1878
JOHN ADAM'S MONARCHICAL IDEAS
by Warren Mercy
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
John Adams Monarchical
SIR:- You complain that I have asserted that a
partiality for monarchy appeared in your conduct. This fact you
deny, and entreat me to bring forward the evidences which I suppose
will warrant the assertion. The assertion was not founded on vague
rumor, nor was it the result of any scattered and dubious
expressions through your Defence of the American Constitutions that
might warrant such a suspicion, but from my own judgment and
observation soon after your return from Europe in the year 1788.
There certainly was then an observable alteration in your whole
deportment and conversation. Many of your best friends saw, felt,
and regretted it. If time has not weakened your memory you will
recollect many instances of yourself. I will remind you of a few.
Do you not remember an interview at Cambridge soon after your
return from England, when his lady and myself met you walking up to
Mr. Gerry's? We stopped the carriage, and informed you that Mrs.
Gerry and myself were engaged to take tea with Madam Winthrop. You
returned and took tea with us at the house of that excellent lady.
You will remember that Mr. Gerry's carriage was sent for me in the
edge of the evening. You took a seat with me, and returned to Mr.
Gerry's. Do you not recollect, sir, that in the course of
conversation on the way you replied thus to something that I had
observed?-"It does not signify, Mrs. Warren, to talk much of the
virtue of Americans. more We are like all other people, and shall do
like other nations, where all wellregulated governments are
monarchic." I well remember my own reply, "That a limited monarchy
might be the best government, but that it would be long before
Americans would be reconciled to the idea of a king." Do you not
recollect that, a very, short time after this, Mr. Warren and
myself made you a visit at Braintree? The previous conversation, in
the evening, I do not so distinctly remember; but in the morning,
at breakfast at Mercy your own table, the conversation on the subject of
monarchy was resumed. Your ideas appeared to be favorable to
monarchy, and to an order of nobility in your own country. Mr.
Warren replied, "I am thankful that I am a plebeian." You answered:
"No, sir, you are one of the nobles. There has been a national
aristocracy here ever since the country was settled,-your family at
Plymouth, Mrs. Warren's at Barnstable, and many others in very many
places that have kept up a distinction similar to nobility." This
conversation subsided by a little mirth. Do you not remember that,
after breakfast, you and Mr. Warren stood up by the window, and
conversed on the situation of the country, on the Southern States,
and some principal characters there? You, with a degree of passion,
exclaimed, "They must have a master; " and added, by a stamp with
your foot, "By God, they shall have a master." In the course of the
same evening you observed that you "wished to see a monarchy in
this country and an hereditary one too." To this you say I replied
as quick as lightning, "And so do I too." If I did, which I do not
remember, it must have been with some additional stroke which
rendered it a sarcasm. You added with a considerable degree of
emotion that you hated frequent elections, that they were the ruin
of the morals of the people, that when a youth you had seen
iniquity practised at a town meeting for the purpose of electing
officers, than you had ever seen in any of the courts in Europe.
These conversations were not disseminated by me,-we were too
much hurt by the apparent change of sentiment and manner; they were
concealed in our own bosoms until time should develop the result of
such a change in such a man. Is not the above sufficient to warrant
everything that I have said relative to your monarchic opinions ?
Had you recollected the conversations alluded to above, you would
not I have asserted on your faith and honor that every sentiment in
a paragraph you refer to is "totally unfounded." On your return
from Europe it was generally thought that you looked coldly on your
Republican friends and their families, and that you united yourself
with the party in Congress who were favorers of monarchy; that the
old Tories, denominating themselves Federalists, gathered round
you. And did not your administration while in the presidential
chair evince that you had no aversion to the usages of monarchic
governments? Sedition, stamp, and alien laws, a standing army,
house and land taxes, and loans of money at an enormous interest
were alarming symptoms in the American Republic. Your removal from
the chair by the free suffrages of a majority of the people of the
United States sufficiently evinces that I was not mistaken when I
asserted that "a large portion" of the inhabitants of America from
New Hampshire to Georgia viewed your political opinions in the same
point of light in which I have exhibited them, and considered their
liberties in imminent danger, without an immediate change of the
Chief Magistrate. However, I never supposed that you had a wish to
submit again to the monarchy of Great Britain, or to become
subjugated to any foreign sovereign. An American monarchy with an
American character at its head would, doubtless, have been more
pleasing to yourself. The veracity of an historian is his strongest
base; and I am sure I have recorded nothing but what I thought I
had the highest reason to believe. If I have been mistaken I shall
be forgiven; and, if there are errors, they will be candidly viewed
by liberal-minded and generous readers.
PLYMOUTH, MASS., 28 July, 1807.
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