Adams Papers Digital Edition

Papers of John Adams, volume 20

From Henry Marchant

From Jabez Bowen
From John Adams to Sylvanus Bourne, 30 August 1789 Adams, John Bourne, Sylvanus
To Sylvanus Bourne
Dear Sir New York August 30th 1789

I have received your letter of the 18th of this month and have communicated that to the President, which was inclosed in it. The particular office you sollicit by that letter, will be sought by numbers: and among them probably will be men advanced in life, incumbered with large families, in necessitous circumstances, perhaps occasioned by public services, by depreciated public promises & &— The President will as he ought, weigh all these particulars and give the preference upon the whole as justice humanity and wisdom shall dictate.

There is another gentleman who has applied for it whose pretensions perhaps will have great weight and will be supported by recommendations of the first sort. I must caution you my dear sir against having any dependance on my influence, or that of any other person— No man I beleive has influence with the President. he seeks information from all quarters and judges more independantly than any man I ever knew. It is of so much importance to the public that he should preserve this superiority, that I hope I shall never see the time that any man will have influence with him beyond the powers of reason and argument.

Who is it, pray that has been honoring—Vice ——— in poetry.1

J A.

LbC in CA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mr S Bourn”; APM Reel 115.

 1.

JA probably saw an advertisement in the 22 Aug. Massachusetts Centinel for a “genuine satire,” an anonymous poem by Edward Church entitled “The Dangerous Vice ———,” Boston, 1789, Evans, No. 21736. Church (1740–1816), Harvard 1759, was a Boston 144 merchant whose repeated rejections for a diplomatic post triggered his attack in print. His popular poem mocked JA as a royalist who was compromised by pride and a love of European luxury, calling him “a Stickler for a crown, / Tainted with foreign vices, and his own, / Already plotting dark, insidious schemes, / Already dubb’d a King, in royal dreams.” AA, who circulated Church’s name as the author, was disappointed that JA’s views on presidency and monarchy went unexamined. “I could wish that the Author might be fully known to the publick with regard to the subject of a proper title for the Pressident mr A never has or will disguise his opinion, because he thinks that the stability of the Government will in a great measure rest upon it,” she wrote (vol. 18:103; AFC , 8:404). For JA’s reaction to Church’s piece, see his letter to Cotton Tufts of 16 Sept., below.