Papers of John Adams, volume 20
Having an opportunity of writing by Mr Rutledge1 I embrace it with
great pleasure to convey to you a few lines & some tracts & to convince you
that you are often in my memory & could I find conveyances easy you would hear
often from me being interested in the progress that Novi homines new men make in
virtue & knowledge.
The state of the publick in general is astonishingly changed since we parted & I see with rapture the scenes which are opening on this world of ours from the English revolution the seeds of Freedom were sown you encouraged & promoted their progress to a Surprising degree of perfection the French Nation tho suffering from every quarter the utmost indignities that human nature could bear were not deterred from aiding & assisting the culture till at last the Sun of Liberty arose with healing in his wings & with undiminished splendor brought forth fruits worthy of Paradise to maintain envigorate & illumine mankind.
This last revolution being supernatural the hand of heaven is
still with them to effect greater purposes This affair of Nootka Sound will have its
consequences whither a war or not it will open that sea to America2 Khamchatzar will be well known Japan will be
practised & open to people of that Hemisphere Mexico will be independent Quebeck
will gain a free constitution not granted by the English & United with America3 the Chinese will alter their manners the
Malese will navigate those seas as the inhabitants of sandwich Island do at present in
American ships— Persia India Tibet & the great Lama will be accessible Asia will
throw of her Tyrants Egypt will be formed by the French into a regular government
& Africa cease to be the market for slaves but enjoy their native innocent &
peace which will prevail all over the world in spight of the Despots. the time is
approaching fast when Dr Jebbs wish will be
accomplished.4 a general hunt of
kings—in this universal regeneration I fear England will be the last.
when we consider how rapidly the french revolution took place like 360 an electrical stroke we may hope such great events are not very distance & to the improvement of government Franklyn’s Idea may succeed that old age may be kept of & even life prolonged for a great period if not continued.5 do not think me wild Some of these events have happened & the progress of science & knowledge promise the consequences.
Bruce’s travels to Abyssinia are published at length have just begun it—to condemn it is the fashion for wch there may be some reasons but it opens almost a new part of the world & there are many valuable facts the stile is that of a proud man unpractised in the mechanism of writing— the designs of antique buildings of wch he had many have been purchased some time past with publick money & kept from that publick which ought to have been gratified with the publication of them for which they have paid & are willing to pay liberally!6
Poor Lidiard the American was lost for want of money probably he
was to have gone to the internal parts of Africa from Cairo— it seems there is a tract
from the River Gambia or serra leone of 700 miles mostly by water to mourzouk capital
of Fezzan & Gonjah is only 46 days from Assenti the gold coast—wch is much shorter than from Tripoli wch is 3000 miles & through desarts
a pompous book is printed but not sold!
two large black cities inland Cushnak & Bornou civilized & mahomitons—perfect religious liberty—they are larger than tripoli—Caravans go there7
The dissenters for want of proper spirit have again lost their cause but the subject is more genally understood & next application will come with greater force & strength—8 Vailliants account of Africa is a valuable work He reinstates the Apron & the Cameliopardalis of Pliny9 the tract on The Feudal tenure is by a friend of yrs a good & excellent performance10
my best compts to Mrs Adams herself & family are in perfect health at the
Hide which I wish her sincerely to enjoy with her family—compts to mr & mrs smith
and am Dear Sir with great esteem / Your affectionate friend
In the chronicle of Kings is there an instance of a Jewish King having 6 millions in bank & 12 hundred thousand a year coming to his people to pay his Doctors bill?. in a recent application the struggle was who Should give most as it is said not to be a question which concerns the civil list!.11
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed by CA: “Thomas / Brand Hollis / May 28— 90”; notation by CFA: “T. B. Hollis. / May 28. 1790.”
John Rutledge Jr. was returning to the United States following
his grand tour of Europe, for which see vol. 19:215. He sailed from Falmouth, England, on the British packet
Chesterfield, Capt. Schuyler, and reached New York City
on 2 Aug. (New-York Journal, 3 Aug.).
Competition for the lucrative fur trade and access to the Northwest Passage drew British, Spanish, and Russian merchants to the largely undeveloped trading post of Nootka Sound, located on the coast of present-day Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. For the diplomatic crisis that challenged American neutrality throughout the summer and autumn of 1790, see John Brown Cutting’s letter of 3 June, and note 1, below.
Responding to loyalists’ dissatisfaction with the terms of the
1774 Quebec Act, Parliament passed the Constitutional Act of 1791, splitting the
province into Upper and Lower Canada. Each region operated under a separate government
with a representative assembly and a governor (Donald Grant Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence 1760–1850,
Toronto, 1937, p. 114–115).
