From John Adams to Thomas Brand-Hollis, 9 April 1788
To Thomas Brand Hollis
Fountain Inn, Cowes, Isle of Wight, April 9, 1788.
Dear Sir,
I have, to day, received your kind letter of the 7th and the valuable books that accompanied it. Mariana, Corio, and Ramsay, for which I most heartily thank you.1
I wish I could write romances. True histories of my wanderings and waitings for ships and winds at Ferrol and Corunna in Spain; at Nantes, Lorient and Brest in France; at Helvoet, the island of Goree, and Over Flackee in Holland; and at Harwich, Portsmouth and the isle of Wight in England, would make very entertaining romances in the hands of a good writer.
It is very true, as you say, that “royal despots endeavor to prevent the science of government from being studied.” But it is equally true that aristocratical despots, and democratical despots too, endeavor to suppress the study, and with equal success. The aristocracies in Holland, Poland, Venice, Bern, &c. are as inexorable to the freedom of inquiry in religion, but especially in politics; as the monarchies of France, Spain, Prussia, or Russia. It is in mixed governments only that political toleration exists, and in Needham’s “Excellencie of a free state,” or right constitution, the majority would be equally intolerant. Every unbalanced power is intolerant.2
I admire your magnificent idea of an “imperial republic:” but would not republican jealousy startle at this title, even more than that of a “regal republic?”
I mentioned to you that I found, in your favorite writer Mr. Hutcheson, Zeno named as a friend to the balance. I have since received further information from Diogenes Laertius, lib. 7. cap. 1. n. 66.—3 If you find any thing more of the sentiments of Zeno, upon this subject, let me pray you to note it.
Cumberland, in his Observer, mentions Heniochus, an Athenian comedian, as enumerating several “cities fallen into egregious folly and declension, from having delivered themselves over to be governed at the discretion of two certain female personages, whom I shall name to you:—the one Democracy; Aristocracy the other. From this fatal moment universal anarchy and misrule inevitably fall upon those cities, and they are lost!” I wish to know his authority for this quotation, and to know the words of the original. Perhaps it is found in Ælian or Athenæus.4 I wish to collect every word from antiquity, in favor of an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. It is an honor to the idea, that Zeno approved it; for he was, I think, one of the wisest and profoundest of the philosophers. The loss of his book “De Lege,” is a great misfortune to me; I have often met with a quotation from some of the Greek commentators, which speaks of two quarrelsome women, Aristocratia and Democratia, but never knew before that it was taken from Heniochus.
When will these lazy winds arise, and relieve you for a time from the trouble given you by your affectionate and obliged
John Adams.
Mrs. A. and I have been to visit Carisbroke castle, once the prison of the booby Charles.5 At what moment did Cromwell become ambitious? is a question I have heard asked in England. I answer, before he was born. He was ambitious every moment of his life. He was a canting dog. I hate him for his hypocrisy: but I think he had more sense than his friends. He saw the necessity of three branches, as I suspect. If he did, he was perfectly right in wishing to be a king. I don’t agree with those who impute to him the whole blame of an unconditional restoration. They were the most responsible for it, who obstinately insisted on the abolition of monarchy. If they would have concurred in a rational reform of the constitution, Cromwell would have joined them.6
MS not found. Printed from , p. 33–34; internal address: “Thomas Brand-Hollis, esq.”
1. In his letter of 7 April to JA, Hollis lauded the American minister’s “Philosophic patience” in waiting to depart for America, and remarked that when it came to political science, “I agree with you in most of yr principles & if I differ it is with diffidence” (Adams Papers). Hollis sent the following works: Juan de Mariana, De rege et regis institutione libri III, Toledo, Spain, 1611; Bernardino Corio, L’historia di Milano, Venice, Italy, 1554; and David Ramsay’s two-volume History of the Revolution of South-Carolina: From a British Province to an Independent State, Trenton, N.J., 1785. The first two works are in JA’s library at MB ().
2. For JA’s expansion of these arguments, see Volumes 2 and 3 of John Adams’ A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, [ca. 25 Aug. 1787 – ca. 23 Jan. 1788], Editorial Note, above.
3. Hollis studied with Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, in the late 1730s (, 7:348). In his widely read work, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, in Three Books; Containing the Elements of Ethicks and the Law of Nature, 3 vols., Glasgow, 1747, Hutcheson identified Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Cicero as classical advocates of a balanced, mixed form of government (same, 3:286). In Book 7, ch. 1, note 131 of his Lives, Opinions, and Remarkable Sayings of the Most Famous Ancient Philosophers, the Greek author Diogenes Laertius profiled the Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium, whose lost works, including The Republic and On Law, advised a political structure balancing democracy, kingship, and aristocracy ().
4. Aelian (A.D. 165–230) chronicled life in the Attic countryside, and Athenaeus (fl. A.D. 200) anthologized early Greek manners ().
5. JA and AA toured the ruins of Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. King Charles I was imprisoned in the castle for nearly a year prior to his execution in 1649 (, 8:254, 255).
6. This was JA’s last letter sent from Europe. AA’s diary of their voyage home to America listed a small company on the Lucretia, and she described the sermon style of fellow passenger John Murray, a founder of American Universalism. Delayed by stormy weather, AA reflected on her time abroad. She wrote that despite many hardships, “I do not regreet that I made this excursion since it has only more attached me to America” (, 3:214–217).
JA, who spent the summer of 1788 settling into rural retirement at Peacefield, resumed his outgoing correspondence on 18 June, with his reply to the Mass. General Court’s letter of the same date, below. Occupied with the duties of farming, JA did not anticipate making a return to public life. On 16 July, he wrote to AA2 that “your father does not stand very high in the esteem, admiration, or respect of his country, or any part of it. In the course of a long absence his character has been lost, and he has got quite out of circulation. The public judgment, the public heart, and the public voice, seem to have decreed to others every public office that he can accept of with consistency, or honour, or reputation; and no other alternative is left for him, but private life at home, or to go again abroad” (, 8:279).