John Adams wrote this about 1765 and the Stamp Act crisis in his Autobiography:
This Year 1765 was the Epoch of the Stamp Act….
I drew up a Petition to the Select Men of Braintree,
and procured it to be signed by a Number of the respectable
Inhabitants, to call a Meeting of the Town to instruct
their Representatives in Relation to the Stamps.
The public Attention of the whole Continent was alarmed,
and my Principles and political Connections
were well known….
I prepared a Draught of Instructions, at home and carried
them with me: the cause of the Meeting was explained,
at some length and the state and danger of the Country
pointed out, a Committee was appointed to prepare
Instructions of which I was nominated as one.
We retired to Mr. Niles House, my Draught was produced,
and unanimously adopted without Amendment, reported
to the Town and Accepted without a dissenting Voice.
These were published in Drapers Paper,
as that Printer first applied to me for a Copy.
They were decided and spirited enough.
They rung through the State, and were adopted,
in so many Words, As I was informed by the
Representatives of that Year, by forty Towns,
as Instructions to their Representatives.
They were honored sufficiently, by the Friends
of Government with the Epithets of inflammatory &c.
I have not seen them now for almost forty Years
and remember very little of them.
I presume they would now appear a poor trifle:
but at that time they Met with such strong feelings
in the Readers, that their Effect was astonishing to me
and excited some serious Reflections.
I thought a Man ought to be very cautious
what kinds of fuel he throws into a fire
when it is thus glowing in the Community.
Although it is a certain Expedient to acquire a momentary
Celebrity: Yet it may produce future Evils
which may excite serious Repentance.
I have seen so many fire brands, thrown into the flames,
not only in the worthless and unprincipled Writings
of Thomas Paine and in the French Revolution,
but in many others, that I think,
every Man ought to take Warning.
In the Braintree Instructions however, If I recollect
any reprehensible fault in them, it was that they
conceded too much to the Adversary, not to say Enemy.
About this time I called upon my Friend Samuel Adams
and found him at his Desk.
He told me the Town of Boston had employed him
to draw Instructions for their Representatives:
that he felt an Ambition, which was very apt to mislead
a Man, that of doing something extraordinary,
and he wanted to consult a Friend who
might suggest some thoughts to his mind.
I read his Instructions and shewed him a Copy of mine.
I told him I thought his very well as far as they went,
but he had not gone far enough.
Upon reading mine he said he was of my Opinion and
accordingly took in to his, some paragraphs from mine.
On the fourteenth of August this Year,
The People in Boston rose, and carried Mr. Oliver
who had been appointed Distributor of Stamps,
to Liberty Tree where they obliged him to take an Oath,
that he would not exercise the office.
The Merchants of Boston could not collect their debts,
without Courts of Justice.
They called a Town Meeting, chose a Committee
of thirty Gentlemen to present a Petition to the Governor
and Council, to order the Courts of Justice to proceed
without Stamped Papers, upon the principle that
the Stamp Act was null because unconstitutional.
This Principle was so congenial to my judgment that
I would have staked my Life on the question:
but had no suspicion that I should have any thing
to do with it, before the Council, till a Courier arrived
with a Certificate from the Town Clerk that I was elected
by the Town, with Mr. Gridley and Mr. Otis,
to argue the Point the next morning.
With so little preparation and with no time to look
into any books for analogous Cases, I went
and introduced the Argument but made a very poor figure.
Mr. Gridley and Mr. Otis more than supplied all my defects.
But the Governor and Council would do nothing.
The Court of Common Pleas, however were persuaded
to proceed and the Superior Court postponed
and continued the Question till the Act was repealed.
At an Inferior Court in Plymouth, Mr. Paine and I
called a Meeting of the Bar, and We labored so successfully
with our Brothers that We brought them all to agree
in an Application to the Court to proceed without Stamps,
in which We succeeded.1
The British Parliament had passed the Stamp Act on 8 March 1765.
The House of Commons voted 294-49 for it, and
it was to become effective in the colonies in November.
The secretary for the province of Massachusetts was Andrew Oliver.
He was very wealthy, and he volunteered to distribute the stamps.
The stamp distributor for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and
New Hampshire arrived from England in August, and Oliver left town with him.
Daniel Dulany was a lawyer in Maryland, and he wrote
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies
in response to the Stamp Act.
He held that the British could not tax the colonies
that were not represented in the British Government.
On August 14 some people hanged an effigy of Oliver from a tree
they named the “Liberty Tree” by Main Street near Boston Common.
The Governor convened the Council, and they decided not to interfere.
Oliver had a building erected for the stamp office.
A crowd gathered by the tree.
Chief Justice Hutchinson ordered the sheriff to remove the effigy,
and he ordered the arrest of those resisting.
Then the crowd tore down Oliver’s office on the wharves at the South End.
The mob looted and destroyed furniture and then burned an effigy with the remains.
That evening people went to Hutchinson’s house.
They demanded that he renounce the Stamp Act.
He fled, and they ransacked the house.
Oliver resigned the next day.
On August 26 as the Oliver family escaped, a mob destroyed their house.
John Adams lamented these actions and disapproved of them.
On September 20 the stamps arrived for the provinces
of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
Governor Francis Bernard convened the General Court on September 25,
and he advised people that all papers without stamps would be null and void,
and they could be fined £10 for each fact.
Public offices would be shut.
If they agreed to use the stamps, he would grant a recess.
The House formed a committee and quickly declined to assist with the stamps.
The next day the Governor adjourned their meeting until October 23.
On October 10 John Adams published in the Boston Gazette
“Instructions to Braintree’s Representative Concerning the Stamp Act”
with this introduction followed by a letter:
We hear from Braintree, that the freeholders and other
inhabitants of that town, legally assembled on Tuesday
the twenty fourth of September last, unanimously voted,
that Instructions should be given their representative, for
his conduct in General Assembly, on this great occasion.
