partiality for the life of a clergyman. But I had uncles and other relations, full of the most illiberal prejudices against the law. I had, indeed, a proper affection and veneration for them, but, as I was under no obligation of gratitude to them, which could give them any claim of authority to prescribe a course of life to me, I thought little of their opinions. Other obstacles, more serious than these, presented themselves. A lawyer must have a fee for taking me into his office. I must be boarded and clothed for several years. I had no money; and my father, having three sons, had done as much for me, in the expenses of my education, as his estate and circumstances could justify, and as my reason or my honor would allow me to ask. I therefore gave out that I would take a school, and took my degree at college undetermined whether I should study divinity, law, or physic.

"In the public exercises at commencement, I was somewhat remarked as a respondent, and Mr. Maccarty, of Worcester, who was empowered by the selectmen of that town to procure them a Latin master, for their grammar-school, engaged me to undertake it. About three weeks after commencement, in 1755, when I was not yet twenty years of age, a horse was sent from Worcester and a man to attend me. We made the journeyabout sixty miles-in one day, and I entered on my office. For about three weeks, I boarded with one Green, at the expense of the town, and by the arrangements of the selectmen. Here I found Morgan's Moral Philosopher, which, I was informed, had circulated with some freedom in that town, and that the principles of deism had made a considerable progress among several people in that and other towns of the county. Three months. after this, the selectmen procured lodgings for me at Dr. Nahum Willard's. This physician had a large practice, a good reputation for skill, and a pretty library. Here were Dr. Cheyne's works, Sydenham and others, and Van Swieten's Commentaries on Boerhaave. I read a good deal in these books, and entertained many thoughts of becoming a physician and surgeon. But the law attracted my attention more and more; and, attending the court of justice, where I heard Worthington, Hawley, Trowbridge, Putnam, and others, I felt myself irresistibly impelled to make some effort to accomplish my wishes. I made a visit to Mr. Putnam, and offered myself to him. He received me with politeness, and even kindness, took a few days to consider of it, and then informed me that Mrs. Putnam had consented that I should board in his house, that I should pay no more than the town allowed for my lodgings, and that I should pay him a hundred dollars, when I should find it convenient. I agreed to his proposals without hesitation, and immediately took possession of his office. His library, at that time, was not large; but he had all the most essential law books. Immediately after I entered with him, however, he sent to England for a handsome addition of law books, and for Lord Bacon's works. I carried with me to Worcester, Lord

Bolingbroke's Study and Use of History, and his Patriot King. These I lent him, and he was so well pleased, that he added Bolingbroke's works to his list, and gave me an opportunity of reading the posthumous works of that writer in five volumes. Mr. Burke once asked who ever read them through. I can answer that I read them through before the year 1758, and that I have read them through at least twice since that time. But, I confess, without much good or harm. His ideas of the English constitution are correct, and his political writings are worth something; but, in a great part of them, there is more fiction than truth. His religion is a pompous folly;

and his abuse of the Christian religion is as superficial as it is impious. His style is original and inimitable; it resembles more the oratory of the ancients, than any writings or speeches I ever read in English.

P

MR.

CHAPTER II.

BARLY LAW PRACTICE-SEEDS OF REBELLION.

R. ADAMS continued his office as teacher of the Worcester school, and his studies under Mr. Putnam, until the month of October, 1758. Then, being en'itled to admission to practice, he desired to present his application for a license, and set out for Boston with that intent. Arrived in that city he discovered that he had neglected to obtain his certificate from Mr. Putnam. The horseback journey of sixty miles, to Worcester, with the return, was no light matter to undertake for the reparation of this mistake, and desiring, if possible, to avoid it, Mr. Adams betook himself to Mr. Gridley, then attorney-general of the province, and, as a lawyer and scholar, second to none of his time. After a few moments' conversation, Mr. Gridley seems to have been fully satisfied as to the attainments of the young aspirant, for he took the unusual responsibility of giving him a personal recommendation to the court, which procured him instant admission to practice. This kind and flattering act on the part of Mr. Gridley was only the first of a long succession of demonstrations of affection and confidence. He gave Mr. Adams, at that time and later, much invaluable advice as to his professional and personal future, and later supplemented it by giving more substantial aid, throwing business into the hands of his younger brother at the bar, when such help was sadly needed. So was Adams launched upon the uncertain waters of his chosen profession.

