To John Adams from Thomas Brand Hollis, 28 May 1790
From Thomas Brand Hollis
28 May. 1790 Chesterfeild Street
Dear Sir
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 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
T. Brand Hollis
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.”
1. 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.).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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).
5. 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” (, 31:455–456).
6. 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 ().
7. 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]).
8. For the parliamentary debates over the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, see Hollis’ letter of 29 March, and note 7, above.
9. 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.
10. 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; ).
11. 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; ).