1To John Adams from John Manners, 30 June 1819 (Adams Papers)
Although I have not the honour of a personal acquaintance with you, yet from the knowledge I have of your character, I trust you will pardon the liberty I have taken in consulting you on an important subject of our national jurisprudence. For in difficult subjects of this nature to whom shall we look, with so much propriety for instruction, as to the author of the Defence of the American...
2From John Adams to John Manners, 15 July 1819 (Adams Papers)
As every Candid inquirer after truth whether personally known, or unknown to me, is very dear to me; I cannot forbear to acknowledge my obligations to you for your kind favour of June 30th.— The field before you is very intensive; it would be arrogance and presumption in me, to pretend tantas Componere lites, when such names as Ellsworth Washington, Peters, and Cooper, are arrayed on one sid,...
3From John Adams to John Manners, 19 July 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have requested my Son, to inclose to you a little Volume, and two separate printed papers, one certainly of Mr Du Ponceau and the other I suspect to be of the same hand—this I request you to return to me when you have perused them, by the Mail—because we have no other copies, as the Common Law of England, has no more binding force upon us than the laws of Hindostan—but our Common law which...
4To John Adams from John Manners, 19 October 1819 (Adams Papers)
I received, with peculiar gratification, your letters, together with the volume and other documents accompanying them, and am not insensible of the obligations under which you have laid me, by the kind attention with which you have been pleased to honour me. I have read with pleasure and interest your instructing letters and am satisfied of the correctness of your opinion respecting the...