Adams Family Correspondence, volume 4
1780-12-08
I have been all impatience for several Months looking and longing to hear from abroad. From June to december would be many Eternitys in the warm imagination of a Lover. Such extravagancys are at no time admissible in a Female Breast, but the anxiety of a wife and the affection of a parent, may be productive of sensations known only to those who feel them, and which language would poorly represent.
You who have a Heart open to Friendship (if not to the softer passions) can commisirate my situation upon the late arrival of Capt. Davis from Amsterdam who being chased threw over all his Letters. I scarcly knew how to endure so cruel a misfortune. A few days how-27ever in some measure relieved me; by the arrival of a Brig from the same port, which brought me one Letter from Amsterdam and 3 from France, Bearing date August 21, 27 and Sepbr. 31 for which I most sincerely thank you. You have afforded me much entertainment by your discriptive pen. I felt a degree of pitty mingle with my Indignation at an Institution equally incompatible with publick Good, and private happiness, an Institution which cruelly devotes Beauty and Innocence to slavery, regret and wretchedness, and is contrary to the dictates of that Being who pronounced it not good for Man to be alone and who created Eve, not for a secluded Bower, or a Grated Partone, but all.
We were formed for a scene of active virtue. He is the Hero who conquers, not he who cowardly flees from the Enemy. Take care my dear Sir that you do not make the fair Maroni repent her vows and convert, instead of being converted. She would then bathe with the bitter tears of repentance and remorse, those altars to which she is consecrated. At so early an age can her passions be all sublimated? and the Love of God substituted to the Love of Man? is each prayer accepted and each wish resignd?
Dissapointed Love and the enthusiasm of Religion only can receive consolation in such a seclusion from the world,
I was sorry to find that any of your Friends had given you uneasiness in the Way you mentiond.2 You well know that the Love of Slander is the prevailing passion of many in this place, and the spirit of levelling all characters has prompted them to strike at the best, and the most unexceptionable, but I trust their malice left not a Spot behind, since the parties have so lived that no one dared to believe the slander. Others since your absence with Hearts as pure, 28and with conduct as irreproachable have equally suffered, even the tender and Gentle Eliza3
from a disorder to which you know she has been long subject, and which will I fear put a period to her days, even in the Bloom of life, has sufferd reproach for no other cause. Let this be your consolation that you have sufferd with good company, and that
You know I ever valued you for a purity of Morals which every young Gentleman would retain, if he knew the Evils ariseing from dissolute connexions, before experience taught them. It is an old observation that a Man is known by his company. You were Intimate with a youth, who I fear is much changed in his manners and principals from Evil communications. You have often lamented his contracted Education, that I fear has led him into company you would Blush to have your name mentiond among. Yet the Sanction of former Intimacy with him prompted a Dissolute Imp of Satan, to Name you as one of those whom she could call hers when she plased. I ventured to send her word by this very person, that she had better take care how she mentioned your Name again. I could assure her you had Friends here who would not suffer your character to be abused with Impunity. This together with a publick exorciseing from the pulpit laid the devil, and I have never heard a syllable of slander since.4 That you may retain every virtue you exported from America, pure and unsullied, and return with them brightned and improved, is the sincere and ardent wish of your ever affectionate Friend,
Nfair American is, tho she has great curiosity to know.
That of 21 Aug. will be found in vol. 3 above; that of 27 Aug. is in Adams Papers but omitted here except for the paragraph quoted in the following note; that of 3 Sept. has not been found; nor has another, dated 1 Sept., which AA acknowledged in Dft of present letter but apparently by oversight omitted mention of in RC.
“I understand my Character has 29been slandered and defamed since my Absence from B
Probably Elizabeth Palmer, referred to several times in vol. 3 above.
In Dft the preceding passage (beginning “Yet the Sanction . . .”) reads: “Vanity and impudence prompted the infamous trolope to say, she would not marry a young fellow who was fool enough to be fond of her, because she could have Mr. A——n, Mr. Joh T, Mr. T——r or Mr. V——y when she pleased. I believe only one can be exempted from the Number as Innocent. Evil communications corrupt good manners, and it has been the misfortune of a youth whom you once loved to suffer in that way.” The names may be filled out with more or less confidence as follows: Allen or Austin, John Thaxter, Thayer, Veasey.
