CHAPTER II.

STUDY AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW UNTIL MARCH, 1770.

FROM the time of the admission of Mr. Adams to the bar, he resided at his father's house, in Braintree; and, after the decease of his father, which happened on the 25th of May, 1761, he remained with his mother, until his marriage, in 1764. The earlier part of this time was a period of intense anxiety to him with regard to his prospects in life. An obscure village of New England, in a family alike unknown to fortune and to fame, was a scene little adapted to promote his advancement in either. In the following extracts from his journal, the reader will find an exposition of the thoughts which occupied his leisure; of the studies that he pursued; of his constant observation upon men and manners within the contracted circle of acquaintance with whom he habitually associated, and of that severe and rigorous self-examination and censure to which he had accustomed himself, and in which he reduced to effective practice the precept of Pythagoras.

“Æt. xxiii. 1759. The other night, the choice of Hercules came into my mind, and left impressions there which I hope will never be effaced, nor long unheeded. I thought of writing a fable on the same plan, but accommodated, by omitting some circumstances and inserting others, to my own case. Let virtue address me.

"Which, dear youth, will you prefer, a life of effeminacy, indolence, and obscurity, or a life of industry, temperance, and honor? Take my advice; rise and mount your horse by the morning's dawn, and shake away, amidst the great and beautiful scenes of nature that appear at that time of the day, all the crudities that are left in your stomach, and all the obstructions that are left in your brains. Then return to your studies, and bend your whole soul to the institutes of the law and the

reports of cases that have been adjusted by the rules in the institutes. Let no trifling diversion, or amusement, or company, decoy you from your books; i. e. no girl, no gun, no cards, no flutes, no violins, no dress, no tobacco, no laziness.'

"Labor to get distinct ideas of law, right, wrong, justice, equity; search for them in your own mind, in Roman, Grecian, French, English treatises of natural, civil, common, statute law. Aim at an exact knowledge of the nature, end, and means of government. Compare the different forms of it with each other, and each of them with their effects on public and private happiness. Study Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral writers; study Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, Vinnius, &c., and all other good civil writers."

"Et. xxv. 1760. I have read a multitude of law books; mastered but few. Wood, Coke, two volumes Lillie's Abridgment, two volumes Salkeld's Reports, Swinburne, Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, Fortescue, Fitzgibbon, ten volumes in folio, I read at Worcester quite through, besides octavos and lesser volumes, and many others, of all sizes, that I consulted occasionally without reading in course, as dictionaries, reporters, entries, and abridgments.

"I cannot give so good an account of the improvement of my last two years spent in Braintree. However, I have read no small number of volumes upon the law the last two years. Justinian's Institutes I have read through in Latin, with Vinnius's perpetual notes; Van Muyden's Tractatio Institutionum Justiniani, I read through and translated mostly into English, from the same language. Wood's Institute of the Civil Law I read through. These on the civil law. On the law of England, I read Cowell's Institute of the Laws of England, in imitation of Justinian, Doctor and Student, Finch's Discourse of Law, Hale's History, and some reporters, cases in chancery, Andrews, &c., besides occasional searches for business. Also a General Treatise of Naval Trade and Commerce, as founded on the laws and statutes. All this series of reading has left but faint impressions, and a very imperfect system of law in my head.

1 The present plan of publication renders it unnecessary to insert here the large extracts from the "Diary," originally introduced by the writer. Only such passages are retained as immediately illustrate his views of character. The remainder appear in the "Diary," as printed in vol. ii. p. 59, et seq.

"I must form a serious resolution of beginning and pressing quite through the plans of my lords Hale and Reeve. Wood's Institutes of Common Law I never read but once, and my Lord Coke's Commentary on Littleton I never read but once. These

two authors I must get and read over and over again. And I will get them, too, and break through, as Mr. Gridley expressed it, all obstructions. Besides, I am but a novice in natural law and civil law. There are multitudes of excellent authors on natural law that I have never read; indeed, I never read any part of the best authors, Puffendorf and Grotius. In the civil law there are Hoppius and Vinnius, Commentators on Justinian, Domat, &c., besides institutes of canon and feudal law that I have to read.1 し

"... Pretensions to wisdom and virtue, superior to all the world, will not be supported by words only. If I tell a man I am wiser and better than he or any other man, he will either despise, or hate, or pity me, perhaps all three. I have not conversed enough with the world to behave rightly. I talk to Paine about Greek; that makes him laugh. I talk to Sam. Quincy about resolution, and being a great man, and study, and improving time; which makes him laugh. I talk to Ned about the folly of affecting to be a heretic; which makes him mad. I talk to Hannah and Esther about the folly of love; about despising it; about being above it; pretend to be insensible of tender passions; which makes them laugh. I talk to Mr. Wibird about the decline of learning; tell him I know no young fellow who promises to make a figure; cast sneers on Dr. Marsh for not knowing the value of old Greek and Roman authors; ask when will a genius rise that will shave his beard, or let it grow rather, and sink himself in a cell in order to make a figure. I talk to Parson Smith about despising gay dress, grand buildings and estates, fame, &c., and being contented with what will satisfy the real wants of nature.

