From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 2 February 1790
To Benjamin Rush
New York Feb. 2. 1790
Dear sir
I cannot give up my dear Latin and Greek although Fortune has never permitted me to enjoy so much of them as I wished.— I dont love you the less however for your Indifference or even Opposition to them. Pray do you carry your Theory so far as to wish to exclude French Italian, Spanish and Tudesque?— I begun to fear that your multiplied phisical and other Engagements had made You forget me— But am much obliged to you for introducing Mr Andrew Brown, to whom I wish success.—1 I congratulate You, on the Prospect of a new Constitution for Pensilvania.—2 Poor France I fear will bleed, for too exactly copying your old one.
When I See Such miserable Crudities approved by Such Men as Rochefaucault & Condorcet I am disposed to think very humbly of human Understanding. Experience is lost on poor Mankind! O how I pitty them without being able to help them.
Write me when you can
Yours &c
John Adams
RC (NN:Harkness Coll.); internal address: “Dr Rush.”
1. Rush wrote to JA on 26 Jan. to recommend printer Andrew Brown, publisher of the Philadelphia Gazette, who had been “very instrumental . . . in circulating federal sentiments thro’ our state” (Adams Papers). Brown (ca. 1744–1797), originally from Ireland, opened a “young ladies’ academy” in Lancaster, Penn., that was “more liberal than had before been contemplated in this country” (New York Diary, 16 Feb. 1797).
2. For the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, see Rush’s reply of 12 Feb., and note 2, below.