1780-12-09
Your Favour of July 25th was received in Paris in my Absence, and I have never had opportunity, to acknowledge it, till now.
You are now I hope happy, both in the Constitution and Administration of Government. It cannot be long before We shall see the Lists.
I am obliged to you for the Journal of the Weather, but cannot admit your Excuse for not writing me Politicks. Every one says you will have publick Affairs from others. So I get them from none.
The Institution of an Accademy of Arts and Sciences, does you much honour in Europe, and it will after a little Time be incouraged, many Ways. But dont set your Hearts upon Benefactions from abroad. It is a shame that We should beg for Benefactions. There have been but two Hollis's—there will perhaps be no more.1
Indeed America will never derive any good from Europe of any Kind. I wish We were wise enough to depend upon ourselves for every Thing, and upon them for nothing. Ours is the richest and most independent Country under Heaven, and We are continually looking up to Europe for Help! Our Riches and Independance grow annually out of the Ground.
The English are hiring ships here to carry Troops and Provisions to America—they have hired about a Dozen and there are Orders to hire as many as they can.
The Dutch are waiting for the English stocks to fall below Sixty 30and then every body will put their Money into them. These Gudgeons are deceived. The English Emmissaries give out that there will be Peace, and the credulous Dutch believe it, and they think that after a Peace the English stocks will rise, as they did after 1763. So they hope to get 15 or 20 Per Cent clear Profit. But there is not the least Probability of Peace: nor will the English stocks rise after it, when it comes.
The Dutch have acceeded to the neutral Confederation, but this I suspect, will be brutum Fulmen.
I inclose you a Pamphlet or two2 and am, with affectionate Respects to the Family &c.
Thomas Hollis and his adopted heir, Thomas Brand Hollis, were British “republicans” who had been generous benefactors of Harvard College and other American institutions of learning. See
DAB
under Thomas Hollis, and references to both men in JA, Diary and Autobiography
.
Undoubtedly one of these was a literary effort that had cost JA much time and trouble during the preceding months. Entitled Pensées sur la révolution de l'Amérique-unie, extraites de l'ouvrage anglois, intitulé Mémoire, adressé aux souverains de l'Europe, sur l'état présent des affaires de l'ancien & du nouveau-monde, Amsterdam [&c.], n.d. (Sabin 64829), it had a long and complex history which can be given in only summary form here. It was a translation of what JA called an “Abridgment,” from his own hand, of an influential pamphlet by Thomas Pownall, A Memorial Most Humbly Addressed to the Sovereigns of Europe ..., London, 1780 (Sabin 64826). JA had prepared his version of this tract in the spring of 1780 and furnished a copy to Congress in the form of a letter to Pres. Samuel Huntington, 19 April (PCC, No. 84, I; LbC, Adams Papers). What appears to be JA's draft or working copy, a holograph MS in nineteen folio pages much corrected in his own and another hand (probably Edmund Jenings'), is in the Adams Papers under the assigned date of 5 Sept. 1780; it bears the title “A Translation of the 'Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe,' into common Sense and intelligible English.” This or another English text was made available in June or early July 1780 to a Parisian named Addenet for translation into French. The translation followed JA to Amsterdam and was sent by him on 5 Sept. to the Leyden scholar-journalist Jean Luzac, who wrote a lengthy and valuable preface and caused the whole to be published anonymously under the title Pensées, &c. (as given above in this note). Copies reached JA in mid-November, and he at once began to circulate them diligently. Early in 1781, as a result of efforts by Edmund Jenings, JA's friend in Brussels (on whom see JA, Diary and Autobiography
, 2:355–356 and passim), the London publisher John Stockdale brought out an English edition under the by now sufficiently confusing title A Translation of the Memorial ... into Common Sense and Intelligible English (Sabin 35987). No subsequent edition has ever been issued, since CFA did not include it in JA's Works
, and Wharton unaccountably omitted from the Diplomatic Correspondence
JA's letter to Huntington of 19 April 1780 embodying JA's revision of Pownall's observations. This is the more regrettable because Pownall, who posited that the Americans had already won their independence, broke new ground in setting forth the future political and commercial relations between the Americas and Europe. JA's redaction is significant both for what it includes and what it omits.
The foregoing summary is based on extensive correspondence during 1780 and early 1781 between JA and Addenet, Jenings, Luzac, and J. D. van der Capellen surviving in the Adams Papers.