John Quincy Adams | Page 7

has suffered by it: so that
his children will have to provide for themselves, which I shall never be
able to do if I loiter away my precious time in Europe and shun going

home until I am forced to it. With an ordinary share of common sense,
which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and
free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die before the time
when I shall be left at my own discretion. I have before me a striking
example of the distressing and humiliating situation a person is reduced
to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to
fall into the same error."
It is needless to comment upon such spirit and sense, or upon (p. 017)
such just appreciation of what was feasible, wise, and right for him, as
a New Englander whose surroundings and prospects were widely
different from those of the society about him. He must have been
strongly imbued by nature with the instincts of his birthplace to have
formed, after a seven years' absence at his impressible age, so correct a
judgment of the necessities and possibilities of his own career in
relationship to the people and ideas of his own country.
Home accordingly he came, and by assiduity prepared himself in a very
short time to enter the junior class at Harvard College, whence he was
graduated in high standing in 1787. From there he went to
Newburyport, then a thriving and active seaport enriched by the noble
trade of privateering in addition to more regular maritime business, and
entered as a law student the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards
the Chief Justice of Massachusetts. On July 15, 1790, being
twenty-three years old, he was admitted to practice. Immediately
afterward he established himself in Boston, where for a time he felt
strangely solitary. Clients of course did not besiege his doors in the first
year, and he appears to have waited rather stubbornly than cheerfully
for more active days. These came in good time, and during the (p. 018)
second, third, and fourth years, his business grew apace to encouraging
dimensions.
He was, however, doing other work than that of the law, and much
more important in its bearing upon his future career. He could not keep
his thoughts, nor indeed his hands, from public affairs. When, in 1791,
Thomas Paine produced the "Rights of Man," Thomas Jefferson acting
as midwife to usher the bantling before the people of the United States,

Adams's indignation was fired, and he published anonymously a series
of refuting papers over the signature of Publicola. These attracted much
attention, not only at home but also abroad, and were by many
attributed to John Adams. Two years later, during the excitement
aroused by the reception and subsequent outrageous behavior here of
the French minister, Genet, Mr. Adams again published in the Boston
"Centinel" some papers over the signature of Marcellus, discussing
with much ability the then new and perplexing question of the
neutrality which should be observed by this country in European wars.
These were followed by more, over the signature of Columbus, and
afterward by still more in the name of Barnevelt, all strongly
reprobating the course of the crazy-headed foreigner. The writer was
not permitted to remain long unknown. It is not certain, but it (p. 019)
is highly probable, that to these articles was due the nomination which
Mr. Adams received shortly afterward from President Washington, as
Minister Resident at the Hague. This nomination was sent in to the
Senate, May 29, 1794, and was unanimously confirmed on the
following day. It may be imagined that the change from the moderate
practice of his Boston law office to a European court, of which he so
well knew the charms, was not distasteful to him. There are passages in
his Diary which indicate that he had been chafing with irrepressible
impatience "in that state of useless and disgraceful insignificancy," to
which, as it seemed to him, he was relegated, so that at the age of
twenty-five, when "many of the characters who were born for the
benefit of their fellow creatures, have rendered themselves conspicuous
among their contemporaries, ... I still find myself as obscure, as
unknown to the world, as the most indolent or the most stupid of
human beings." Entertaining such a restless ambition, he of course
accepted the proffered office, though not without some expression of
unexplained doubt. October 31, 1794, found him at the Hague, after a
voyage of considerable peril in a leaky ship, commanded by a
blundering captain. He was a young diplomat, indeed; it was on his
twenty-seventh (p. 020) birthday that he received his commission.
The minister made his advent upon a tumultuous scene.