John Adams, July 4, 1774

Patten’s, at Arundel, 4 July.

We went to meeting at Wells and had the pleasure of hearing my friend upon “Be not partakers in other men’s sins. Keep yourselves pure.” Mr. Hemmenway came and kindly invited us to dine, but we had engaged a dinner at Littlefield's, so we returned there, dined, and took our horses to meeting in the afternoon and heard the minister again upon “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” There is a great pleasure in hearing sermons so serious, so clear, so sensible and instructive as these.¹

We went to Mr. Hemmenway's, and as it rained a little he put out our horses, and we took a bed with him, i. e. Mr. Winthrop and I.

You know I never get or save anything by cozening or classmating. So I gave pistareens enough among the children and servants to have paid twice for my entertainment.

Josiah Quincy, always impetuous and vehement, would not stop, but drove forward; I suppose, that he might get upon the fishing ground before his brother Sam and me. I find that the divines and lawyers this way are all Tories. Brother Hemmenway is as impartial as any I have seen or heard of. James Sullivan seems half inclined to be a Whig.

Mr. Winthrop has been just making some observations which I think worth sending to you. Upon reading an observation in the Farmer's fourth letter,² that some of our (the Massachusetts) resolves and publications had better have been suppressed, Mr. Winthrop said that many things in our newspapers ought to have been suppressed, for example, whenever there was the least popular commotion or disturbance, it was instantly put in all the newspapers in this province. But in all the other provinces they took care to conceal and suppress every such thing.

Another thing, he says we ought to avoid all paragraphs in our papers about our own manufactures, especially all vaporing puffing advertisements about them, because such paragraphs only tend to provoke the ministers, merchants, and manufacturers in England to confine and restrain or prohibit our manufactures. But our presses in Boston, Salem, and Newburyport are under no regulation, nor any judicious, prudent care. Therefore it seems impracticable to keep out such imprudences. The printers are hot, indiscreet men, and they are under the influence of others as hot, rash, and injudicious as themselves, very often.

For my own part, it has long been my resolution to avoid being concerned in counseling, or aiding, or abetting tumult or disorder; to avoid all exceptionable scribbling in the newspaper of every kind; to avoid all passion and personal altercation or reflections. I have found it difficult to keep these resolutions exactly; all but the last, however, I have religiously and punctiliously observed these six years.

_______________

¹ Thirty-six years afterwards Mr. Adams wrote of the same person, “My affection for him, which began when we first entered college, has continued and increased till it has become veneration.”

² The letters of John Dickinson, printed under that name.

SOURCE: Charles Francis Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, p. 10-11