The substance of these instructions is as follows:—
To EBENEZER THAYER, Esq.SIR,
“In all the Calamities which have ever befallen
this Country, we have never felt so great a Concern,
or such alarming Apprehensions, as on this Occasion.—
Such is our Loyalty to the King, our Veneration for both
Houses of Parliament, and our Affection for all our
Fellow subjects in Britain, that Measures, which
discover any Unkindness in that country towards Us,
are the more sensibly and intimately felt.
And we can no longer forbear complaining, that many
of the Measures of the late Ministry, and some of the late
Acts of Parliament, have a tendency, in our Apprehension,
to divest us of our most essential Rights and Liberties.—
We shall confine ourselves, however, chiefly to the Act
of Parliament, commonly called the Stamp Act, by which a
very burthensome, and in our Opinion, unconstitutional tax,
is to be laid upon us all; and we subjected to numerous
and enormous Penalties, to be prosecuted, sued for,
and recovered, at the Option of an Informer,
in a court of Admiralty without a jury.
We have called this a burthensome Tax, because
the Duties are so numerous and so high, and the
Embarrassments to business in this infant, sparsely-settled
Country, so great, that it would be totally impossible for
the People to subsist under it, if we had no Controversy
at all about the Right and Authority of imposing it.
Considering the present Scarcity of Money, we have
Reason to think, the Execution of that Act for a short Space
of Time would drain the Country of its Cash, strip Multitudes
of all their Property, and reduce them to absolute Beggary.
And what the Consequence would be to the Peace
of the Province, from so sudden a Shock and such
a convulsive Change, in the whole Course of
our Business and Subsistence, we tremble to consider.—
We further apprehend this Tax to be unconstitutional:
We have always understood it to be a grand
and fundamental Principle of the Constitution, that
no Freeman should be subjected to any Tax, to which
he has not given his own Consent, in Person or by Proxy.
And the Maxims of the Law as we have constantly
received them, are to the same Effect, that no Freeman can
be separated from his Property, but by his own Act or Fault.
We take it clearly, therefore, to be inconsistent with the
Spirit of the Common Law, and of the essential fundamental
Principles of the British Constitution, that we should be
subjected to any Tax, imposed by the British Parliament:
because we are not represented in that Assembly
in any Sense, unless it be by a Fiction of Law,
as insensible in Theory as it would be injurious in Practice,
if such a Taxation should be grounded on it.
But the most grievous Innovation of all, is the
alarming extension of the Power of Courts of Admiralty.
In these Courts, one Judge presides alone!
No Juries have any Concern there!
The Law, and the Fact, are both to be decided by the same
single Judge, whose Commission is only during Pleasure,
and with whom, as we are told, the most mischievous
of all Customs has become established, that of taking
Commissions on all Condemnations; so that he is under
a pecuniary Temptation always against the Subject.
Now, if the Wisdom of the Mother Country has thought
the Independency of the Judges, so essential to an impartial
Administration of Justice, as to render them independent of
every Power on Earth, independent of the King, the Lords,
the Commons, the People, nay independent, in Hope
and Expectation, of the Heir apparent, by continuing their
Commissions after a Demise of the Crown, what Justice and
Impartiality are we, at three thousand Miles distance from
the Fountain to expect from such a Judge of Admiralty?
We have all along thought the Acts of Trade in this Respect
a Grievance; but the Stamp-Act has opened a vast Number
of Sources of new Crimes, which may be committed by
any Man, and cannot, but be committed by Multitudes,
and prodigious Penalties are annexed, and all these
are to be tried by such a Judge of such a Court!—
What can be wanting, after this, but a weak
or wicked man for a judge, to render Us
the most sordid and forlorn of Slaves?
We mean the Slaves of a Slave
of the Servants of a Minister of State.
We cannot help asserting therefore, that this Part of the Act
will make an essential Change in the Constitution of Juries,
and is directly repugnant to the Great Charter itself;
for by that Charter “no Amercement shall be assessed,
but by the Oath of honest and lawful Men of the Vicinage;”
and “No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned,
or disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs,
nor passed upon, nor condemned, but by
lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land.”
So that this Act will “make such a Distinction,
and create such a Difference between” the Subjects
in Great-Britain, and those in America as we could not
have expected from the Guardians of Liberty in “Both.”
As these, Sir, are our Sentiments of that Act, We,
the Freeholders and other Inhabitants, legally assembled
for this Purpose, must enjoin it upon you, to comply
with no Measures or Proposals for countenancing the same,
or assisting in the Execution of it, but by all lawful Means,
consistent with our Allegiance to the King, and relation to
Great Britain, to oppose the Execution of it, till we can hear
the Success of the Cries and Petitions of America for Relief.
We further recommend the most clear and explicit
Assertion and Vindication of our Rights and Liberties,
to be entered on the Public Records; that the World
may know, in the present and all future Generations,
that we have a clear Knowledge and a just Sense of them,
and, with Submission to Divine Providence,
that we never can be Slaves.
Nor can we think it advisable to agree to any steps
for the Protection of stamped Papers, or Stamp-Officers.—
Good and wholesome Laws we have already,
for the Preservation of the Peace; and we apprehend
there is no further Danger of Tumult and Disorder,—
to which we have a well-grounded Aversion;
and that any extraordinary and expensive Exertions,
would tend to exasperate the People and endanger
the public Tranquility, rather than the contrary.
Indeed we cannot too often inculcate upon you our Desires,
that all extraordinary Grants and expensive Measures,
may, upon all Occasions, as much as possible be avoided.
The Public Money, of this Country, is the Toil
and Labor of the People, who are under many uncommon
Difficulties and Distresses, at this Time,
so that all reasonable Frugality ought to be observed.
And we would recommend particularly, the strictest Care,
and the utmost Firmness to prevent all
unconstitutional draughts upon the Public Treasury.2
A committee prepared a report and resolutions
that the House adopted on October 30.
