Diary of John Adams, volume 1
1765-12-30
We are now concluding the Year 1765, tomorrow is the last day, of a Year in which America has shewn such Magnanimity and Spirit, as never before appeared, in any Country for such a Tract of Country. And Wednesday will open upon Us a new Year 1766, which I hope will procure Us, innumerable Testimonies from Europe in our favour and Applause, and which we all hope will produce the greatest and most extensive Joy ever felt in America, on the Repeal both of the stamp Act and sugar Act, at least of the former.
Q
Read Shakespears Life of K. Henry 8th. Spent the Evening with the Company of Singers at Moses Adams’s.
They are extreamly proud of their Country, and they have reason to be so. Millions, Tens and Hundreds of Millions of Freeborn Sub-282jects, are familiar to their Imaginations, and they have a pious Horror, of consenting to any Thing, which may intail slavery on their Posterity. They think that the Liberties of Mankind and the Glory of human Nature is in their Keeping. They know that Liberty has been skulking about in Corners from the Creation, and has been hunted and persecuted, in all Countries, by cruel Power. But they flatter them selves that America was designed by Providence for the Theatre, on which Man was to make his true figure, on which science, Virtue, Liberty, Happiness and Glory were to exist in Peace.
Now have not they the same Reason to contend against Parliamentary Taxations, which you and your Hampden had against regal and ministerial Taxations.—What were your Reasons?
First entry in “Paper book No. 12” (our D/JA/12), a gathering of leaves stitched into a cover cut from a copy of the Boston Gazette, 11 Feb. 1765.
The references in this paragraph are to Thomas Hutchinson in his role as chief justice of the Superior Court, and especially to what JA and others considered Hutchinson’s judicial favoritism in the appeals of the customs officer Charles Paxton in the related cases of Gray v. Paxton and Province v. Paxton, 1761–1762. See entry of 3 April 1761 and note 7 there; and Appendix II, by Samuel M. Quincy, in Quincy, Reports
, p. 541–552.
This remarkable fragment was not used in any of JA’s published “Clarendon” letters.
1765-12-31
Went to Mr. Jo. Bass’s and there read Yesterdays Paper. Walked in the Afternoon into the Common and quite thro my Hemlock Swamp.
The national Attention is fixed upon the Colonies. The Religion, Administration of Justice, Geography, Numbers, &c. of the Colonies are a fashionable Study. But what wretched Blunders do they make in attempting to regulate them. They know not the Character of Americans.
MS: “A”—an obvious inadvertence.