From John Adams to John Rutherford, 3 August 1796
To John Rutherfurd
Sober Hill, in Quincy August 3. 1796
Dear Sir
I received, with great Pleasure, your kind Letter of the 28th. of June, inclosing Mr Bordleys Notes, on the Outline of the 15th. Chapter of the proposed general Report from The Board of Agriculture.1 Mr Bordleys Observations shew him to be a Farmer of uncommon intelligence as well as Experience. If I should ever have the Courage to send sir John Sinclair any Remarks on the Report I shall certainly inclose these. Thirty years ago I should have been all alive to such a Correspondence: but thirty Years taken from Agriculture and applied to Law and Politicks diminish a Mans Ardour and destroy his activity.
You and I, and others like Us, if such there are who retire in Summer to Tranquillity and Sobriety (for that is the name of my Hill) without hearing a Dispute upon Politicks are the happiest Mortals alive, as long as We can keep out of our minds the thought of the necessity of returning to Cares and Perplexities in the Winter.
I own I have another unpleasant Reflection which occurs to me very often, vizt that We are no longer to meet an Elsworth a King a Strong or a Cabot to share our toils and diminish our Anxieties. We shall have good Men however in their Places.
The Political Atmosphere has been more serene this summer than ever I knew it. After a storm generally comes a Calm—I have not heard a Gale nor a Breeze. Long may the quiet last: that you and I may have Leizure to pursue our favourite Amusements studies and Experiments.
I shall always be happy to hear of your Welfare and to share in your discoveries in Agriculture or in Politicks or any other science Literature or scæne of Life, being with great and / Sincere Esteem your Friend and / humble servant
John Adams
RC (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York); internal address: “Mr Rutherford.”
1. Originally from New York City, John Rutherfurd (1760–1840), Princeton 1779, represented New Jersey in the Senate from 1791 to 1798. He wrote to JA on 28 June 1796 (Adams Papers) to share agricultural news from Robert Somerville’s Outlines of the Fifteenth Chapter of the Proposed General Report from the Board of Agriculture. On the Subject of Manures, London, 1795. Maryland judge John Beale Bordley (1727–1804), of Annapolis, founded the Agricultural Society of Philadelphia in 1785 (; , 3:238; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Loan Exhibition of Historical Portraits Dec. 1, 1887 – Jan. 15, 1888, 2d edn., Phila., 1887, p. 17).