The Stamp Act was supposed to become effective on November 1.
On the 8th Hutchinson prorogued the General Court until 15 January 1766.
A town meeting was held in Boston, and Samuel Adams drafted a memorial.
The next day John Adams learned that Boston’s town-clerk William Cooper
had informed the town that a unanimous vote directed him to inform
Jeremiah Gridley, James Otis, and John Adams that they were to be
counsel before the Governor and the Council for the town.
On December 18 John Adams wrote in his diary:
How great is my Loss, in neglecting to keep a regular
journal, through the last Spring, Summer, and Fall.
In the Course of my Business, as a Surveyor of High-Ways,
as one of the Committee, for dividing, planning, and
selling the North-Commons, in the Course of my two great
journeys to Pownalborough and Martha’s Vineyard,
and in several smaller journeys to Plymouth, Taunton
and Boston, I had many fine Opportunities
and Materials for Speculation.—
The Year 1765 has been
the most remarkable Year of my Life.
That enormous Engine, fabricated by the British Parliament,
for battering down all the Rights and Liberties of America,
I mean the Stamp Act, has raised and spread,
through the whole Continent, a Spirit that will be recorded
to our Honor, with all future Generations.
In every Colony, from Georgia to New Hampshire
inclusively, the Stamp Distributors and Inspectors have been
compelled, by the unconquerable Rage of the People,
to renounce their offices.
Such and so universal has been the Resentment
of the People, that every Man who has dared to speak
in favor of the Stamps, or to soften the detestation in which
they are held, how great so ever his Abilities and Virtues
had been esteemed before, or whatever his fortune,
Connections and Influence had been, has been seen
to sink into universal Contempt and Ignominy.
The People, even to the lowest Ranks, have become more
attentive to their Liberties, more inquisitive about them,
and more determined to defend them,
than they were ever before known or had occasion to be.
Innumerable have been the Monuments of Wit, Humor,
Sense, Learning, Spirit, Patriotism, and Heroism, erected
in the S in the several Colonies and Provinces,
in the Course of this Year.
Our Presses have groaned, our Pulpits have thundered;
our Legislatures have resolved; our Towns have voted.
The Crown Officers have everywhere trembled,
and all their little Tools and Creatures,
been afraid to Speak and ashamed to be seen.
This Spirit however has not yet been sufficient to banish,
from Persons in Authority, that Timidity,
which they have discovered from the Beginning.
The executive Courts have not yet dared to adjudge
the Stamp-Act void nor to proceed with Business as usual,
though it should seem that Necessity alone would be
sufficient to justify Business, at present,
though the Act should be allowed to be obligatory.
The Stamps are in the Castle.
Mr. Oliver has no Commission.
The Governor has no Authority to distribute,
or even to unpack Bales;
the Act has never been proclaimed nor read in the Province.
Yet the Probate office is shut; the Custom House is shut;
the Courts of justice are shut;
and all Business seems at a Stand.
Yesterday and the day before, the two last days of Service
for January Term, only one Man asked me for a Writ,
and he was soon determined to waive his Request.
I have not drawn a Writ since 1st. November.
How long We are to remain in this languid Condition,
this passive Obedience to the Stamp Act, is not certain.
But such a Pause cannot be lasting.
Debtors grow insolent.
Creditors grow angry.
And it is to be expected that the Public offices will very soon
be forced open, unless such favorable Accounts should be
received from England, as to draw away the Fears
of the Great, or unless a greater Dread of the Multitude
should drive away the Fear of Censure from G. Britain.
It is my Opinion that by this Timorous Inactivity
we discover Cowardice,
and too much Respect and Regard to the Act.
This Rest appears to be by Implication
at least an Acknowledgement
of the Authority of Parliament to tax Us.
And if this Authority is once acknowledged and established,
the Ruin of America will become inevitable.
This long Interval of Indolence and Idleness will make
a large Chasm in my affairs if it should not reduce me
to Distress and incapacitate me
to answer the Demands upon me.
But I must endeavor in some degree to compensate
the Disadvantage, by posting my Books,
reducing my Accounts into better order,
and by diminishing my Expenses, but above all
by improving the Leisure of this Winter,
in a diligent Application to my Studies.
I find that Idleness lies between Business and Study, i.e.
The Transition from the Hurry of a multiplicity of Business,
to the Tranquility that is necessary for intense Study, is not easy.
There must be a Vacation, an Interval between them,
for the Mind to recollect itself.
The Bar seem to me to behave
like a Flock of shot Pigeons.
They seem to be stopped, the Net seems to be thrown
over them, and they have scarcely Courage left
to flounce and to flutter.
So sudden an Interruption in my Career,
is very unfortunate for me.
I was but just getting into my Gears, just getting under Sail,
and an Embargo is laid upon the Ship.
Thirty Years of my Life are passed
in Preparation for Business.
I have had Poverty to struggle with—Envy and jealousy
and Malice of Enemies to encounter—no Friends, or but few
to assist me, so that I have groped in dark Obscurity,
till of late, and had but just become known,
and gained a small degree of Reputation,
when this execrable Project was set on foot for my Ruin
as well as that of America in General,
and of Great Britain.3
John Adams after studying canon and feudal law wrote
“A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law” in four parts,
and each one was published in the Boston Gazette.
This is No. 1 which was published on 12 August 1765:
“Ignorance and inconsideration are
the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.”
This is an observation of Dr. Tillotson, with relation to the
interest of his fellow-men, in a future and immortal state.
But it is of equal truth and importance, if applied to
the happiness of men in society, on this side the grave.
In the earliest ages of the world, absolute monarchy
seems to have been the universal form of government.
Kings, and a few of their great counsellors and captains,
exercised a cruel tyranny over the people who held
a rank in the scale of intelligence, in those days,
but little higher than the camels and elephants,
that carried them and their engines to war.
By what causes it was brought to pass, that the people
in the middle ages, became more intelligent in general,
would not perhaps be possible in these days to discover.
