Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 2
1828-06-20
Continuation of fine weather to pay us for our rainy month. Morning at the Office reading Kent’s Commentaries and examining the doctrine of Calvin’s case, in Coke’s reports and a case in Cowper, in order to reply to the last letter of my father.1 Tolerably occupied. Afternoon, Executive Record, finished my Novel and was engaged in arranging my documents of the last Session. Evening, a walk around the Common, moon very brilliant.
To counteract CFA’s doubts as to the legal basis for the colonists’ protests against British taxation, JQA advised his son to study the famous case of Calvin v. Smith (6 Jac. banco regis, fo. 1), where it had been held that the people of Ireland were not bound by an act of the English Parliament, in which they were not represented (JQA to CFA, 13 June 1828, Adams Papers). CFA replied with a decision of Lord Mansfield, given in Henry Cowper’s Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench (1783), p. 208: “A country conquered by the British arms becomes . . . necessarily subject to the legislature, the parliament of Great Britain” (CFA to JQA, 24 June 1828, Adams Papers).