Mr. Adams selected his native village, Braintree, as the place for practicing his profession, settling there immediately after his admission to the bar. He resided with his father in the homestead until May 25, 1761, when the latter died. After this event, and until his own marriage, in 1764, he continued with his mother. There is little of incident in those early days of his legal life. Braintree was far from a promising place of settlement; small as it was, its population does not convey to us at this day any just idea of the difficulty of there making even a bare living by the law, during the last

century. It has been said that the people of Massachusetts were but ill disposed toward lawyers. The most controversial people in America, they were perhaps the least litigious; they would quarrel sooner over a dogma than a question of property, and more readily forgive an injury to themselves than the heresy of a neighbor. They went little to law, and, when arbitration would not suffice, and they were driven or dragged into court, were apt to think themselves fully equal to the trial of their own causes. So Braintree was to a lawyer, much what a church is to a mouse,-a middle ground between living and starvation. Yet the time spent by Mr. Adams in the little village was far from lost. If there was little to do and less to make, it was also true that little was needed; that the village was primitive; that neither display nor more than the simplest hospitality was called for. Then, too, such practice as there was, offered, as elsewhere in a country town, the best of discipline for a young lawyer. The attention to minute. points of law and practice, the careful devotion to detail in preparation, the guarding against the arts of pettifogging opponents, all these laid the foundation of valuable habits, little likely to be acquired in a larger field, where small cases are rather despised. Then, too, when a trial was held, it was an event of universal interest in the contracted field. It was protracted unconscionably; the evidence was sifted with industry, if not with the greatest skill; arguments were as long and labored in a case involving the value of a sheep, as they would be in the heaviest action in a community where litigation was more common and important. Then, too, there was the inspiration of an audience, the praise, the condemnation, the applause of neighbors and friends. The bar was usually present as a unit, and gave the force of its criticism to place counsel upon their mettle, and, after the cause was tried and determined, it was the talk of the village, until another sheep was killed. So, surrounded by these influences, which, continuing for many years, tend to make the lifelong country lawyer narrow and mechanical, Adams, during his few years at Braintree, learned only to be painstaking and exact, doing everything that he undertook, great or small, to the best of his ability. He was wise enough, too, to regard his admission to the bar as a form, neither the necessary end of preparation, of study and development, nor certainly the gate to wealth and reputation. While he awaited clients, he made himself, day by day, more worthy of their confidence and trust. Again it is best to turn to the words of his journal to obtain a view of his plans and resolves. It reads almost like a treatise on professional ethics, though written by a man then but twenty-five years of age. "Labor to get distinct ideas of law, right, wrong, justice, equity; search for them in your own mind, in Roman, Grecian, French, English treatises, of natural, civil, common, statute law. Aim at an exact knowledge of the nature, end, and means of government. Compare the different forms of it with each other, and each of them with their effects on public and private

happiness. Study Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral writers; study Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, Vinnius, etc., and all other good civil writers. "1760. I have read a multitude of law books; mastered but few. Wood, Coke, two volumes Lillie's abridgement, two volumes Salkeld's reports, Swinburne, Hawkins' Pleas of the Crown, Fortescue; Fitzgibbon, ten volumes in folio, I read at Worcester quite through, besides octavos and lesser volumes, and many others, of all sizes, that I consulted occasionally, without reading in course, as dictionaries, reports, entries, and abridgements. I cannot give so good an account of the improvement of my last two years spent in Braintree. However, I have read no small number of volumes upon law the last two years. Justinian's Institutes I have read through in Latin, with Vinnius perpetual notes; Van Muyden's Tractatio Institutionum Justianiani, I read through and translated mostly into English from the same language."

Then follows a long list of other works read, many of them very abstruse and far out of the ordinary course of legal study. The journal is thus continued:

"I must form a serious resolution of beginning and continuing quite through the plans of my Lords Hale and Reeve. Wood's Institutes of the Common Law I never read but once, and my Lord Coke's Commentaries on Littleton I have never read but once. These two authors I must get and read over and over again. And I will get them, too, and break through, as Mr. Gridley expresses it, all obstructions. Besides, I am but a novice in natural and civil law. There are multitudes of excellent authors on natural law, that I have never read; indeed, I never read any part of the best authors, Puffendorf and Grotius. In civil law there are Hoppius and Vinnius, commentators on Justinian, Domat, etc., besides institutes of canon and feudal law that I have never read." This attributing to himself, as a fault, ignorance of the text of authors whom the majority of lawyers of to-day know only by name or not at all, is sufficient index of the standard of scholarship which Adams had set for himself. His habit of self-scrutiny and criticism was not confined to matters of attainment. He was no less censorious in regard to morals and manners, as the following self-arraignment shows: "Pretensions to wisdom and virtue superior to all the world, will not be supported by words only. If I tell a man that I am wiser and better than he, or any other man, he will either despise or hate or pity me, perhaps all three. I have not conversed enough with the world to converse rightly. I talk to Paine about Greek; that makes him laugh. I talk to Sam Quincy about resolution, and being a great man, and study, and improving time; which makes him laugh. I talk to Ned about the folly of affecting to be a heretic; which makes him mad. I talk to Hannah and Esther about the folly of love; about despising it; about being above it; pretend to be insensible of tender passions; which makes them laugh. I talk to Mr.