But the fact is certain; and wherever a general knowledge
and sensibility have prevailed among the people,
arbitrary government, and every kind of oppression,
have lessened and disappeared in proportion.
Man has certainly an exalted soul; and the same principle
in human nature, that aspiring, noble principle founded
in benevolence, and cherished by knowledge;
I mean the love of power, which has been so often
the cause of slavery, has, whenever freedom
has existed, been the cause of freedom.
If it is this principle, that has always prompted the
princes and nobles of the earth, by every species of fraud
and violence, to shake off, all the limitations of their power;
it is the same that has always stimulated
the common people to aspire at independency,
and to endeavor at confining the power of the great
within the limits of equity and reason.
The poor people, it is true, have been
much less successful than the great.
They have seldom found either leisure
or opportunity to form a union and exert their strength—
ignorant as they were of arts and letters, they have seldom
been able to frame and support a regular opposition.
This, however, has been known, by the great,
to be the temper of mankind, and they have accordingly
labored, in all ages, to wrest from the populace,
as they are contemptuously called,
the knowledge of their rights and wrongs,
and the power to assert the former or redress the latter.
I say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly,
antecedent to all earthly government—Rights,
that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws—
Rights, derived from the great legislator of the universe.
Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two greatest
systems of tyranny, that have sprung from this original,
are the cannon and the feudal law.
The desire of dominion, that great principle by which
we have attempted to account for so much good,
and so much evil, is, when properly restrained,
a very useful and noble movement in the human mind.
But when such restraints are taken off, it becomes
an encroaching, grasping, restless and ungovernable power.
Numberless have been the systems of iniquity, contrived by
the great, for the gratification of this passion in themselves;
but in none of them were they ever more successful,
than in the invention and establishment
of the cannon and the feudal law.
By the former of these, the most refined, sublime,
extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that
ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the
Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order.
All the epithets I have here given to the Romish policy
are just, and will be allowed to be so when it is considered,
that they even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully
and undoubtingly, that GOD Almighty had entrusted them
with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open
and close at pleasure—with a power of dispensation
over all the rules and obligations of morality—
with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes—
with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects
from allegiance—with a power of procuring or withholding
the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun—with the
management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine;
nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible
power of creating out of bread and wine
the flesh and blood of God himself.
All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet
among the people by reducing their minds to a state
of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing
into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge.
Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel,
shameful, and deplorable servitude to him,
and his subordinate tyrants, who, it was foretold,
would exalt himself above all that was called God,
and that was worshipped.
In the latter we find another system, similar in many
respects to the former; which, although it was originally
formed, perhaps, for the necessary defense of a barbarous
people against the inroads and invasions of her neighboring
nations, yet for the same purposes of tyranny, cruelty,
and lust, which had dictated the cannon law,
it was soon adopted by almost all the princes of Europe,
and wrought into the constitutions of their government.
It was originally a code of laws
for a vast army in a perpetual encampment.
The general was invested with the sovereign
propriety of all the lands within the territory.
Of him, as his servants and vassals, the first rank
of his great officers held the lands; and in the same manner
the other subordinate officers held of them:
and all ranks and degrees held their lands by
a variety of duties and services, all tending to bind
the chains the faster on every order of mankind.
In this manner the common people were held together
in herds and clans in a state of servile dependence
on their lords, bound, even by the tenure of their lands,
to follow them, whenever they commanded, to their wars,
and in a state of total ignorance of every thing
divine and human, excepting the use of arms
and the culture of their lands.
But another event still more calamitous to human liberty,
was a wicked confederacy between
the two systems of tyranny above described.
It seems to have been even stipulated between them,
that the temporal grandees should contribute every thing
in their power to maintain the ascendency of the priesthood,
and that the spiritual grandees in their turn, should employ
their ascendency over the consciences of the people,
in impressing on their minds a blind,
implicit obedience to civil magistracy.
Thus, as long as this confederacy lasted,
and the people were held in ignorance, liberty, and with her,
knowledge and virtue too, seem to have deserted the earth,
and one age of darkness succeeded another, till GOD
in his benign providence raised up the champions
who began and conducted the reformation.
From the time of the reformation, to the first settlement
of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe,
but especially in England; and in proportion as that
increased and spread among the people, ecclesiastical
and civil tyranny, which I use as synonymous expressions
for the cannon and feudal laws,
seem to have lost their strength and weight.
The people grew more and more sensible
of the wrong that was done them by these systems,
more and more impatient under it,
and determined at all hazards to rid themselves of it;
till at last, under the execrable race of the Stuarts,
the struggle between the people and the confederacy
aforesaid of temporal and spiritual tyranny,
became formidable, violent, and bloody.
It was this great struggle, that peopled America.
It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed;
but it was a love of universal Liberty, and a hatred, a dread,
a horror of the infernal confederacy, before described,
that projected, conducted, and accomplished
the settlement of America.
It was a resolution formed, by a sensible people,
I mean the Puritans, almost in despair.
They had become intelligent in general,
and many of them learned.
For this fact I have the testimony of archbishop King
himself, who observed of that people, that they were
more intelligent, and better read than even the members
of the church whom he censures warmly for that reason.
This people had been so vexed, and tortured by the powers
of those days, for no other crime than their knowledge,
and their freedom of enquiry and examination,
and they had so much reason to despair of deliverance
from those miseries, on that side the ocean;
that they at last resolved to fly to the wilderness for refuge,
from the temporal and spiritual principalities and powers,
and plagues, and scourges, of their native country.
After their arrival here, they began their settlements, and
formed their plan both of ecclesiastical and civil government,
in direct opposition to the cannon and the feudal systems.
The leading men among them, both of the clergy
and the laity, were men of sense and learning.
