Browsing: Papers of John Adams, Volume 9

2. This and the preceding paragraph are an accurate digest of the first four and a half pages of the Memorial. As Pownall indicates in a note on page 1 of the Memorial, much of what he says in this section, some of it in quotation marks, was taken from his Administration of the Colonies (London, 1764, p. 1–10), although in the Memorial it is given a different twist. This is true of his statements regarding the evolution of a new system based on “the Spirit of Commerce,” as well as those regarding a new “Center of Gravity.” In both the Administration (p. 2) and the Memorial (p. 1), Pownall saw changed circumstances as creating a “Nascent Crisis,” but the two works presented fundamentally different solutions to the crisis. See Editorial Note (above).