Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 4
1831-12-26
Morning cold again. I went to the Office as usual. And was very busy all my time in finishing the second Number began yesterday. This was written several times over. I closed it by one o’clock and sent it away.1 Then went down to the Athenaeum where I killed an hour in which I ought properly to walk for my health. Indeed I felt a little uncomfortable today from a Cold and head ach which seemed to foretell the far-famed Influenza.
In the Afternoon I finished the Treatise of Cicero “De legibus” which is in many parts defective. The Commentary is interesting but in some respects I think his brother Quintus is more than half right. The Roman Republic is a study for a Legislator. Though many of it’s best Institutions were borrowed from the Greeks. After all that we can say about it, this was a wonderful people and the world is more indebted to them than to any mere men it ever produced. They shone through the powers of the mind. While the Romans always shared this superiority more equally with that which came from the body.
Evening, the Canterbury Tales to my Wife, after which the Iliad, Gibbon and Spectator.
The second number of CFA’s series on the report of Secretary McLane appeared in the Boston Patriot on 29 Dec. (p. 2, cols. 1–2). In it, issue was taken principally with the means proposed by which the national debt could be redeemed at an accelerated rate. The argument was advanced that for the government to require the sale to the United States Bank of the shares in the Bank held by the Treasury would be unfairly disadvantageous to the Bank and to its private stockholders and unsound as a national policy.