Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
Your letter of the 10 has come to hand; I arrived at Lancaster a few hours before it; of course you favor of a prior date is yet to be received.1 I have requested the Post Master of York Town to forward it here when it reaches that places— As to the Letter’s you speak of I am at a loss what request to make concerning them— The business of Newcombe cannot be advanced till I return; if you will be good enough to leave the letter in the hands of Mr Otis, if you should be gone before my return, I shall find it with him— The letter from Mr Wm Morris, I wish may be inclosed to me at Carlisle; next week.2 My visit to York Town was very delightful; the town is handsome & I dare say much improved since you knew it—3 The Banks of the Codorus—the same creek, immortalized by the fertile fancy of Mr: Vining in the debate of Congress concerning Permanent residence— are rich & well cultivated—4 The slow moving, lethargic German, will in time subdue the roughest soil— The same spirit that prompts him to perseverence in the attainment of wealth, urges him to a kind of honest obstinacy in the pursuit of Justice, when he is unjustly deprived of it; and it is not uncommon I am told for the parties to expend double the value of the thing in dispute, for the sake of a trial for victory— Indeed there has been a cause of this cast upon trial these two days past— The dispute is concerning a water course or Spring— it has been at Law nearer 30 than 20 years— Several trials have been had, but the Juries have always disagreed & no
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verdict has ever been had— The value of this Spring to either of the parties is trifling, but not less than six hundred Pounds has been expended by them. Germans are apt to consider courts of justice as engines convertible to the purposes of revenge & private mallice— It may be profitable for Lawyers, but is a wrong & perhaps injurious sentiment, to be diffused at large.
At York Town I met with great civility from Col Hartley & his Family— they are the principal people in the County, & his influence as a political character far beyond any man in it—5 I also met with an old Gentleman whom I take to be near, if not past 70 years of age by the name of Smith— He knew you very well in the year that Congress met at York Town; told me he used often to walk with you on the commons, & remarked how fond you were of viewing a well cultivated Farm— The old Gentleman’s spleen against Great Brittain has not diminished in the smallest degree, but age perhaps has rather increased it— He is still at the Bar; a circumstance rather singular, as I never recollect to have seen so old a man in the practice of Law—6
I thank you Sir for the news papers I received & should be glad of one or two more at Carlisle— Fenno’s Paper is very little in the circulation of the Country I find, and in point of news when one gets past the Susquehannah there is a perfect dearth.
Before I leave this place I will endeavor [to send] a few lines more from
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “The Vice President of the United States / Philadelphia Boston”; internal address: “The Vice President of the U. S.”; endorsed: “T. B. A. Lancaster / May 14. 1794.” Some loss of text where the seal was removed. This is the first of several letters originally addressed to JA in Philadelphia but redirected either to Boston or Quincy, presumably after JA left Philadelphia on 31 May.
Neither letter has been found.
Possibly William White Morris (1772–1798), a son of Robert Morris who had studied law at the University of Pennsylvania (Washington, Papers, Presidential Series,
6:578; Eleanor Young, Forgotten Patriot: Robert Morris, N.Y., 1950, p. 195).
JA spent time in York, Penn., in Sept.-Oct. 1777 during the final weeks of his service in the Continental Congress; see vol. 2:342, 349–350, 352–354, 357–358, 359–362, 365. The Congress convened there following the British occupation of Philadelphia.
John Vining (1758–1802) represented Delaware in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 to 1793 and the Senate from 1793 to 1798. During the congressional debate over the permanent seat of government on 3 Sept. 1789, he inquired regarding the proposed location of the capital, “whether Congress are to tickle the trout on the stream of the Codorus, to build their sumptuous palaces on the banks of the Potomac, or to admire commerce with her expanded wings, on the waters of the Delaware” (
Biog. Dir. Cong.
;
Annals of Congress,
1st Cong., 1st sess., p. 880–881).
Col. Thomas Hartley (1748–1800), a lawyer and soldier in the Revolutionary War, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 to 1800. His wife was the former Catherine Holtzinger (
DAB
).
James Smith (1713–1806), a York, Penn., lawyer and iron manufacturer, had been a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, 1776–1778, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence (
Biog. Dir. Cong.
).
The Alteration of Post Days or some other Cause has disappointed me of a Letter from you this Week, which is the first time I have failled of a Letter on Monday for several months.
The Weather has been very hot and dry here. Yesterday however We had a Light shower: but to day it is very hot again.
The House is slow upon the Ways and means the essential Measure which remains— But I think We shall rise by the first of June, and I fear not before. a tedious Six months it has been to me.
The Senate have given a gentle Check to a very contemptuous Reprobation of the Measures of Congress, voted in the statehouse yard by a Number of Tobacconists & sugar Bakers &c1
By the Way this statehouse Yard is a beautiful Thing formed on an English Plan, like the Inclosure in Grosvenor Square. I walk there every day for Air and Exercise in the shade. It is not a Paines Hill nor a stow, nor a Leasows—but it is pretty. I am, Patience almost / exhausted, tenderly tenderly tenderly yrs.
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A.”
A group of manufacturers met in Philadelphia on 8 May to draft a series of resolutions to “reprobate the imposition of an excise upon the infant manufactures of America.” They described the suggested excise as “unjust, impolitic, oppressive, dangerous and unnecessary” and indicated that if such a tax was passed, “the manufacturers of the city of Philadelphia will assemble at the State house … to take into consideration what measures ought to be pursued to express their sympathy for their oppressed brethren, and with a due respect for their obligations as citizens to demonstrate their abhorrance of so unjust, so impolitic and so pernicious a precedent.” These resolutions were presented to the Senate on 12 May. After reading them, the Senate declared them, by a vote of fifteen to nine, “to be disrespectful to the Senate, ordered that the same be dismissed” (Philadelphia Gazette, 12 May;
Annals of Congress,
3d Cong., 1st sess., p. 98).
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.