Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. | Page 4

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]
[3] See Niles' Weekly Register, New