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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) TO WILLIAM TUDOR. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes)
TO WILLIAM TUDOR. - 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 WILLIAM TUDOR.
Quincy, 9 September, 1816.
I thank you for your kind letter of the 5th of this month, which our meritorious friend, Mr. Shaw, put into my hand yesterday. I had before seen the paragraph in the Daily Advertiser. The Baron de Grimm himself, in a subsequent volume, sufficiently explains and confutes the error of the rumor which had been propagated, I know not by whom, in 1782. You will find at the end of the first volume of the “Defence of our Constitutions,” a postscript and a letter, in French, which will explain, somewhat too cavalierly and vulgarly, the whole matter. If you think it of any importance, however, as soon as the weakness of my eyes and the trembling of my hands will permit, I will give you a more decent statement of the facts, and the letter to the Abbé, in our language. I never saw the Baron till 1785, when I left Paris, never to see it more. He was then only a secret correspondent of the empress of Russia, and some of the sovereigns of Germany. He was soon appointed a public minister, admitted into the diplomatic corps, and consequently became known to Mr. Jefferson. The Baron’s great work in fifteen volumes will be read with different views. The lovers of romance, founded on truth, will find it an exquisite entertainment. I need not tell you how the amateurs and connoisseurs of the fine arts, of architecture, painting, sculpture, statuary, music, poetry, eloquence, &c., and every species of theatrical instruction and amusement will be delighted with it. I own to you, I admire it as the best history of the causes, the rise, and progress of the French revolution, to 1790, that I have seen.
That the Abbé de Mably had been applied to by the United States, for his aid to form a code of laws. Baron de Grimm corrected the error in 1784. See Vol. v. Appendix, p. 491.
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