy, problematical history and heretical divinity, for the present.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 12 November, 1813.

As I owe you more for your letters of October 12th and 28th than I shall be able to pay, I shall begin with the P. S. to the last. I am very sorry to say that I cannot “assist your memory in the inquiries of your letter of August 22d.”1 I really know not who was the compositor of any one of the petitions or addresses you enumerate. Nay, farther, I am certain I never did know. I was so shallow a politician, that I was not aware of the importance of those compositions. They all appeared to me, in the circumstances of the country, like children’s play at marbles or push-pin, or, rather, like misses in their teens emulating each other in their pearls, their bracelets, their diamond pins and Brussels lace.

In the Congress of 1774, there was not one member, except Patrick Henry, who appeared to me sensible of the precipice, or, rather, the pinnacle on which he stood, and had candor and courage enough to acknowledge it. America is in total ignorance, or under infinite deception, concerning that assembly. To draw the characters of them all would require a volume, and would now be considered as a caricature-print; one third tories, another whigs, and the rest mongrels. There was a little aristocracy among us, of talents and letters; Mr. Dickinson was primus inter pares, the bellwether, the leader of the aristocratical flock. Billy, alias Governor Livingston, and his son-in-law, Mr. Jay, were of this privileged order. The credit of most, if not all, those compositions was often, if not generally, given to one or the other of the choice spirits. Mr. Dickinson, however, was not on any of the original committees. He came not into Congress until October 17th; he was not appointed till the 15th by his assembly.1 Congress adjourned, October 27th, though our correct secretary has not recorded any final adjournment or dissolution. Mr. Dickinson was in Congress but ten days. The business was all prepared, arranged, and even, in a manner, finished before his arrival. R. H. Lee was the chairman of the committee for preparing “the loyal and dutiful address to his Majesty.” Johnson and Henry were acute spirits, and understood the controversy very well, though they had not the advantages of education, like Lee and John Rutledge. The subject had been near a month under discussion in Congress, and most of the materials thrown out there. It underwent another deliberation in committee, after which they made the customary compliment to their chairman, by requesting him to prepare and report a draught, which was done, and after examination, correction, amelioration, or pejoration, as usual, reported to Congress. October 3d, 4th, and 5th were taken up in debating and deliberating on matters proper to be contained in the address to his Majesty.2 October 21st, the address to the king was, after debate, recommitted, and Mr. John Dickinson added to the committee. The first draught was made, and all the essential materials put together by Lee. It might be embellished and seasoned afterwards with some of Mr. Dickinson’s piety, but I know not that it was.3 Neat and handsome as the composition is, having never had any confidence in the utility of it, I never have thought much about it since it was adopted. Indeed, I never bestowed much attention on any of those addresses, which were all but repetitions of the same things, the same facts and arguments,—dress and ornaments rather than body, soul, or substance. My thoughts and cares were nearly monopolized by the theory of our rights and wrongs, by measures for the defence of the country, and the means of governing ourselves. I was in a great error, no doubt, and am ashamed to confess it, for those things were necessary to give popularity to our cause, both at home and abroad; and, to show my stupidity in a stronger light, the reputation of any one of those compositions has been a more splendid distinction than any aristocratical star or garter in the escutcheon of every man who has enjoyed it. Very sorry I cannot give you more satisfactory information, and more so, that I cannot, at present, give more attention to your two last excellent letters.

N. B. I am almost ready to believe that John Taylor, of Carolina, or of Hazel Wood, Port Royal, Virginia, is the author of 630 pages of printed octavo upon my books, that I have received. The style answers every characteristic that you have intimated. Within a week, I have received and looked into his Arator. They must spring from the same brain, as Minerva issued from the head of Jove, or, rather, as Venus rose from the froth of the sea. There is, however, a great deal of good sense in Arator, and there is some in his Aristocracy.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Philadelphia, 15 November, 1813.

The anecdote of Sir William Keith’s proposal to the British ministry is to be found in the latter end of the 1st volume of American Tracts, printed by J. Almon, in London, 1767. It had been published in London in 1739, and is titled “A proposal for establishing by act of parliament the duties upon stamped paper and parchment in all the British colonies.” Part of the anecdote I had by tradition, and in a novel, “Peregrine Pickle;” for I have read and still read novels. These fabulous histories afford me not only amusement but pleasure, because they almost universally make vice detested and punished, and virtue triumphant, which is not the case of history of real life.

With respect to the histories of North America hitherto published, I concur with you in opinion. They were not popular, because the authors were little known, and it was known, that they had not an opportunity of personal knowledge of the facts they related, and in several of them were mistaken. The authors seem to have paid too much attention to those who they supposed would, from their reputation for wealth and influence, be most likely to promote the sale of their books, or otherwise advance their fortunes. This temptation is now done away; the favored characters are all dead, and very few of their descendants at present in any way distinguished.

