To John Adams from Thomas Brand Hollis, 19 October 1790
From Thomas Brand Hollis
Harvard octo. 19th. 1790
my Dear Sir
amidst the numerous & important concerns in which you are engaged, & for which I rejoice that you should sometimes think of me gives me a heartfelt satisfaction & I trust to have some claim to the continuance of your friendship & correspondence, if being conscious, my regard for you was always sincere & interested from principle, in the cause of your country.
I begun this letter on a pleasing spot in Dorsetshire called Adams a portion of a large farm nominated Harvard there you stand not alone; but in the midst of a commonwealth surrounded by your american friends & Hero’s; Cotton Mather Vane Hutcheson Mayhew Hancock & others indeed the whole state is peopled with American Patriots & martyrs. think then what pleasing reflections must there occur from the glorious effects of the principles of these noble writers & actors, Ludlow, Sidney, Marvell, Harrington, Milton Neville Locke all surrounding Harvard have operated, to emancipate your Hemisphere & the same divine light has dispersed no small clouds & illumined our Horizon which will direct to more extended future views.1
France will succeed to her utmost wishes the Assignats do pass currently & the Lands sell at 22 years purchase & it is imagined the Lands of the chruch will sell higher as the purchase is more convenient. the government will be formed & fixed by January & a new election of members which will strenghen the present System.2
I never despaired of the French revolution there is one will all acting to one point the general happiness, & the oppression which was enormous drove to this & discover’d to the body of the Nation that the welfare of 30 millions of people was an object of greater consequence to them who made that number than the parade & pomp of one family or of one man to whose fantastick power they were Subject. what a divine afflatus to break out all at once!
to such a phantom of a King as now is, perhaps I should have no objection but the name, the Hebrew Superstition still remaining; its probable he may be of use for Suspence & deliberation.
two councils would not have been born in France the Nobility would have torn the other house in peices & no regeneration could have succeeded the peerage remaining.
what fermentation can you expect here? we are not sick enough for any bleeding nor yet ripe for any cure! you have touched on a capital principle, live & let live have we not extended the monopoly even to Liberty but is not this the spirit of trade?— take warning, has not cicero said something like this 2000 years agoe?
that more humanity more knowledge & freedom will be the consequence of these fermentations I have no doubt & will all tend to Essential good.
The pope precipitates his fall by folly ignorance & avarice— status Ecclesia a large & severe work published a great sale of books of an Italian Dr: Paitoni of venice cheifly Physick & natural knowledge a small tract from Paris sur la vente &c not capital which may be satisfactory to you. will come next time—3
I can say with great truth no american wishes prosperity to that country more than I do & therefore rejoice to hear that you are getting into order & that Rhode Island is united with you.
I cannot say the french have been hasty they have done much it is true & much remains to do.
I am glad to hear of your pleasing situation as no one has a greater claim to be happy for the services he has done & is doing. your Journals entertained me & add to my american library. mr Knox conveyed to me Winthrop & the confederalist4 this I have read some time since & is valuable the other is curious as a History of a persecuted Colony.
I do not want inclination to see your country but the objection my amiable friend makes to repeat her visit here, operates strongly with me with the additional circumstance of eternal Blue & gold.
one unlucky circumstance regarding marbles in your country & I fear will prevent the use of them is that the flies will entirely cover them with a Patina not of the most pleasing or antique colour.
if no americans were ever prisoners at algiers or Morrocco you need have no fears of the plague but we have heard lately & most truely of some dying there5 & the transportation is most easy by goods—however Howards book is most excellent of its kind & therefore sent it wishing you to have every capital Book as it is said you are the first Library. am told you have Piranesi works?6 we only differ about the wolfe & what is the best guard against him under whatever name he may go we had a singular meeting on the 4th. November Dr Price in the chair as a triumph over Burke— Horne Tooke one of the stewards supporting him on one side!
many excellent toasts from D. P. may the Parliament of England be the National assembly.7
I cannot but send you Burke’s reflection on the French revolution tho unwilling to disperse them illiberal & indecent full of misrepresentations & Sophistry inveterate prejudices disappointed ambition tending almost to raving, talents misapplied eloquence & Brilliancy of stile perverted to wrong purposes, thus all the amiable excellencies & knowledge & science are become mischeivous & detrimental to the best interests of mankind! yet notwithstanding this work is become the engine of party to scandalize the most independent & best of men.8
The Bernois have made a Cordonn of 3000 men with increase of pay to keep out the french refugees! vain cord! Burke will remind you of filmer in the 18 century!9 some french speeches will entertain you. wch. I wish this letter may do for it has tired me— is there a good Library at N. York on a liberal plan? on the 4th. we had the news of the spanish affairs to settled on 27.10 by Gazeete a matter of triumph to our young man & the only Equivalent for his enormous expences I rejoice that France will not now be disturbed in her new constituion not that it is the general wish here of politicians.
the Czarina has made peace without the P. Tyrant interfering11
RC (Adams Papers).
1. Hollis interspersed with Americans Cotton Mather, Thomas Hutchinson, and John Hancock a set of famed British politicians, rebels, and writers, including Sir Henry Vane, Jonathan Mayhew, Edmund Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, John Milton, James Harrington, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Neville (vols. 1:198, 4:48; , 1:6; ).
2. Emboldened by the profits made from its 2 Nov. 1789 seizure of church property, the National Assembly by April 1790 began acquiring aristocrats’ private estates. These lands were sold in exchange for assignats, which became the legal tender on 17 April. On 19 June the assembly abolished the titles and privileges of all hereditary nobility (, p. xviii, 145).
3. In early November, British newspapers announced the sale of the vast library of Venetian author Giovanni Battista Paitoni (1703–1788). Hollis sent to JA Laurent Le Couteulx, Observations sur la Vente des Domaines Nationaux et son Influence sur le Credit Public, Paris, 1790 (London Gazetteer, 4 Nov.; London World, 6 Nov.).
4. JA sent congressional journals with his letter of 1 June, above. For John Winthrop’s journal, see Jeremy Belknap’s 18 July 1789 letter, and note 2, above.
5. According to Joshua Johnson’s 25 Feb. 1791 report to Thomas Jefferson, six American sailors died of the bubonic plague between Jan. 1787 and Aug. 1788 (, 19:332).
6. John Howard, State of the Prisons in England and Wales: With Preliminary Observations, and An Account of Some Foreign Prisons, London, 1777, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d’Invenzione, Rome, 1750.
7. Hollis evidently completed this letter a few weeks later, for he reported on the nearly 300 members of the Revolution Society who met in the London Tavern on 4 Nov. 1790 to mark the anniversary of King William III’s 1688 arrival in England. Chairman Richard Price offered toasts to the French National Assembly and to the British Parliament, while British radical John Horne Tooke (1736–1812) criticized M.P. Edmund Burke’s views as “The Lamentations of the Priesthood, for the loss of their Cake” (London General Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1790; London World, 5 Nov.; ).
8. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, London, 1790.
9. Sir Robert Filmer (ca. 1588–1653), of Kent, England, was a political theorist who upheld the divine right of kings ().
10. The London Whitehall Evening Post, 2 Nov., reported the anticipated signing of the second Nootka Sound convention on 27 November.
11. Owing to Prussian mediation, the Russo-Swedish War ended on 14 Aug., for which see John Paul Jones’ letter of 20 Dec. 1789, and note 3, above.