Papers of John Adams, volume 20
I have duly received but not duly answered your favor of April 3d.1 It is a
misfortune that a man can never be spoken to by a projectors without being misunderstood
or misrepresented I told Mr. Forbisher that if he expected
any thing from the general government, he must apply to it by petition. But I never told
him, that I had the least suspicion that the general government would ever do anything
for him.— How should they? He is in possession of no secret; if he was an inventor or
discoverer he has long since made his art public; he therefore cannot obtain a patent.—
One is harrassed through life with an hundred of these dreamers who will never take no!
for an answer. if he will beleive that Congress will assist him why does he not
petition? I have no such faith: if the state would not assist him, why should the
Continent? We have been much allarmed, at the sickness of the President: but thank God,
he is better and recovering fast. The house do not harmonize in the right system, so
well as we could wish: but the prosperity of the Country, has been so greatly promoted
by the government, that I hope we shall not throw it away.— The 356 Massachusetts have appeared to me to waver as much as any State: but the elections
this year I hope are more favorable—
Yours &c
LbC in CA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “Hon Benja Lincoln.”; APM Reel 115.
Lincoln’s letter of 3 April (Adams Papers) introduced William Frobisher (ca.
1724–1807). The Boston merchant, who had discovered a new method of making potash,
failed to earn compensation from the Massachusetts legislature for his invention and
sought JA’s aid in securing it from the federal government. In his Diary,
JA recalled meeting Frobisher on 28 June 1770 and hearing “a Narration
of his Services to the Province,” commenting, “Thus Projectors, ever restless.”
Frobisher was granted a federal patent on 17 Nov. 1796 (JA, D&A
, 1:353; “The Records of Trinity
Church, Boston, 1728–1830,” Col.
Soc. Mass., Pubns.
, 56:821 [1982]; Henry L.
Ellsworth, A Digest of Patents, Issued by the United States,
from 1790 to January 1, 1839, Washington, D.C., 1840, p. 154).
Your agreable favour of the 24th of
April, was brought to me in season and I thank you for it; though my thanks are not in
good season.—Your sentiments concerning the assumption of the State debts, the
encouragement of American navigation and the establishment of a national bank, are
conformable to those of about one half The Continent and contrary to those of the other
half. How shall we contrive to make the Clocks all strike together? Virginia begins to
be convinced of the necessity of uniting with the States on this side of her, in
measures to encourage our shipping, and give it an advantage over foreigners; but your
cousin of Carolina, who is one of the most judicious men in the house, is you see quite
an enemy to such measures. The Carolinas and Georgia, I suppose will be longer in their
conversion, than Virginia has been.—1 It
may require a more United people and a stronger government to take those steady
measures, necessary to support our navigation: but my sentiments on this point are no
secret to Congress: I wrote them continually from England: and I still think for us to
build man, and maintain twelve hundred ships for a foreign nation, out of the labour of
our husbandmen is very ill contrivance for the interest of Agriculture, whatever our
friend Smith may say.
Division of sentiments about every thing—some inclining to the French, some to the English; one party to the south and another to the north; one sett advocates for the interest of Agriculture; another for those of commerce a third for those of manufactures—every party pushing their own principles too far, and opposing others too much— 357 How few minds look through the mighty all, with a steady eye, and consider all its relations and dependences!2 How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of parts?— These questions have occurred ever since I was born, and will as long as I live, or you either. The turbulent maneuvres of a faction in the Massachusetts weaken and embarrass us, as much or more than Rhode Island. I despair of New England: they upon principle tie the hands and destroy the influence of every man who has any chance and any desire to serve them— So says and so feels, by cruel experience yours
LbC in CA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mr Wm Smith Boston”; APM Reel 115. Tr (Adams Papers).
As the Anglo-American trade war dragged on, British merchants
extended credit to southern planters in need of manufactured goods and agreed to carry
their grain in exchange. On 17 May James Madison, leading a committee comprising
Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts and Thomas Hartley of Pennsylvania, introduced a
trade bill to increase tonnage duties on foreign ships. South Carolina representative
William Loughton Smith opposed it, claiming in his speeches to the House on 17 and 18
May that the proposal was squarely aimed at Great Britain. W. L. Smith recommended
that the executive branch should determine all questions of tonnage and warned
Congress that it was “highly impolitic to enter into a commercial warfare with Great
Britain.” The bill was read again on 18 May and for a third time on 25 June, when the
House voted to consider it further, but it was not passed. British newspapers reported
avidly on the congressional debates, noting that the absence of an Anglo-American
commercial treaty would injure British profits (George C. Rogers, Evolution of a Federalist: William Loughton Smith of Charleston
(1758–1812), Columbia, S.C., 1962, p. 173–175;
First Fed. Cong.
,
3:411, 413, 415, 477, 822; New-York Daily Gazette, 17, 18
May; London English Chronicle, 22 July; London Diary, 11 Aug.; London Public
Advertiser, 7 Sept.).
CA emphasized this sentence in the left margin of the LbC with a manicule.