Thomas Boylston Adams to John Adams, March 17, 1797
The Hague March 17 th: 1797.
My dear Sir.
Your kind favors of October 28. & November 11. of the past
year, have been some weeks in my possession. 1 I am not, nor can I conveniently be, so good a correspondent as my brother, whose frequent and copious
communications exhaust most of the subjects upon which I should feel disposed to write
you myself, I think it is my duty nevertheless not to suffer any considerable period to
pass, without giving you some testimony of my attachment & respect, though I am
sensible that my letters can otherwise have but little merit.
Public report and general belief, have long since conferred upon
you Sir, the chief Executive Magistracy of the American Union, and if I have hitherto
maintained a rigorous silence upon this subject, I feel no concern lest the motives of
it should have been misinterpreted by you. The occasion was too important, and affected
too nearly the cause of my dearest relatives and of our common Country, not to call
forth a lively interest in my mind with a view to its ultimate decision. If the result
be in reality as it has been reported, I shall freely own, that I do not consider it a
subject of personal congratulation to yourself. The post of danger however, was neither
sought or shunned by you in times of greater difficulty than the present; but you have
often been placed in it by the public, when its only honor was its very danger. I feel a
confidence therefore that this fresh example will witness an ability a zeal and an
activity, proportioned to all its exigencies, and I shall never cease to pray that the
issue may prove as honorable to yourself and beneficial to the public, as the exercise
of the same qualities has been on all preceding occasions.
The advice, which your letters contain with respect to my conduct,
upon the arrival of certain contingencies, will be my guide, untill I receive those
further indications from you which I am led to expect. It is proper that I should
observe however, that my present state of uncertainty as to my future destination,
considerably interferes with the plan, which I had purposed to pursue respecting my
return home. The probability that my brother will remain here some months longer, is
nearly as strong as when I last wrote you; the negotiations, of our Minister in Portugal
being still in train, as we have lately been informed by him, without a possibility of
fixing a precise term for their close. 2 Unless therefore a new arrangement, of which we have yet no notice, should have taken
place upon this head, my brother may be continued here through the Spring & perhaps
the ensuing summer. The place of Minister here, by this calculation, will not be vacant
untill the period, which I had contemplated for my departure, and unless new obstacles
should make a further postponement necessary, choice & preference
would then determine me upon it. But I hope that the next letters we receive from you,
will put an end to all surmises of the above nature, and unless a successor to the
Minister here should already be appointed, under the nomination of the late President, I
shall govern myself by your recommendation to return home, when, or perhaps before, my
brother leaves this place. Though I should be sorry to “leave the public service
unhandsomly,” I shall freely own that neither my wishes or expectations would induce me
to seek a more responsible station than that which I now hold; and I rejoyce in the
assurance, which was given us some time past from an authentic
source , that upon the arrival of a certain contingency, the road of preferment,
under the immediate superintendence of the Executive of the Union, would no longer be
open to us. 3
I am not only desirous but anxious to revisit my native land, for
the longer my absence from it is, the more difficult & tedious will be the
establishment I should wish to make upon my return. The recultivation of my own
language, and that of my profession, and the formation of connections for future benefit
in the exercise of them, must be a business of time and labor, and the age of 25. seems
to me quite late enough to commence the undertaking.— I owe an apology for engrossing so
much of this letter with an exposition of so selfish a nature, though I am well assured
of its being received with the same indulgence, that has been accorded to all preceding
ones of a similar strain.
Our latest intelligence from home reaches no further than the
middle of December; the most important particulars of it relate to the proceedings of
the french Minister which had then just transpired, and which naturally occasioned some
concern. 4 The correspondent measures
which the Directory have since pursued towards our Government are of a nature still more
violent and hostile, and though I am fully confident that our Countrymen are not
unprepared to meet the crisis which is thus hurried upon them, I cannot but regret that
the present administration in France discover so little remorse in the employment of so
dangerous an experiment. It is said by some of our Countrymen recently from Paris, that
the Directory are bent upon war with us, and are only
waiting a confirmation of the result of our Elections to put in force further acts of
rigour towards our navigation. It is notorious that several of our vessels have already
been taken by french privateers, commanded & owned by Americans ; that they have been carried in & condemned in french ports, and as many of our London traders as shall fall in the way of these
pirates, may be expected to share a similar fate. 5
This open encouragement of piratical depredation, cannot I think be
regarded with indifference in America; it must rouse resentment against both its authors
and patrons; but in what manner these feelings will be manifested, I am at some loss to
conjecture. Our intercourse with the french Government is suspended; our wrongs are
hourly multiplying, and the only alternative left to us seems to be silent uncomplaining
submission, or manful resistance. Painful as this situation is in contemplation, there
is to me a sensible satisfaction in the reflection, that we have neither provoked or merited it, for in my mind those calamities which are
inevitable are always less irksome to endure, than such as prudence & discretion
might have averted. If Sir, it should be your lot, and that of the American people to be
forced into a war at the commencement of your administration, I hope and I believe there
exists public spirit enough among our Countrymen to second your endeavors to procure a
favorable & happy issue. The struggle may be arduous, but the object is such as
merits every sacrifice.
France notwithstanding her “retinue of victories,” 6 may possibly learn too late, that the friendship
of a feeble power is preferable to its enmity. The strength of the United States does
not consist in the possitive force of fleets and armies, but there is a sort of negative
power in her commerce, the efficacy of which can only be appreciated by its deprivation.
France may drive it by violence from her ports, but if I mistake not, she will be the
first to feel its loss, more especially as her rival enemy, Britain, will benefit in the
same degree as she suffers. But plunder seems to be the great object with the french
Government, and the question, to whom the property belongs, never enters into their
calculation, except, that if any preference is discoverable, it appears to be given to
that of their friends.
A great naval battle has lately been fought between a British and a
Spanish squadron, in which the former is said to have lost six ships, either sunk or
taken, and the latter four of their first rate line of battle ships. The affair is yet
so recent that the particulars of the engagement have not yet fully transpired, but the
vast superiority of the Spaniards over the English both in number and rate of vessels,
makes it a matter of surprise that the issue was not more disastrous to the latter than
it seems to have been. I send herewith the Leyden Gazette which contains the principal
details that have yet appeared upon this subject. 7
In compliance with your desire, I wrote soon after the receipt of
your last letters, to M r: Tegelaar of Amsterdam, to
ascertain whether he had received the papers which were transmitted by you for him. His
answer acknowledges their receipt in good condition, and at the same time requests me to
convey to you his grateful thanks for the trouble you had taken in his affair. 8
I am, my dear Sir, with much duty & attachment / Your Son
Thomas B Adams