Adams Papers
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From John Adams to William Cranch, 14 March 1790

To William Cranch

New York March 14. 1790

Dear Sir

Your favours of Decr 15. Jan. 24. and Feb. 17 are before me, and I thank for your Attention, and hope for a continuance of it, though I am not a punctual Correspondent to You.1

To the original of the Bar Meetings I was a Witness, as I was also to their excellent Effects in the Progress of them. They introduced a Candor and Liberal[ity] in the Practice at the Bar that were never before known in the Massachusetts. Mr Gardners Master Mr Pratt was so sensible of their Utility that when We took leave of him at Dedham his last Words to Us were “Bretheren, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”2

My Advice to you, and all the young Gentlemen coming Up, as well as to those, now on the stage is never to Suffer Such Meetings to go into disuse, let who will clamour about them: for as I know the Body of the Law will never consent to any illegal or dishonourable Combinations, so on the other hand their deliberations together, on what is for the honour and dignity of the Bar and for the Public Good as far as their Practice is connected with it cannot but produce benign Effects.

What? is it unlawful for the Gentlemen of the Profession to Spend an Evening together once a Week? to converse upon Law, and upon their Practice: to hear complaints of unkind unfair and ungentle-manlike Practice: to compose differences: to agree that they will not introduce ignorant, illitterate, or illbred or unprincipled Students or Candidates? that they will not practice any kind of Chicanery, or take unmanly Advantages of one another, to the Injury of Clients for accidental or inadvertent Slips in pleading or otherwise? on what unhappy times are We fallen, if that Profession without which the Laws can never be maintained nor Liberty exist, is to be treated in this tyrannical manner?

But I must Stop.— ask my son if he has received two Letters from me.3 I am / with much Esteem and affection yours

John Adams

RC (MHi:Cranch Family Papers); addressed by CA: “Mr: William Cranch. / at Judge Dawes’s / Boston.”; internal address: “Mr William Cranch.”; endorsed: “V. President March 14 1790”; notation by JA: “Free / John Adams.” LbC (Adams Papers); APM Reel 115. Text lost where the seal was removed has been supplied from the LbC.

1. Cranch’s letters of 15 Dec. 1789 and 17 Feb. 1790 have not been found, but that of 24 Jan. is above.

2. At the age of fourteen, John Gardiner entered the office of Benjamin Prat (1711–1763), Harvard 1737, a leading Boston lawyer whom JA admired for his “strong, elastic Spring, or what we call Smartness, and Strength in his Mind.” The allusion is to Hebrews, 10:25 (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates description begins John Langdon Sibley, Clifford K. Shipton, Conrad Edick Wright, Edward W. Hanson, and others, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873–. description ends , 10:226, 229, 238; 13:593, 602; JA, D&A description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 1:83).

3. For JA’s 9 and 19 Feb. letters to JQA about his son’s career prospects, see AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 9:14, 16.

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    Adams Papers
    Title
    From John Adams to William Cranch, 14 March 1790
    Author
    Adams, John
    Recipient
    Cranch, William
    Date
    14 March 1790

    Reference

    Cite as
    “From John Adams to William Cranch, 14 March 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-20-02-0166. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 20, June 1789–February 1791, ed. Sara Georgini, Sara Martin, R. M. Barlow, Gwen Fries, Amanda M. Norton, Neal E. Millikan, and Hobson Woodward. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020, pp. 275–276.]

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