I have briefly mentioned the situation of the people of Pennsylvania at the time of the American revolution; the like shall now be done with respect to Delaware. This small State was inhabited before Pennsylvania; it consists of only three counties, namely—Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex; the last was settled by a few families from Sweden, more from Holland, but the great mass from England. Kent was nearly in the same proportions; and Newcastle was inhabited from Sweden, Holland, but the great majority were from Ireland; there were a few from England and Scotland. In Newcastle, three fifths were at the time of the revolution Presbyterians, in Kent, about five eighths Protestant Episcopalians, and in Sussex, two thirds of the latter. The Society in London “for propagating the gospel in foreign parts,” had about half a dozen missionaries, perhaps more, in the State of Delaware, to some of whom they gave a salary of 60l., to others 50l. sterling a year. These ministers foresaw, that if America became an independent state or nation, their salaries would necessarily cease. It was their interest, therefore, to oppose the revolution, and they did oppose it, though with as much secrecy as practicable. They told their hearers, many of whom, especially in Sussex, were illiterate, ignorant, and bigoted, that it was a plan of the Presbyterians to get their religion established; that it originated in New England, and was fostered by the Presbyterians in every colony or province A majority of this State were unquestionably against the independence of America; but the most sensible of the Episcopalians, the Baptists and Quakers, and the Presbyterians, with very few exceptions, prevailed against them, as they believed they would be overpowered, with the help of the other colonies, if they resisted. I could not avoid remarking, that I was chosen, unanimously, speaker of the House of Representatives of this State, when, of all the members present, there were but six, including myself, who were esteemed whigs.

That you may continue to enjoy health and every other blessing is the sincere prayer of, dear Sir, your old friend,

Tho’s McKean.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Quincy, 25 December, 1813.

Answer my letter at your leisure. Give yourself no concern. I write as a refuge and protection against ennui.

The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all Christianity is, “Rejoice always in all things.” “Be thankful at all times for all good, and all that we call evil.” Will it not follow, that I ought to rejoice and be thankful that Priestley has lived? Aye, that Voltaire has lived? I should have given my reason for rejoicing in Voltaire, &c. It is because I believe they have done more than even Luther or Calvin to lower the tone of that proud hierarchy that shot itself up above the clouds, and more to propagate religious liberty than Calvin, or Luther, or even Locke. That Gibbon has lived? That Hume has lived, though a conceited Scotchman? That Bolingbroke has lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist? That Burke and Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-deceiving hypocrites both? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call Bolingbroke a superficial writer; to hear him ask, “who ever read him through!” Had I been present, I should have answered him: “I, I myself! I have read him through, more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in my life, and once within five years past. And, in my opinion, the epithet ‘superficial’ belongs to you and your friend Johnson more than to him.” I might say much more; but I believe Burke and Johnson to have been as political Christians as Leo X.

I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it all, and hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above. Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson, told me, that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation; and all the accounts we have of his death corroborate this account of Brocklesby. Dread of annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing? Were you on your deathbed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration or revelation that you would cease to think and to feel at your dissolution, should you be terrified? You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long, to bear the proud man’s contumely; you might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare Him to a little girl amusing herself, her brothers, and sisters by blowing bubbles in soapsuds; you might compare Him to boys, sporting with crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making more artificial fireworks, or to men and women at fairs and operas, or Sadler’s Wells exploits; or to politicians, in their intrigues; or to heroes, in their butcheries; or to Popes, in their devilisms. But what should you fear? Nothing. Emori nolo; sed me mortuum esse nihil æstimo.

To return to Priestley—you could make a more luminous book than his upon the “Doctrines of Heathen Philosophers, compared with those of Revelation.” Why has he not given us a more satisfactory account of the Pythagorean philosophy and theology? He barely names Ocellus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians, or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The Marquis D’Argens translated it in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé Batteux has given another translation. D’Argens not only explains the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different doctrines compared with one another, and with the modern discoveries. I wish I owned this book, and one hundred thousand more that I want every day, now when I am almost incapable of making any use of them. No doubt, he informs us that Pythagoras was a great traveller.

Priestley barely mentions Timæus; but it does not appear that he had read him. Why has he not given us an account of him and his book? He was before Plato, and gave him the idea of his Timæus, and much more of his philosophy. After his master, he maintained the existence of matter; that matter was capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitates all the parts of it, and that an intelligence directed the moving power; that this intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world. The intelligence had seen a plan, an idea (logos), in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it would not have known what it was about, nor what it wanted to do. This plan was the idea, image, or model, which had represented to the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had directed it in its action upon the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the elements, the bodies, and the world. This model was distinguished from the intelligence which produced the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided the productive cause of the world into a spirit, which directed the moving force, and into an image, which determined it in the choice of the directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it gave to matter.

I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because it is the same philosophy with Plato’s, and would have shown that the Pythagorean, as well as the Platonic philosophers, probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity. Priestley mentions the name of Archytas, but does not appear to have read him, though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great statesman, and a great general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome edition of his works, with a Latin translation, and an ample account of his life and writings. Zaleucus, the legislator of Locris, and Charondas of Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why are those laws lost? I say, the spirit of party has destroyed them; civil, political, and ecclesiastical bigotry. Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical fury, have all been employed in this work of destruction of every thing that could give us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone to every species of fraud and violence and usurpation. Why has not Priestley mentioned these legislators? The preamble to the laws of Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox Christian theology as Priestley’s, and Christian benevolence and forgiveness of injuries almost as clearly expressed.

Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first, the original revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this revelation is clear and certain, by intuition or necessary inductions, no subsequent revelation, supported by prophecies or miracles, can supersede it. Philosophy is not only the love of wisdom, but the science of the universe and its cause. There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy in the universe. Portions of it, in different degrees, are revealed to creatures. Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I have examined all as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means, and my busy life would allow me; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen; and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future investigation. Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Confucius, and all the founders of religions before Christ, whose superiority would, from such a comparison, have appeared the more transcendent. Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras passed twenty years in his travels in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon. He ought to have told us, that in India he conversed with the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand years old, written in the language of the sacred Sanscrit, with the elegance and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or philosophy more profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta? “God is one, creator of all, universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs all the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs. Search not the essence and the nature of the Eternal, who is one; your research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough, that, day by day and night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom, and his goodness, in his works. The Eternal willed, in the fulness of time, to communicate of his essence and of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it. They as yet existed not. The Eternal willed, and they were. He created Birma, Vitsnow, and Sib.” These doctrines, sublime, if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in India, and taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned also his metempsychosis; but this never was popular, never made much progress in Greece or Italy, or any other country besides India and Tartary, the region of the grand immortal Lama. And how does this differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and Rome, from the demon of Socrates, from the worship of cows and crocodiles in Egypt and elsewhere? After migrating through various animals, from elephants to serpents, according to their behavior, souls that, at last, behaved well, became men and women, and then, if they were good, they went to Heaven. All ended in Heaven, if they became virtuous. Who can wonder at the widow of Malabar? Where is the lady who, if her faith were without doubt that she should go to Heaven with her husband on the one hand, or migrate into a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lie down on the pile, and set fire to the fuel? Modifications and disguises of the metempsychosis had crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read Farmer on the demons and possessions of the New Testament?

According to the Shasta, Moisayer, with his companions, rebelled against the Eternal, and were precipitated down to Ondero, the region of darkness.

Do you know any thing of the prophecy of Enoch? Can you give me a comment on the 6th, the 9th, the 14th verses of the epistle of Jude?

If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of reading such incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I can help it, so farewell.

[1 ] The list of Acts and proceedings of Congress is omitted, as the same is found in the autobiography. Vol. iii. p. 8-10.

[1 ] This act was drawn by Mr. Gerry and Mr. Sullivan, for the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts.

[1 ] The copy, which is quite defective, says John in one place and Joseph in the other, but John had been dead many years. Of William Reed, the only one of the name at the bar at this time, Mr. Washburn confesses his inability to gain any information. Judicial History of Massachusetts.

[1 ] Hutchinson speaks of the address, which was actually presented, as having been signed by “the gentlemen of the law, with three or four exceptions only.” None of the names of the persons placed in the first category are found attached to it. All those included in the second signed it.

[2 ] This letter had just appeared at this time in the appendix to Belsham’s Memoirs of Theophilus Lindsey. It is included in Mr. Randolph’s edition of Jefferson’s Writings, vol. iii. p. 461.

[1 ] Published by Randolph, vol. iv. p. 191.

[1 ] “A convention, invited by the republican members of Congress with the virtual President and Vice-President, would have been on the ground in eight weeks, would have repaired the Constitution where it was defective, and wound it up again.” Jefferson to Priestley.

[1 ] For the whole of the answer, of which this is a part, see vol. ix. p. 188.

[2 ] All the later letters of Mr. Adams are much marred in the copying. Unless these words refer to Messrs. Horne and Howes, two of the disputants with Dr. Priestley in England, the editor cannot explain them.

[1 ] See the whole letter of Mr. Jefferson in Mr. Randolph’s collection, vol. iv. p. 193.

[1 ] One or two words not legible in the copy.

[1 ] “The expressions good and bad men, which in later times bore a purely moral signification, are evidently used by Theognis in a political sense for nobles and commons.” Müller, Literature of Ancient Greece.

[1 ] Much has been published on this subject since. See Collections Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. xxv. pp. 5-74. Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, vol. iii. p. 20. Sparks’s Franklin, vol. iii. pp. 22-36.

[1 ] The principal inquiry was, who drew the petition to the king, in the Congress of 1774.

[1 ] Journals, vol. i. p. 30.

[2 ] Journals, vol. i. p. 22.

[3 ] It is now well known to have been the composition of Mr. Dickinson. Much light is shed upon this question by an article in the American Quarterly Review, vol. i. p. 413.

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1813: TO J. B. VARNUM. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes) [1854]

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TO J. B. VARNUM.

TO JOHN LANGDON.

JOHN LANGDON TO JOHN ADAMS.

Respected Sir,—

That your last days may be your best and happiest, is the wish of, &c.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

TO JAMES MONROE.

TO JOHN LATHROP.

Reverend Sir,—

TO WILLIAM PLUMER.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

TO BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

I remain, &c.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Dear Sir, your friend,

TO THOMAS McKEAN.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

ΚΛΕΑΝΘΟΥΣ ΥΜΝΟΣ ΕΙΣ ΔΙΑ.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

THOMAS McKEAN TO JOHN ADAMS.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.