To many of them, the historians, orators, poets
and philosophers of Greece and Rome were quite familiar;
and some of them have left libraries that are still in being,
consisting chiefly of volumes, in which the wisdom of the
most enlightened ages and nations is deposited, written
however in languages, which their great grandsons, tho’
educated in European Universities, can scarcely read.4
No. 2 was published on August 19:
Thus accomplished were many
of the first planters in these colonies.
It may be thought polite and fashionable by many modern
fine gentlemen, perhaps, to deride the characters of these
persons, as enthusiastic, superstitious, and republican.
But such ridicule is founded in nothing but foppery
and affectation, and is grossly injurious and false.
Religious to some degree of enthusiasm it may be admitted
they were; but this can be no peculiar derogation from their
character; because it was at that time almost the universal
character not only of England, but of Christendom.
Had this, however, been otherwise, their enthusiasm,
considering the principles on which it was founded
and the ends to which it was directed, far from being
a reproach to them, was greatly to their honor;
for I believe it will be found universally true, that no great
enterprise for the honor or happiness of mankind was ever
achieved without a large mixture of that noble infirmity.
Whatever imperfections may be justly ascribed to them,
which, however, are as few as any mortals have
discovered, their judgment in framing their policy
was founded in wise, humane, and benevolent principles.
It was founded in revelation and in reason too.
It was consistent with the principles of the best
and greatest and wisest legislators of antiquity.
Tyranny in every form, shape, and appearance
was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment,
nor even of Death itself in exquisite tortures, had been
sufficient to conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit
with which they had opposed the tyrants
of those days in church and state.
They were very far from being enemies to monarchy;
and they knew as well as any men, the just regard
and honor that is due to the character of a dispenser
of the mysteries of the gospel of grace.
But they saw clearly, that popular powers must be placed
as a guard, a control, a balance, to the powers
of the monarch and the priest, in every government,
or else it would soon become the man of sin, the whore
of Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, a great and detestable
system of fraud, violence, and usurpation.
Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish
a government of the church more consistent
with the Scriptures, and a government of the state
more agreeable to the dignity of human nature,
than any they had seen in Europe, and to transmit
such a government down to their posterity,
with the means of securing and preserving it forever.
To render the popular power in their new government
as great and wise as their principles of theory,
that is, as human nature and the Christian religion
require it should be, they endeavored to remove
from it as many of the feudal inequalities
and dependencies as could be spared, consistently
with the preservation of a mild limited monarchy.
And in this they discovered the depth of their wisdom
and the warmth of their friendship to human nature.
But the first place is due to religion.
They saw clearly, that of all the nonsense and delusion
which had ever passed through the mind of man,
none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of
absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions,
and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from
the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery,
sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence
and holiness, around the idea of a priest, as no mortal
could deserve, and as always must, from the constitution
of human nature, be dangerous in society.
For this reason, they demolished the whole system
of diocesan episcopacy; and, deriding, as all reasonable
and impartial men must do, the ridiculous fancies
of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers,
they established sacerdotal ordination
on the foundation of the Bible and common sense.
This conduct at once imposed an obligation on the whole
body of the clergy to industry, virtue, piety, and learning,
and rendered that whole body infinitely more independent
on the civil powers, in all respects, than they could be
where they were formed into a scale of subordination,
from a pope down to priests and friars and confessors,—
necessarily and essentially a sordid, stupid, and wretched
herd; or than they could be in any other country,
where an archbishop held the place of a universal bishop,
and the vicars and curates that of the ignorant, dependent,
miserable rabble aforesaid; and infinitely more sensible
and learned than they could be in either.
This subject has been seen in the same light by many
illustrious patriots, who have lived in America
since the days of our forefathers, and who
have adored their memory for the same reason.
And methinks there has not appeared in New England
a stronger veneration for their memory, a more
penetrating insight into the grounds and principles and spirit
of their policy, nor a more earnest desire of perpetuating
the blessings of it to posterity, than that fine institution
of the late chief justice Dudley, of a lecture against popery,
and on the validity of Presbyterian ordination.
This was certainly intended by that wise and excellent man,
as an eternal memento of the wisdom and goodness
of the very principles that settled America.
But I must again return to the feudal law.
The adventurers so often mentioned,
had an utter contempt of all that dark ribaldry of hereditary,
indefeasible right—the Lord’s anointed—and the divine
miraculous original of government, with which
the priesthood had enveloped the feudal monarch
in clouds and mysteries, and from whence
they had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines,
that of passive obedience and nonresistance.
They knew that government was a plain, simple,
intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason,
and quite comprehensible by common sense.
They detested all the base services and
servile dependencies of the feudal system.
They knew that no such unworthy dependencies
took place in the ancient seats of liberty,
the republics of Greece and Rome; and they thought
all such slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent
with the constitution of human nature and that
religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free.
This was certainly the opinion they had formed; and they
were far from being singular or extravagant in thinking so.
Many celebrated modern writers in Europe
have espoused the same sentiments.
Lord Kames, a Scottish writer of great reputation,
whose authority in this case ought to have the more weight
as his countrymen have not the most worthy ideas
of liberty, speaking of the feudal law, says,
“A constitution so contradictory to all the principles which
govern mankind can never be brought about, one should
imagine, but by foreign conquest or native usurpations.”
Brit. Ant. P. 2.
Rousseau, speaking of the same system, calls it
“That most iniquitous and absurd form of government
by which human nature was so shamefully degraded.”
Social Compact, Page 164.
It would be easy to multiply authorities,
but it must be needless; because, as the original
of this form of government was among savages,
as the spirit of it is military and despotic, every writer who
would allow the people to have any right to life or property
or freedom more than the beasts of the field, and who was
not hired or enlisted under arbitrary, lawless power,
has been always willing to admit the feudal system
to be inconsistent with liberty and the rights of mankind.5
No. 3 was published on September 30:
To have held their lands alodially, or for every man
to have been the sovereign lord and proprietor
of the ground he occupied, would have constituted
a government too nearly like a commonwealth.