"All this is affectation and ostentation. It is affectation of learning, and virtue, and wisdom, which I have not; and it is a weak fondness to show all that I have, and to be thought to have more than I have.

"Besides this, I have insensibly fallen into a habit of affecting wit and humor, of shrugging my shoulders, and moving, dis

1 Vol. ii. p. 104.

torting the muscles of my face. My motions are stiff and uneasy, ungraceful, and my attention is unsteady and irregular.

"These are reflections on myself that I make. They are faults, defects, fopperies, and follies and disadvantages. mend these faults, and supply these defects?"

Can I

During his residence at Worcester, in 1757, Mr. Adams became personally acquainted with Jonathan Sewall, a young man descended from one of the most distinguished families of the province, but who, like himself, had inherited nothing from his ancestors but a college education and poverty. He was about seven years older than Mr. Adams, but was admitted only a short time before him to the bar. In 1757 and 1758, Sewall, who then resided at Salem, attended the sessions of the superior court at Worcester, and spent his evenings in Colonel Putnam's office with Mr. Adams, who was then a student there. Congenial tastes and sentiments soon bred a warm and intimate friendship between them, rendered interesting not only by its pleasing and long-continued intercourse of mutual good offices and kindness, but painfully so by its subsequent dissolution occasioned by the different sides which they took in the Revolution of Independence.

In the preface to the republication of the controversial essays, under the respective signatures of Novanglus and Massachusettensis, Mr. Adams, in 1819, so shortly before his own death, gave an account of Jonathan Sewall, and of the friendship which had subsisted between them. Of their correspondence, a few small fragments only are known to remain. Mr. Adams, at that time, kept few and imperfect copies of his letters, and of those of Mr. Sewall to him none have been found among his papers. The following extracts from the copies of letters. written in 1759, 1760, and 1761, are submitted to the reader as characteristic of their author at that period of his life, and while yet under the age of twenty-five.

[NOTE, BY THE EDITOR. The first of the three letters intended for insertion here has been printed in the "Diary," in the immediate connection in which the copy of it occurs in the manuscript.2 In the place it was to occupy, one of three

early letters of Mr. Sewall, which a closer examination of Mr. Adams's papers has revealed, is introduced. It is particularly appropriate, as being the one which called out the succeeding letter of Mr. Adams, that made the second of the original series. It is of value on other accounts. It discloses a project entertained at this time by Mr. Adams, though somewhat feebly, it would seem, of removing to Providence, no trace of which is found elsewhere. It likewise explains the purpose of the correspondence, which was mutual improvement, by stimulating the investigation of questions of law. But beyond and above all these, it sets in full light the genuine nature of the bond of sympathy between these young men, brought up in a small town of an obscure colonial settlement, with few objects immediately before them to excite their ambition or to nurse the purest aspirations. In this respect it may reasonably be doubted whether the lapse of time and the great change of circumstances in America, though opening an incomparably greater field of exertion to human abilities, have done any thing to improve upon the motives or principles here shown as setting them in motion.]

JONATHAN SEWALL TO JOHN ADAMS.

Charlestown, 13 February, 1760. MY FRIEND,- In my last, if I rightly remember, I joined with you in your panegyric on the superior rewards which ancient Rome proposed to application and study, and in your satire on those despicable præmia, which we, whose lot it is to live in the infant state of a new world, can rationally expect. But perhaps we have both been too hasty in our conclusions; possibly, if we pierce through the glare of false glory, too apt to dazzle and deceive the intellectual eye; if, in order to the forming a just estimate, we secrete the genuine from the imaginary rewards, we may find the difference much less than at first sight we are apt to conceive. For, let us, if you please, my friend, consider what was the palm for which the Roman orator ran. It was the plaudit of a people at that time sunk into a most shameful effeminacy of manners, governed by a spirit of faction and licentiousness, to which this father of his country at length fell himself a sacrifice. It was the highest

VOL. I.

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