John Adams to Thomas Brand Hollis, June 11, 1790

New York June 11 th 1790

Dear Sir

I have received your kind letter of March 29 th and the packet of pamphlets, and I pray you to accept of my best thanks for
both— I sent you lately by Gen l Mansel, some of our rough
matters. 1 The boxes of books you sent
by Captain Bernard arrived safely, I know.— 2

You seem to suppose our coast in danger from African pyrates; in
this I presume you are deceived by the Artifices of the London insurance offices, for we are in no more danger than the Empire of China is.—

The great revolution in France is wonderful but not supernatural.
The hand of Providence is in it, I doubt not; working however by natural and ordinary
means, such as produced the revolution in the fifteenth century.— That all men have one
common nature, is a principle which will now universally prevail: and equal rights and
equal duties, will in a just sense I hope be inferred from it: but equal ranks and equal
property never can be infered from it, any more than equal understanding agility vigour
or beauty. Equal laws are all that ever can be derived from human equality. I am
delighted with Doctor Price’s sermon on patriotism; but there is a sentiment or two
which I should explain a little. He guards his hearers and readers, very Judiciously
against the extreme of adulation and contempt. The former is the extreme he says to
which mankind in general have been most prone. “The generality of Rulers have treated
men, as your English Jockies treat their horses—convinced them first that they were
their masters and next that they were their friends, at least they have pretended to do
so.” Mankind have I agreed behaved too much like horses: been rude wild and mad untill
they were mastered, and then been too tame gentle and dull.— I think our friend should
have stated it thus. The great and perpetual distinction in civilized societies, has
been between the rich who are few, and the poor who are many. When the many are masters,
they are too unruly and then the few are too tame and afraid to speak out the truth.
When the few are masters they are too severe, and then the many are too servile. This is
the strict truth. The few have had most art and union, and therefore have generally
prevailed in the end. The inference of wisdom from these premisses, is, that neither the
poor, or the rich, should ever be suffered to be masters. They should have equal power
to defend themselves: and that their power may be always equal, there should be an
independent mediator between them, always ready, always able and always interested to
assist the weakest. Equal laws can never be made or maintained without this.— You see I
still hold fast my scales, and weigh every thing in them. The French must finally become
my disciples, or rather the disciples of Zeno: or they will have no equal laws, no
personal liberty, no property, no lives.—

I am very much employed in business, and this must be my apology
for neglecting so much to write to you: but I will be as good a correspondent as I can—
I hope you will not forget your old friend.—

In this Country the pendulum has vibrated too far to the popular
side, driven by men without experience or Judgment, and horrid ravages have been made
upon property, by arbitrary multitudes or majorities of multitudes. France has severe
tryals to endure from the same cause— Both have found or will find, that to place
property at the mercy of a majority who have no property is “Committere agnum lupo” My
fundamental maxim is never trust the lamb to the custody of the wolf. If you are not
perfectly of my mind at present, I hereby promise and assure you that you will live to
see that I am precisely right— Thus arrogantly concludes your friend

John Adams