They were contented, therefore, to hold their lands of their
King, as their sovereign Lord; and to him they were willing
to render homage, but to no mesne or subordinate Lords;
nor were they willing to submit to any of the baser services.
In all this they were so strenuous, that they have even
transmitted to their posterity a very general contempt
and detestation of holdings by quitrents, as they have also
a hereditary ardor for liberty and thirst for knowledge.
They were convinced, by their knowledge of human
nature, derived from history and their own experience,
that nothing could preserve their posterity from the
encroachments of the two systems of tyranny, in opposition
to which, as has been observed already, they erected their
government in church and state, but knowledge diffused
generally through the whole body of the people.
Their civil and religious principles, therefore,
conspired to prompt them to use every measure
and take every precaution in their power
to propagate and perpetuate knowledge.
For this purpose they laid very early the foundations
of colleges, and invested them with ample privileges
and emoluments; and it is remarkable that they have left
among their posterity so universal an affection and
veneration for those seminaries, and for liberal education,
that the meanest of the people contribute cheerfully
to the support and maintenance of them every year,
and that nothing is more generally popular
than projections for the honor, reputation,
and advantage of those seats of learning.
But the wisdom and benevolence
of our fathers rested not here.
They made an early provision by law,
that every town consisting of so many families,
should be always furnished with a grammar school.
They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute
of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months,
and subjected it to a heavy penalty.
So that the education of all ranks of people
was made the care and expense of the public,
in a manner that I believe has been unknown
to any other people ancient or modern.
The consequences of these establishments
we see and feel every day.
A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare
an appearance as a Jacobite or a Roman Catholic,
that is, as rare as a comet or an earthquake.
It has been observed, that we are all of us
lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers.
And I have good authorities to say, that all candid foreigners
who have passed through this country, and conversed
freely with all sorts of people here, will allow, that
they have never seen so much knowledge and civility
among the common people in any part of the world.
It is true, there has been among us a party for some years,
consisting chiefly not of the descendants of the first settlers
of this country, but of high churchmen and high statesmen
imported since, who affect to censure this provision
for the education of our youth as a needless expense,
and an imposition upon the rich in favor of the poor—
and as an institution productive of idleness and vain
speculation among the people, whose time and attention,
it is said, ought to be devoted to labor, and not to public
affairs, or to examination into the conduct of their superiors.
And certain officers of the crown, and certain other
missionaries of ignorance, foppery, servility, and slavery,
have been most inclined to countenance
and increase the same party.
Be it remembered, however, that liberty
must at all hazards be supported.
We have a right to it, derived from our Maker.
But if we had not, our fathers have earned
and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease,
their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general
knowledge among the people, who have a right,
from the frame of their nature, to knowledge,
as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain,
has given them understandings, and a desire to know—
but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable,
unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that
most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge,
I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees
for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust,
is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away,
the people have a right to revoke the authority
that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute
abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.
And the preservation of the means of knowledge
among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public
than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
It is even of more consequence
to the rich themselves, and to their posterity.
The only question is, whether it is a public emolument;
and if it is, the rich ought undoubtedly to contribute,
in the same proportion as to all other public burdens,—
that is, in proportion to their wealth,
which is secured by public expenses.
But none of the means of information are more sacred,
or have been cherished with more tenderness and care
by the settlers of America, than the Press.
Care has been taken that the art of printing should be
encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe
for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public.
And you, Messieurs Printers, whatever the tyrants
of the earth may say of your paper, have done important
service to your country by your readiness and freedom
in publishing the speculations of the curious.
The stale, impudent insinuations of slander and sedition,
with which the gormandizers of power have endeavored
to discredit your paper, are so much the more to your
honor; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour,
and her arm is always stretched out, if possible,
to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
And if the public interest, liberty, and happiness have been
in danger from the ambition or avarice of any great man,
whatever may be his politeness, address, learning,
ingenuity, and, in other respects, integrity and humanity,
you have done yourselves honor and your country service
by publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition.
These vices are so much the more dangerous and
pernicious for the virtues with which they may be
accompanied in the same character, and with so much
the more watchful jealousy to be guarded against.“Curse on such virtues, they’ve undone their country.”
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors,
from publishing with the utmost freedom,
whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country;
nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty
by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency.
These, as they are often used, are but three
different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
Much less, I presume, will you be discouraged
by any pretenses that malignancies on this side the water
will represent your paper as factious and seditious,
or that the great on the other side the water
will take offence at them.
This Dread of representation has had for a long time,
in this province, effects very similar to what
the physicians call a hydrophobia, or dread of water.
It has made us delirious; and we have rushed
headlong into the water, till we are almost drowned,
out of simple or phrenzical fear of it.
Believe me, the character of this country has suffered more
in Britain by the pusillanimity with which we have borne
many insults and indignities from the creatures of power
at home and the creatures of those creatures here,
than it ever did or ever will by the freedom and spirit
that has been or will be discovered in writing or action.
Believe me, my countrymen, they have imbibed an opinion
on the other side the water, that we are an ignorant,
a timid, and a stupid people; nay, their tools on this side
have often the impudence to dispute your bravery.
But I hope in God the time is near at hand when they will be
fully convinced of your understanding, integrity and courage.
But can anything be more ridiculous, were it not too
provoking to be laughed at, than to pretend that
offence should be taken at home for writings here?
Pray, let them look at home.
Is not the human understanding exhausted there?
Are not reason, imagination, wit, passion, senses, and all,
tortured to find out satire and invective against
the characters of the vile and futile fellows
who sometimes get into place and power?
The most exceptionable paper that ever I saw here
is perfect prudence and modesty in comparison
of multitudes of their applauded writings.
Yet the high regard they have
for the freedom of the Press, indulges all.
I must and will repeat it, your Paper deserves
the patronage of every friend to his country.
