Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
The long continuance of the session, and the uncommon heat and drought of the Weather have made this, to me an unpleasant Spring. And to increase my Mortification, I have this Week received 180 no Letter from you. I have not for Several months before, failed to receive a delicious Letter worth a dozen of mine, once a Week.
Well! Boston comes on! Mr Morton is now to be its Leader! How changed in Reputation Since 1788.!1
I wonder not at the Choice of Well-born Winthrop. He might I Suppose have been chosen at any time. His Father was one of my best Friends. and The Son was a good son of Liberty. I know of nothing to his Disadvantage.2
The Fœderalists committed an egregious Blunder, in a very unwarrantable and indecent Attempt, I had almost Said upon the freedom of Elections, at their previous Meeting for the Choice of Governor. The Opposite Party to be sure practice Arts nearly as unwarrantable, in secret, and by send agents with printed Votes— But this is no Justification unless upon Catos Principle In corruptâ civitate Corruptio est licita. i.e. In a corrupt City corruption is lawful!3
Elections are going the Usual Way in our devoted Country. Oh! that I had done with them.— We shall realize the raving in the Tempest, which Charles quoted to me in his last Letter.
innocent and pure;
This is Lubberland indeed— Le Pays de Cocain, I believe the French call it.—5 but it is terra incognita.— I am afraid We shall have too many of its qualities without its innocence.
I have no hope of Congress rising, before the last of May— Never in my Life did I long to see you more— I am most ardently / your
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A”; endorsed: “May 17th 1794.”
Perez Morton, along with John Winthrop Jr. (see note 2, below), was elected as one of Boston’s representatives to the Mass. General Court. They replaced John Coffin Jones and Jonathan Mason. Several years before, Morton had been involved in a scandal in which he impregnated his wife’s sister, Frances Theodora Apthorp, who subsequently committed suicide in Aug. 1788. Morton was ultimately cleared of any responsibility for Apthorp’s death in a report drafted in part by JA (Mass., Acts and Laws,
1794–1795, p. 142;
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates,
17:557–558).
John Winthrop Jr. (1747–1800), son of JA’s close friend and professor John Winthrop Sr., was Boston’s other new representative. Winthrop Jr., a Boston merchant, had previously served on the General Court from 1787 to 1790 (
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates,
16:294–295; vol. 4:352; Mass., Acts and Laws,
1794–1795, p. 142).
Possibly a paraphrase of a line from Sallust’s description of a debate between Caesar and Cato the Younger in his Bellum Catilinae, ch. 53, line 5, an edition of which is in JA’s library at MB. JA made the same citation in the margin of his copy of The Miscellaneous Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Conyers Middleton, D.D., 4 vols., London, 1752, 1:47, also at MB (
Catalogue of JA’s Library
).
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act II, scene i, lines 147–156, 159–164. CA included the same quotation in his
letter to JA of 14 May 1794 (Adams Papers).
Both “Lubberland” and pays de Cocagne refer to a land of plenty.