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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) TO RUFUS KING. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes)
TO RUFUS KING. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes) [1854]Edition used:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 10.
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TO RUFUS KING.
Quincy, 2 December, 1814.
I am very much obliged to you for the information, melancholy as it is to me, of the death of Mr. Gerry. A friendship of forty years, I have found a rarity, though not a singularity.
I am left alone. While Paine, Gerry, and Lovell lived, there were some that I seemed to know; but now, not one of my contemporaries and colleagues is left. Can there be any deeper damnation in this universe than to be condemned to a long life, in danger, toil, and anxiety; to be rewarded only with abuse, insult, and slander; and to die at seventy, leaving to an amiable wife and nine amiable children nothing for an inheritance but the contempt, hatred, and malice of the world? How much prettier a thing it is to be a disinterested patriot, like Washington and Franklin, live and die among the hosannas and adorations of the multitude, and leave half a million to one child or to no child! Do you wonder at Tacitus and Quinctilian? I do; but not at the profoundness of their philosophy. I am astonished at the shallowness of it. I am amazed at their vanity and presumption in pretending to judge the government of this all. Their only true philosophy should have been submission and resignation.
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