And whether the defamers of it are arrayed in
robes of scarlet or sable, whether they lurk and skulk
in an insurance office, whether they assume the venerable
character of a priest, the sly one of a scrivener, or the dirty,
infamous, abandoned one of an informer, they are
all the creatures and tools of the lust of domination.
The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.6
No. 4 was published on October 21:
We have been afraid to think.
We have felt a reluctance to examining into the grounds
of our privileges, and the extent in which
we have an indisputable right to demand them,
against all the power and authority on earth.
And many who have not scrupled to examine for
themselves, have yet for certain prudent reasons
been cautious and diffident of declaring
the result of their inquiries.
The cause of this timidity is perhaps hereditary, and to be
traced back in history as far as the cruel treatment
the first settlers of this country received, before their
embarkation for America, from the government at home.
Everybody knows how dangerous it was to speak
or write in favor of anything, in those days,
but the triumphant system of religion and politics.
And our fathers were particularly the objects
of the persecutions and proscriptions of the times.
It is not unlikely, therefore, that although they were
inflexibly steady in refusing their positive assent
to anything against their principles,
they might have contracted habits of reserve,
and a cautious diffidence of asserting their opinions publicly.
These habits they probably brought with them to America,
and have transmitted down to us.
Or we may possibly account for this appearance
by the great affection and veneration Americans
have always entertained for the country from whence
they sprang—or by the quiet temper for which they have
been remarkable, no country having been less disposed
to discontent than this—or by a sense they have that
it is their duty to acquiesce under the administration
of government, even when in many smaller matters
grievous to them, and until the essentials
of the great compact are destroyed or invaded.
These peculiar causes might operate upon them;
but without these, we all know that human nature itself,
from indolence, modesty, humanity, or fear, has always
too much reluctance to a manly assertion of its rights.
Hence, perhaps, it has happened, that nine tenths of the
species are groaning and gasping in misery and servitude.
But whatever the cause has been, the fact is certain,
we have been excessively cautious
of giving offence by complaining of grievances.
And it is as certain, that American governors,
and their friends, and all the crown officers,
have availed themselves of this disposition in the people.
They have prevailed on us to consent to many things which
were grossly injurious to us, and to surrender many others,
with voluntary tameness, to which we had the clearest right.
Have we not been treated, formerly,
with abominable insolence, by officers of the navy?
I mean no insinuation against any gentleman now
on this station, having heard no complaint
of any one of them to his dishonor.
Have not some generals from England treated us
like servants, nay, more like slaves than like Britons?
Have we not been under the most ignominious contribution,
the most abject submission, the most supercilious insults,
of some custom-house officers?
Have we not been trifled with, brow-beaten,
and trampled on, by former governors, in a manner
which no king of England since James the Second
has dared to indulge towards his subjects?
Have we not raised up one family, in them placed
an unlimited confidence, and been soothed and flattered
and intimidated by their influence, into a great part
of this infamous tameness and submission?
“These are serious and alarming questions,
and deserve a dispassionate consideration.”
This disposition has been the great wheel and the
mainspring in the American machine of court politics.
We have been told that “the word Rights is an offensive
expression;” “that the King, his ministry, and parliament,
will not endure to hear Americans talk of their Rights.”
That “Britain is the mother and we the children,
that a filial duty and submission is due from us to her,”
and that “we ought to doubt our own judgment,
and presume that she is right, even when she
seems to us to shake the foundations of government.”
That “Britain is immensely rich and great and powerful,
has fleets and armies at her command which have been
the dread and terror of the universe, and that she will
force her own judgment into execution, right or wrong.”
But let me entreat you, sir, to pause.
Do you consider yourself
as a missionary of loyalty or of rebellion?
Are you not representing your King, his ministry,
and parliament, as tyrants, imperious,
unrelenting tyrants by such reasoning as this?
Is not this representing your most gracious sovereign as
endeavoring to destroy the foundations of his own throne?
Are you not representing every member of parliament as
renouncing the transactions at Runnymede,
and as repealing in effect the bill of rights, when the Lords
and Commons asserted and vindicated the rights
of the people and their own rights, and insisted
on the King’s assent to that assertion and vindication?
Do you not represent them as forgetting that the
prince of Orange was created King William, by the People,
on purpose that their rights might be eternal and inviolable?
Is there not something extremely fallacious in the common-place
images of mother country and children colonies?
Are we the children of Great Britain any more
than the cities of London, Exeter, and Bath?
Are we not brethren and fellow subjects with those
in Britain, only under a somewhat different method
of legislation, and a totally different method of taxation?
But admitting we are children, have not children a right
to complain when their parents are attempting to break
their limbs, to administer poison,
or to sell them to enemies for slaves?
Let me entreat you to consider,
will the mother be pleased when you represent
her as deaf to the cries of her children?
When you compare her to the infamous miscreant,
who lately stood on the gallows for starving her child?
When you resemble her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare,
(I cannot think of it without horror)Who “Had given suck, and knew
How tender ’twas to love the Babe that milked her.”
But yet, who could
“Even while ’twas smiling in her Face,
Have plucked her nipple from the boneless Gums,
And dashed the brains out.”Let us banish forever from our minds,
my countrymen, all such unworthy ideas
of the King, his ministry and parliament.
Let us not suppose, that all are become luxurious
effeminate and unreasonable, on the other side the water,
as many designing persons would insinuate.
Let us presume, what is in fact true, that the spirit of liberty,
is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation,
though a few individuals may be corrupted.
Let us take it for granted, that the same great spirit, which
once gave Caesar so warm a reception; which denounced
hostilities against John ’till Magna Charta was signed;
which severed the head of Charles the first from his body,
and drove James the second from his kingdom;
the same great spirit
(may heaven preserve it till the earth shall be no more)
which first seated the great grandfather of his present
most gracious Majesty, on the throne of Britain,
is still alive and active and warm in England;
and that the same spirit in America, instead of
provoking the inhabitants of that country, will
endear us to them forever and secure their good will.
