Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 2

1. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne (1727–1781), French statesman and philosophe (Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Générale ). It was a letter of Turgot's to Richard Price, concerning the new American state constitutions, written in 1778 and published in Price's Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, London, 1784, that prompted JA to write a gigantic rebuttal entitled JA, Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, London, 1787–1788; 3 vols. The personal and intellectual relations of JA and Turgot have been described, and JA's marginalia on Turgot's letter of 1778 printed, in Haraszti, JA and the Prophets of Progress , ch. 8, “Turgot's Attack on the American Constitutions.” On the more immediate origins of JA's Defence see note on entry of 29 [i.e. 28] July 1786, below.