Under John Jebb’s ideal constitution, the people were empowered
to bestow and to revoke the status of monarchs and nobility (Anthony Page, John Jebb and the Enlightenment Origins of British
Radicalism, Westport, Conn., 2003, p. 203).
Writing to Joseph Priestley on 8 Feb. 1780, Benjamin Franklin
speculated that “all Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting
even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the
antediluvian Standard” (Franklin,
Papers
, 31:455–456).
Scottish explorer James Bruce (1730–1794), of Kinnaird, published
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 5 vols.,
Edinburgh, 1790. During his travels in Algiers and Tunis, Bruce made three volumes of
drawings of classical ruins that he presented to George III (
DNB
).
Great Britain’s African Association hired American explorer John
Ledyard to travel south from Egypt. Ledyard arrived in Cairo in Aug. 1788 but died of
a “bilious disorder” several months later. Hollis read an excerpt of secretary Henry
Beaufoy’s Proceedings of the African Association, London,
1790, which had appeared in the London St. James’s
Chronicle, 8 April 1790, and described the trading capitals of Cashnah (now
Katsina, Nigeria) and the former empire of Bornu, Nigeria (vol. 18:96; A. Adu Boahen, “The
African Association, 1788–1805,” Transactions of the
Historical Society of Ghana, 5:45, 56 [1961]).
For the parliamentary debates over the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, see Hollis’ letter of 29 March, and note 7, above.
Pliny the Elder wrote about wild boars and giraffes in the eighth
book of his Natural History, as did François Le Vaillant
in his Travels from the Cape of Good-Hope, into the Interior
Parts of Africa, 2 vols., London, 1790, 2:184, 457.
Hollis meant the Abbé de Mably’s Observations sur l’histoire de France, Geneva, 1765, a copy of which is in
JA’s library at MB.
Widely reprinted in 1788, Mably’s work chronicled the social history of rural
feudalism and aristocratic tyranny (vol. 17:72;
Catalogue of JA’s Library
).
Under the Civil List Act of 1782, Parliament oversaw the
expenditures of the monarchy. On 17 May 1790 George III requested a pension for his
doctor, Francis Willis (1718–1807), of Lincoln, England. Ten days later, Parliament
granted Willis an annual sum of £1,000 for 21 years (vol. 19:195; London St. James’s Chronicle, 18, 29 May, 8 July;
DNB
).
th.May ’90
Sir, You did me the honor the winter before last to subscribe to a
little Astronomical essay of mine and on my presenting the work I was honor’d by your
invitation at Braintree, which gain’d me access 362 to your Excellency:
when on your understanding that I had been some many years in the East Indies, Your
Excellency was pleas’d to intimate that you would present to your friends in Congress a
memorial if I prepar’d one pointing out the eligibility of the Ameicans establishing
factories in the East Indies, and of striking up Commercial treaties with the Indostan,
and other Asiatic powers: a sufficient inducement for me to have digested into a
Narrative the materials in my possession and the India matters I had then in
speculation; and propos’d within my self to have effected this work, as soon as I should
have received the profits of my little litarary undertaking, but disappointed therein by
my having intrusted a man with my list of Subscribers and a second Edition of my Work
who laying himself in with Edes the Printer at Boston and my Engraver; both equally
dispos’d to wrong me, under the colour of Partnership, sequester’d the work out of my
hands, and left me in a very ridiculous position at Boston, depriving me of all the
advantages I expected to have reap’d from it; when in order to retrieve my self I set
about composing and protracting a Sett of Charts of the Coast of America which are all
now engraved, & publish’d in Boston;1
a laborious peice of work that I compleated under very disadvantageous circumstances:
when after having run my self in debt, in originating it, and bringing it forward by
obtaining the patronage of the Honorable Mr. Bowdoin, Mr. Tommy Russel, Major Covin &c. &c; oblig’d to give
it up and leave unpaid these demands, and forfeit my Engagements with the Public, or
surrender it up to an artful fellow upon very disadvantageous terms I choos’d the
latter, which man disappointing me in every shape, thro’ out the series of the whole
business, at the latter end I found my self, and family (remov’d by this time by me to
Boston) in sudden extremity in a severe season of the year, and finally reduc’d to the
alternative of being beholden to some four or five Honorable Gentlemen for assistance,
or of seeing my wife, & three Children suffer; for however dispos’d to stoop to any
thing for their support Gentlemen, and Merchants, on the one hand; to whom I was known,
averse to employ a person in a low station, who had been in company and conversation
with them, and with men of rank, and was; as they were pleas’d to say calculated for
something better; added to my having been considerably incapacitated from getting a