This spirit however without knowledge,
would be little better than a brutal rage.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish,
therefore the means of knowledge.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
Let every order and degree among the people
rouse their attention and animate their resolution.
Let them all become attentive to the grounds
and principles of government, ecclesiastical and civil.
Let us study the law of nature; search into the spirit
of the British constitution; read the histories of ancient ages;
contemplate the great examples of Greece and Rome;
set before us, the conduct of our own British ancestors,
who have defended for us, the inherent rights of mankind,
against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers,
against arbitrary kings and cruel priests,
in short against the gates of earth and hell.
Let us read and recollect and impress upon our souls,
the views and ends, of our own more immediate
forefathers, in exchanging their native country
for a dreary, inhospitable wilderness.
Let us examine into the nature of that power and the cruelty
of that oppression which drove them from their homes.
Recollect their amazing fortitude, their bitter sufferings!
The hunger, the nakedness, the cold,
which they patiently endured!
The severe labors of clearing their grounds,
building their houses, raising their provisions
amidst dangers from wild beasts and savage men,
before they had time or money or materials for commerce!
Recollect the civil and religious principles and hopes
and expectations, which constantly supported and carried
them through all hardships, and patience and resignation!
Let us recollect it was liberty!
The hope of liberty for themselves and us and ours,
which conquered all discouragements, dangers and trials!
In such researches as these let us all
in our several departments cheerfully engage!
But especially the proper patrons
and supporters of law, learning and religion.
Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines
and sentiments of religious liberty.
Let us hear the danger of thraldom to our consciences,
from ignorance, extreme poverty and dependence,
in short from civil and political slavery.
Let us see delineated before us, the true map of man.
Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank
he holds among the works of God! that consenting
to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust,
as offensive in the sight of God, as it is derogatory
from our own honor or interest or happiness;
and that God almighty has promulgated from heaven,
liberty, peace, and good-will to man!
Let the Bar proclaim, “the laws, the rights, the generous
plan of power,” delivered down from remote antiquity;
inform the world of the mighty struggles, and numberless
sacrifices, made by our ancestors, in defense of freedom.
Let it be known, that British liberties are not the grants
of princes or parliaments, but original rights,
conditions of original contracts, coequal
with prerogative and coeval with government.
That many of our rights are inherent and essential,
agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries,
even before a parliament existed.
Let them search for the foundations of British laws
and government in the frame of human nature,
in the constitution of the intellectual and moral world.
There let us see, that truth, liberty, justice and benevolence,
are its everlasting basis; and if these could be removed,
the superstructure is overthrown of course.
Let the colleges join their harmony,
in the same delightful concern.
Let every declamation turn upon
the beauty of liberty and virtue, and the
deformity, turpitude and malignity of slavery and vice.
Let the public disputations become researches
into the grounds and nature and ends of government, and
the means of preserving the good and demolishing the evil.
Let the dialogues and all the exercises,
become the instruments of impressing on the tender mind,
and of spreading and distributing, far and wide,
the ideas of right and the sensations of freedom.
In a word, let every sluice of knowledge
be opened and set a-flowing.
The encroachments upon liberty, in the reigns
of the first James and the first Charles, by turning
the general attention of learned men to government,
are said to have produced the greatest number
of consummate statesmen, which has ever
been seen in any age, or nation.
Your Clarendons, Southamptons, Seldens, Hampdens,
Falklands, Sidneys, Lockes, Harringtons, are all
said to have owed their eminence in political knowledge,
to the tyrannies of those reigns.
The prospect, now before us, in America, ought in the same
manner to engage the attention of every man of learning to
matters of power and of right, that we may be neither led
nor driven blindfolded to irretrievable destruction.
Nothing less than this seems to have been meditated for us,
by somebody or other in Great-Britain.
There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot,
to enslave all America.
This however must be done by degrees.
The first step that is intended seems to be an entire
subversion of the whole system of our Fathers, by
an introduction of the canon and feudal law, into America.
The cannon and feudal systems though greatly
mutilated in England, are not yet destroyed.
Like the temples and palaces, in which the great contrivers
of them, once worshiped and inhabited, they exist in ruins;
and much of the domineering spirit of them still remains.
The designs and labors of a certain society, to introduce
the former of them into America, have been well exposed
to the public by a writer of great abilities,
and the further attempts to the same purpose that may be
made by that society, or by the ministry or parliament,
I leave to the conjectures of the thoughtful.
But it seems very manifest from the Stamp Act itself,
that a design is formed to strip us in a great measure
of the means of knowledge, by loading the Press,
the Colleges, and even an Almanack and a News-paper,
with restraints and duties; and to introduce the inequalities
and dependencies of the feudal system, by taking
from the poorer sort of people all their little subsistence,
and conferring it on a set of stamp officers,
distributors and their deputies.
But I must proceed no further at present.
The sequel, whenever I shall find
health and leisure to pursue it,
will be a “disquisition of the policy of the stamp act.”
In the meantime, however, let me add,—
These are not the vapors of a melancholy mind,
nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition,
nor of a spirit of opposition to government, but the
emanations of a heart that burns for its country’s welfare.
No one of any feeling, born and educated in this
once happy country, can consider the numerous distresses,
the gross indignities, the barbarous ignorance,
the haughty usurpations, that we have reason to fear
are meditating for ourselves, our children, our neighbors,
in short for all our countrymen and all their posterity,
without the utmost agonies of heart, and many tears.7
Notes
1. John Adams Revolutionary Writings 1755-1775, p. 628-630.
2. Ibid., p. 125-128.
3. Ibid., p. 137-139.
4. John Adams Revolutionary Writings 1755-1775, p. 114-118.
5. Ibid., p. 118-121.
6. Ibid., p. 121-125.
7. Ibid., p. 130-136.
This work has not yet been published as a book, and all the chapters are free in this website.