From John Adams to Thomas Brand Hollis, 4 January 1788
To Thomas Brand Hollis
Grosvenor Square, January 4, 1788.
Dear Sir,
I am in your debt for several very friendly letters, all of which shall be answered hereafter. I have had a great cold, which brought with it some fever, and has disabled me from every thing for three weeks.
Your kind invitation for Wednesday the 9th, is accepted with pleasure, by Mr. Smith as well as myself.
And now, sir, for other matters. Our new constitution does not expressly say that juries shall not extend to civil causes.— Nor, I presume, is it intended, to take away the trial by jury in any case, in which you, sir, yourself would wish to preserve it.— Maritime causes, must be decided by the law of nations, and in conformity to the practice of the world. In these cases juries would not be willing to sit as judges, nor would the parties be contented with their judgment. Juries understand not the nature, nor the law of foreign transactions. We began, about twelve years ago, with juries in our courts of admiralty: but I assure you, the parties, witnesses, juries, judges, and all the world became so weary of the innovation upon trial, that it was laid aside by a new law with universal satisfaction. The examinations on interrogatories of witnesses and parties, in short the whole course of proceedings, as well as all the rules of evidence, must be changed, before juries could be introduced with propriety.
Taxes on advertisements, and on every thing that contributes to facilitate the communication of knowledge, I should wish to avoid as much as possible.
Whether the human mind has limits or not, we ought not to fix a limit to its improvement, until we find it and are sure of it:—incumbered with gross bodies and weak senses, there must be some bounds to its refinements in this world: you and I entertain the joyous hope, of other states of improvement without end: and for my part, I wish that you and I may know each other, and pursue the same objects together in all of them. Fair science, equity, liberty, and society will be adorable for ever.
I am, with great esteem, / my dear sir, / your friend and servant,
John Adams.1
MS not found. Printed from , p. 31–32; internal address: “To Thomas Brand-Hollis Esq. / the Hyde near Ingatestone, Essex.”
1. Between August and Sept. 1809, several of JA’s exchanges with Hollis were reprinted in the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, evidently all sourced from John Disney’s Memoirs of Thomas Brand-Hollis, London, 1808. Disney (1746–1816), a Unitarian minister and antiquarian from Lincolnshire Co., England, often preached at Theophilus Lindsey’s Essex Street Chapel, where the Adamses attended services while living in London. When Hollis died in 1804, he bequeathed his main estates to Disney, who moved to The Hyde a year later and continued a prolific literary career ().
On 24 Aug. 1807, Disney wrote to JA requesting permission to use Hollis’ correspondence with him and with AA for “a Memoir of my munificent friend, in which I should greatly wish to introduce these letters, in testimony of the friendship which subsisted between the parties, and from my conviction of their good principles, and their doing honor to the writers” (Adams Papers). JA, in his reply of 9 Nov., urged Disney to print their letters, and lamented that the French Revolution’s onset had forced him to suspend their correspondence (LbC, APM Reel 118). In JA’s library at MB, there is only a copy of the 1793 London edition of Disney’s Sermons, but JA evidently read and was pleased by the completed Memoirs. As he wrote to Thomas Jefferson on 25 June 1813: “Neither of Us recollected a Word of them for We had no Copies. We both left to his discretion to publish what he pleased and he has done it. I expected much more nonsense and extravagance in mine than appears, for I wrote to Hollis without reserve” (, 6:226–229).