Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. Josiah Quincy
or two years, to the rules of a college, pass three more in the tedious study of the law, before I can hope to bring myself into professional notice. The prospect is discouraging. If I accompany my father to London, my satisfaction would possibly be greater than by returning to the United States; but I shall loiter away my precious time, and not go home until I am forced to it. My father has been all his lifetime occupied by the interests of the public. His own fortune has suffered. His children must provide for themselves. I am determined to get my own living, and to be dependent upon no one. With a tolerable share of common sense, I hope, in America, to be independent and free. Rather than live otherwise, I would wish to die before my time."
In this spirit the tempting prospects in Europe were abandoned, and he returned to the United States, to submit to the rules, and to join, with a submissive temper, the comparatively uninteresting associations, of college life. After reviewing his studies under an instructor, he entered, in March, 1786, the junior class of Harvard University. Diligence and punctual fulfilment of every prescribed duty, the advantages he had previously enjoyed, and his exemplary compliance with the rules of the seminary, secured to him a high standing in his class, which none were disposed to controvert. Here his active and thoughtful mind was prepared for those scenes in future life in which he could not but feel he was destined to take part. Entering into all the literary and social circles of the college, he became popular among his classmates. By the government his conduct and attainments were duly appreciated, which they manifested by bestowing upon him the second honor of his class at commencement; a high distinction, considering the short period he had been a member of the university. The oration he delivered when he graduated, in 1787, on the Importance of Public Faith to the Well-Being of a Community, was printed and published; a rare proof of general interest in a college exercise, which the adaptation of the subject to the times, and the talent it evinced, justified.
After leaving the university, Mr. Adams passed three years in Newburyport as a student at law under the guidance of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards chief justice of Massachusetts. He was admitted to the bar in 1790, and immediately opened an office in Boston. The ranks of his profession were crowded, the emoluments were small, and his competitors able. His letters feelingly express his anxiety to relieve his parents from contributing to his support. In November, 1843, in an address to the bar of Cincinnati, Mr. Adams thus described the progress and termination of his practice as a lawyer—
"I have been a member of your profession upwards of half a century. In the early period of my life, having a father abroad, it was my fortune to travel in foreign countries; still, under the impression which I first received from my mother, that in this country every man should have some trade, that trade which, by the advice of my parents and my own inclination, I chose, was the profession of the Law. After having completed an education in which, perhaps, more than any other citizen of that time I had advantages, and which of course brought with it the incumbent duty of manifesting by my life that those extraordinary advantages of education, secured to me by my father, had not been worthlessly bestowed—on coming into life after such great advantages, and having the duty of selecting a profession, I chose that of the Bar. I closed my education as a lawyer with one of the most eminent jurists of the age—Theophilus Parsons, of Newburyport, at that time a practising lawyer, but subsequently chief justice of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Under his instruction and advice I closed my education, and commenced what I can hardly call the practice of the law in the city of Boston.
"At that time, though I cannot say I was friendless, yet my circumstances were not independent. My father was then in a situation of great responsibility and notoriety in the government of the United States. But he had been long absent from his own country, and still continued absent from that part of it to which he belonged, and of which I was a native. I went, therefore, as a volunteer, an adventurer, to Boston, as possibly many of you whom I now see before me may consider yourselves as having come to Cincinnati. I was without support of any kind. I may say I was a stranger in that city, although almost a native of that spot. I say I can hardly call it practice, because for the space of one year from that time it would be difficult for me to name any practice which I had to do. For two years, indeed, I can recall nothing in which I was engaged that may be termed practice, though during the second year there were some symptoms that by persevering patience practice might come in time. The third year I continued this patience and perseverance, and, having little to do, occupied my time as well as I could in the study of those laws and institutions which I have since been called to administer. At the end of the third year I had obtained something which might be called practice.
"The fourth year I found it swelling to such an extent that I felt no longer any concern as to my future destiny as a member of that profession. But in the midst of the fourth year, by the will of the first President of the United States, with which the Senate was pleased to concur, I was selected for a station, not, perhaps, of more usefulness, but of greater consequence in the estimation of mankind, and sent from home on a mission to foreign parts.
"From that time, the fourth year after my admission to the bar of my native state, and the first year of my admission to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, I was deprived of the exercise of any further industry or labor at the bar by this distinction; a distinction for which a previous education at the bar, if not an indispensable qualification, was at least a most useful appendage."[3]
While waiting for professional employment, he was instinctively drawn into political discussions. Thomas Paine had just then published his "Rights of Man," for which Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, took upon himself to be sponsor, by publishing a letter expressing his extreme pleasure "that it is to be reprinted here, and that something is at length to be publicly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of Common Sense."
Notwithstanding the weight of Jefferson's character, and the strength of his recommendation, in June, 1791, young Adams entered the lists against Paine and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on the National Assembly of France, and a commentary on the rights of man, inferring questionable deductions from unquestionable principles. In a series of essays, signed Publicola, published in the Columbian Centinel, he states and controverts successively the fundamental doctrines of Paine's work; denies that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do it has a right to do," and maintains, in opposition, that "nations, no less than individuals, are subject to the eternal and immutable laws of justice and morality;" declaring that Paine's doctrine annihilated the security of every man for his inalienable rights, and would lead in practice to a hideous despotism, concealed under the parti-colored garments of democracy. The truth of the views in these essays was soon made manifest by the destruction of the French constitution, so lauded by Paine and Jefferson, the succeeding anarchy, the murder of the French monarch, and the establishment of a military despotism.
In April, 1793, Great Britain declared war against France, then in the most violent frenzy of her revolution. In this war, the feelings of the people of the United States were far from being neutral. The seeds of friendship for the one, and of enmity towards the other belligerent, which the Revolutionary War had plentifully scattered through the whole country, began everywhere to vegetate. Private cupidity openly advocated privateering upon the commerce of Great Britain, in aid of which commissions were issued under the authority of France. To counteract the apparent tendency of these popular passions, Mr. Adams published, also in the Centinel, a series of essays, signed Marcellus, exposing the lawlessness, injustice, and criminality, of such interference in favor of one of the belligerents. "For if," he wrote, "as the poet, with more than poetical truth, has said, 'war is murder,' the plunder of private property, the pillage of all the regular rewards of honest industry and laudable enterprise, upon the mere pretence of a national contest, in the eye of justice can appear in no other light than highway robbery. If, however, some apology for the practice is to be derived from the incontrollable law of necessity, or from the imperious law of war, certainly there can be no possible excuse for those who incur the guilt without being able to plead the palliation; for those who violate the rights of nations in order to obtain a license for rapine manifestly show that patriotism is but the cloak for such enterprises; that the true objects are plunder and pillage; and that to those engaged in them it was only the lash of the executioner which kept them in the observance of their civil and political duties."