John Adams to William Cushing, September 14, 1789

New York sept r 14, 89

Dear Sir

I have not yet acknowledged my obligation to you for your favor of
Aug t 22. if my hasty scrawls written in gloomy times and
desperate circumstances, have furnished you an amusement for a vacant hour I am glad of
it.

My present office is as agreable to me as any public office ever
can be: and my situation as pleasing as any on this earth, excepting Braintree. My
compensation will be straightened to such a degree, that to live among foreign
ministers, travelling Americans, Govenors, Chancellors, Judges, Senators and Repre in a
style which my unmerciful Countrymen exact of all their public men, will require the
consumption of the whole of it with the whole income of my private fortune added to it:
and after all I shall be but poorly accommodated. But I have often been obliged to apply
to myself what one of my predecessors in the Corps diplomatique in Holland, wrote to his
master. The President Jeannin, Ambassador from Henry 4 th of
France, wrote him from Holland “Sire I have been so long used to labour a great deal,
and profit little, that the habit is familiar, and I am
contented.” 1 Jeannin however profited
more and labored less, and never ran the gauntlet among halters, axes, libels, Daggers,
cannon balls, and pistol bullets as I have done, nor performed one half of the immense
journeys and voyages that have fallen to my lot.

Every unpopular point is invariably left to me to determine so that
I must be the scape goat, to bear all their sins, without a possibility of acquiring any
share in the honor of any of their popular deeds— If legislative, my friend, and
judicial work their way, and the executive has not weight to ballance the former, what
will be the consequence? an unballanced Legislative is a tyranny, whether in one few or
many. A more important question, than yours concerning treason, never was proposed upon
any part of the constitution: and upon the right decision: of it will, in my opinion,
depend the existence of government. Two sovereignties against which treason can be
committed can never exist in one nation or in one system of laws.— We should soon see
officers of the national government indicted convicted and executed for treason against
the seperate states, for acts done by virtue of their offices and in discharge of their
duty. The clause you refer to in ss: 2 Art 4 is this “A person charged in any state with
treason, felony or other crime who shall flee from justice, and be found in another
state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be
delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime” But this in
the case of treason can mean only that the traitor may be tried, by the national
judicial in the State where the crime was committed according to those words in ss: 2
Art 3 “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment shall be by Jury: and
such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been
committed.[”] I am not enough acquainted with the subject of Pyracy to form any
opinion.

The character, biography and merits of our friend N—C. has been
long since laid before the President, in as handsome terms as I was master of, and if he
is passed by it will be from public motives only, I presume. I hope he will bear it with
magnanimity: but I know not the Presidents intentions. M rs A
joins with me in kind comp ts: to M rs Cushing & yourself— Your letters sir are not like hundred I receive— They
contain profound and useful enquiries, a continuance of them will be a favor to

J Adams