1. Lovell enclosed a copy of his 17 Dec. letter to Benjamin Lincoln, expressing reluctance to comply with the collector’s 16 Dec. request for a record of Boston imports from 1 to 10 August. Once the Tariff Act took effect on 1 Aug., importers were required to pay certain customs, but they were allowed a grace period until local collecting houses were established; in Boston, they were formally created on 10 August. Lovell argued that an interim collection was unfair to importers who had sold their goods and that it targeted ports with better records. Responding to critics, Alexander Hamilton sent a circular letter on 31 Oct. to the nation’s port collectors stipulating that while customs must be collected to fund the debt, moderation was key. The backlash continued, and on 30 Dec. Hamilton again issued a circular letter. There, the treasury secretary admitted that the new policy was problematic, and he recommended that Congress revise the plan in its second session (Hamilton, Papers description begins The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, Jacob E. Cooke, and others, New York, 1961–1987; 27 vols. description ends , 5:478–479; 6:39, 290).

2. Despite his lack of an appointment, Lovell continued to monitor the politics of the port. When Philippe André Joseph de Létombe, the French consul at Boston, was suspected of forcing a French intendant to sign for supplies that may not have been delivered, Lovell intervened in the press. He trained his criticism on Létombe’s accuser, Louis Baury de Bellerive. Originally from St. Domingue, Bellerive (1754–1807) was a French officer who fought in the Continental Army and aided in the suppression of Shays’ Rebellion. Claiming that the charge was “false in the groundwork,” Lovell issued a four-letter defense of Létombe, which began appearing in Edmund Freeman’s Herald of Freedom the day before Lovell wrote this letter to JA. Bellerive fired back via the same newspaper, replying that Lovell had “too much of my contempt to merit further notice” (vol. 14:159; Boston Herald of Freedom, 18, 22, 25 Dec. 1789, 5 Jan. 1790; Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives Made during the First Session of the Thirty-second Congress, Washington, D.C., 1852, 147:1; 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 , 9:173). On the mounting significance of fraud in New England ports, see Stephen Higginson’s letter of 21 Dec. 1789, and note 1, below.

3. The legal right of a husband to acquire his wife’s estate by virtue of marriage (Black, Law Dictionary description begins Henry Campbell Black, Black’s Law Dictionary: Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern, St. Paul, Minn., 1979, 5th edn. description ends ).