Adams Family Correspondence, volume 11
On Monday I recd your favour of the 20th Nothing will damp the Rage for Speculation but a Peace which may break a few hundreds or thousands of speculators.
The Georgia Business is Impudence of uncommon hardness. The Rage of Party is there unrestrained by Policy or Delicacy.
Our sons Account of shakespears Relicks Fenno has printed without Names.1
He must early learn to bear Mortifications. He will never have more to bear than his Father has borne. He is in a state of honourable Banishment. I wish he would come home, with leave, and have Courage enough to set down again in his office and go before Justices of the Peace & Quarter sessions in Defence of the Rights of Man, after marrying his Girl if she is still disengaged if he likes it.— Upon the whole however I think he had better stay another Year, which will make great Changes in this as well as other Countries.
The Appointment of the C. J. was a wise Measure.— My Mind is quite at ease on that subject—
Buy as much Hay as you please— I was afraid you would be obliged to give more than five Pounds a load.
The Barn is to be forty five feet long or rather exactly of the Dimensions of my Fathers— I think it must be in a line with that—if you make an Ell you cutt off all the Prospect. I shall only raise board & shingle it this year—merely for a shelter to the Hay.
235I send you a Post Note for 600 which I wish you to acknowledge by the first opportunity. My Expences are so enormous that I can send no more.
The House consume all their Time upon Party Politicks and all the Great Business of the Nation is suspended.
Mr Henry of Maryland exclaimed to me to day with great Pathos—“Pensilvania has passed a Law to appoint Electors by a general or state Ticket— The Point will lay with Pensilvania— they are a wrong and We shall be defeated.” Bingham answered “Oh No We shall have every Man”— I held my Tongue and understood not a Word they said.2
Henry poor Man had not taken laudanum enough to raise his spirits to the Key.—
The Heart is deceitful and I do believe as well as suspect that I know not mine: But I really and soberly feel as if I should be better pleased that Henry my sincere friend should be defeated than that he should tryumph.—
Torment and Philadelphia are in one scale—Quiet and Quincy in the other. that is all the Difference— I feel myself as fixed as fate. Our statesmen have Letters from John which I have not seen: but which please entertain and interest them.3 I am my dearest friend / poor or sick, great or small yours / everlastingly
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A”; endorsed: “March 29th 1796.”
The Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 29 March, printed a summary of part of
JQA’s 24 Nov. 1795 letter to AA
, above, regarding the alleged discovery of a new play by Shakespeare.
Between 21 and 31 March 1796 the Pennsylvania legislature debated and ultimately approved “An Act Directing the Manner, Time and Places, for Holding Elections for the Electors of a President and Vice-President of the United States.” The new law allowed Pennsylvania citizens to select electors through direct elections. Gov. Thomas Mifflin signed it on 1 April (Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Passed at a Session, Which Was Begun … the First Day of December, in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Five, Phila., 1796, p. 46–47, Evans, No. 30976).
For a summary of JQA’s letters to Timothy Pickering during his time in London, see JA to AA, 9 April, note 2, below. During the same period JQA wrote only one letter to Oliver Wolcott Jr., 21 Dec. 1795, commenting on the delays in American interest payments to the Dutch bankers and suggesting that “some permanent system” be established in the United States to pay off the interest “or the credit of the nation for punctuality will materially suffer” (LbC, APM Reel 130).
The opportunities for writing occur so frequently at this time, and there is so little to say that I am apprehensive some of them will 236 escape without carrying any letters to you; for one is ashamed to write a short letter; when it is to go so far; and like most correspondents I do not always remember that to write little is better than not to write at all.
I send you by the present opportunity Miss Williams’s last Letters from France, and an Answer to Paine’s theology by Bishop Watson. The first you have perhaps already seen, but as they concern the same subject with the other publications which I have lately sent to you and my father; you will perhaps be pleased to add them to the collection.— The Bishop’s “Apology for the Bible” has just been published and it is to be hoped will operate as oil upon Paine’s Arsenic.1
The Newspapers contain but little intelligence. There is much talk of Peace, but I think very little prospect of it. The military campaign has not yet been opened but the most formidable apparatus for the work of destruction has been collected on both sides, and will probably soon be brought into action.
The scarcity of subsistence has much diminished in France and here. Grain and flour have fallen considerably in their prices. The present complaint is of a scarcity of money.
I have no letters from my father later than December. 13. The last from you is of January 23.2 The vessels from Boston & Philadelphia are constantly arriving, and I wait for further letters with all the Patience that my philosophy can command. I find my health much improved by the relaxation (not to call it by an hard name,) that I have had for the last two months. I hope therefore that the Time has not been wholly lost.— My intelligence from my brother at the Hague is not later than the last of February; he had suffered a severe attack from his old rheumatic complaint, but he says he had in a great measure recovered from it. I am afraid he must have had a hard time of it, deprived of all the alleviations to his pain which he had in former instances; alone, in a strange country; though not altogether without friends; for he will find them wherever he goes. His last Letter however is written in apparent good spirits: he was preparing to attend at the ceremony of opening the National Convention, which took place on the day after the date of his letter.3
Please to remember me in duty and affection to my Grandmother, and to all our friends at Quincy, Weymouth and Boston. I am very happy to hear that my cousin W. Cranch has a son; though I cannot help considering it as a sort of reflection upon me; for a good example always contains a censure upon a bad practice.— I begin to think 237 very seriously of the duty incumbent upon all good citizens to have a family.— If you think this the language of a convert, perhaps you will enquire how he became so?— I am not yet prepared to answer that.
I remain your ever affectionate Son
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs: Adams. Quincy.”; endorsed: “J Q A March 30 1796.” FC-Pr (Adams Papers); APM Reel 131.
Helen Maria Williams, Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France, 2 vols., London, 1795, and Richard Watson, An Apology for the Bible: In a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Paine, London, 1796.
That is, JA to JQA, 12 Dec. 1795, above, JA wrote to TBA on 13 Dec., for which see JA to CA, 13 Dec., note 4, above.
TBA’s 29 Feb. 1796 letter to JQA has not been found, but see
JQA to TBA, 24 March, above. At the end of 1795 the States General decided by majority vote to call for a National Assembly, and on 18 Feb. 1796 a unanimous vote was passed for the Assembly to convene on 1 March. Only 90 of the 126 representatives were present on that day, and those who refused to take the oath of loyalty were excluded. The meeting took place in the Binnenhof at The Hague, where the deputies elected Pieter Paulus as their president. TBA “went in full Diplomatic Dress to assist at the ceremony” and noted that he “enjoyed doubtless more than any Stranger present, this mockery of regeneration— I did feel glad on the occasion, for I know an opportunity to try their luck, in a new form of Govt cannot be for the publick a greater calamity than the continuance of the Old-régime” (I. Leonard Leeb, The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Republic, The Hague, 1973, p. 262; George Edmundson, History of Holland, Cambridge, Eng., 1922, p. 348–349; M/TBA/2, 1 March 1796, APM Reel 282).