Livelyhood by daily labour, by reason of a shot—ie. or large iron ball, I received in
India that enter’d my breast, and pass’d thro’ my shoulder blade, in seising on an
English ship in the Gulph of Gugzerat while in the service of Gillumnabby the Prince of
Sinde;2 and men who had been a 363 long time in the line of Tuihin bendes the number
of Newcomers acting in that sphere leaving no opening for my succeeding that way on the
other hand and our furniture and things dispos’d of to buy bread; not resolution enough
to snatch my self from my family immers’d in such distress, and go farther afield for
their releif however expedient the step— in this provoking situation I remaind ’till
about the middle of this month, when rather than leave my family so situated, by going
to India at this time of life without securing to them some aid in my absence as some
had advis’d me to do I form’d the resolution of gaining this Metropolis where was the
seat of Government and where your Excellency residing something perhaps might be hop’d
for, for the meliorating my condition, at least if any countenance could be given to any
plan I might adopt for that purpose, that at the same time should have a tendency to
national utility, and induc’d by these hopes, and urg’d by the above motives I came here
and publish’d last Thursday the accompany’d Proposals: your Excellency’s patronage to
which, can I but obtain, by your honoring me with your name thereto, and the illustrious
Presidents name to crown my endeavours, it will most undoubtedly answer my most sanguine
expectations as it will be the means of not only bringing about a temporary assistance
for me, but enable me to open a private Marine Academy for the improvement, and
instruction of the Seafaring line in general, and a Marine Intelligence Office at the
same time, where when Captains of Vessels of all denominations should be supply’d with
Charts, and nautical directions and naval, and commercial information adapted to their
Voyages from the most modern and authentic authorities to any part of the World, and
enable me to prepare materials for an Edetion of large Terraqueous Globes, and the
Superfices for Engraving; a business I am thoroughly acquainted with which would have a
Tendency towards promoting useful Knowledge in this Empire, and of reestablishing my
self again in life. Then please your Excellency being my Ultimatum should I not with the
benevolent disposition you inherit succeed in this application I should conclude that
some fatality must attend my proceedings that defeats all my attempts in these parts
however honest my endeavours and despair of succeeding on the Continent of America! But
reflect then please your Excellency on the situation of mind that dictated these
sentiments and I should have hopes that this intrusion on your hours; to your self &
the world of such importance, and of my particulars might plead you to pardon the
liberty I have taken and to pay some little attention to my request begging leave to
subscribe myself with the greatest respect, May it 364 please Your
Excellency Your Excellency’s most Obedient & / devoted humble servant
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “The Honorable John Adames Esquire / L.L.D. Vice President of the United States &c.”
Bartholomew Burges (ca. 1740–1807) taught navigation, surveying,
and astronomy in Ipswich, Mass. He wrote A Short Account of
the Solar System, and of Comets in General, Boston, 1789, Evans, No. 21722. His most
recent publication was A Series of Indostan Letters,
N.Y., 1790, Evans, No. 22380,
which he advertised in the New-York Packet, 27 May. Along
with engraver John Norman (ca. 1750–1817) and auctioneer Matthew Clark (ca.
1747–1798), Burges produced A Complete Chart of the Coast of
America, from Cape Breton into the Gulf of Mexico, Boston, 1790, Evans, No. 21738.
Several prominent authors, including David Ramsay and Jedidiah
Morse, joined Burges in petitioning Congress for copyright protection. On 23 June 1789
Benjamin Huntington of Connecticut introduced a bill in the House of Representatives
“to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Members
of the House postponed debate on the bill until the next session, presenting a revised
proposal “securing the copyright of books” on 28 Jan. 1790. One month later, Elias
Boudinot made another key change, expanding the privilege to maps, charts, and other
writings. Congress then passed the Copyright Act, which secured authors’ rights for
fourteen years, and George Washington signed it into law on 31 May (David Bosse,
“Matthew Clark and the Beginnings of Chart Publishing in the United States,” Imago Mundi, 63:22, 24, 26 [Jan. 2011];
First Fed.
Cong.
, 1:723, 728; 3:22 56–57, 94, 306; New York Gazette of the United States, 5 June). See also Richard Cranch’s 22 Jan. letter,
and note 1, above.
Fom 1757 to 1772, Ghulam Shah Kalhora ruled Hyderabad, located in
present-day Pakistan’s Sindh province (James Wynbrandt, A
Brief History of Pakistan, N.Y., 2009, p. 100).