Details
ADAMS, JOHN, President. Autograph letter signed ("John Adams") as President to "His Excellency" Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory, Quincy, [Mass.], 18 May 1799. 2 pages, 4to, integral blank with recipient's docket, extremely light dampstains to blank.
"MANKIND WILL NOT LEARN WISDOM BY EXPERIENCE IN MATTERS OF GOVERNMENT"
A concise but surprisingly cogent expression of Adams' Federalist convictions about the advantage of "mixed government" (probably meaning rule by a combination of popularly elected and appointed officials) That form, he maintains, is proven by both by theory and experience to be superior to its counterpart, which he calls "simple democracy" (presumably democracy of the Jeffersonian stamp). The President, resting in Quincy after a disappointing and difficult session of Congress, comments bitterly on the neglect of his own writings. "I thank you for your favour of April 8th and especially for the Pamphlet inclosed with it. I have read it with great pleasure as a masterly Refutation of its Antagonist, in the style and manner of a Gentleman, and Seasoned with no more than was useful and agreable, of Attic Salt. Happy am I to find such just Sentiments countenenced, encouraged and prevailing in the North Western Territory.
"Although your Wish that my Writings were more generally read, is very flattering to me, I am nevertheless not very confident that they would do much good. Mankind will not learn wisdom by experience in matters of Government. They get rid of all such Systems by Slight Sarcasms: and say that Theory is in favour of Simple Democracy. I say, that Theory is altogether in favour of mixed Governments, as well as experience...But I am not about to write a Lecture...."
The recipient, Arthur St. Clair (1736-1818) had served as a general in the American Revolution, and was a delegate from western Pennsylvania to the Constitutional Convention. In 1787, when the Northwest Territory was created, St. Clair was appointed its first Governor, which post he held until 1802. He was a staunch Federalist, and "sought to enforce the spirit and the letter of the highly centralized and undemocratic Ordinance of 1787...He objected to statehood [for any of the regions comprising the territory] as premature...The result was a movement by the local Jeffersonians in 1801 to remove him from office and...to create the state of Ohio" (-DAB). He was finally removed from office in 1802 by Jefferson. The identity of the political pamphlet sent to Adams by St. Clair, mentioned here, is uncertain.
"MANKIND WILL NOT LEARN WISDOM BY EXPERIENCE IN MATTERS OF GOVERNMENT"
A concise but surprisingly cogent expression of Adams' Federalist convictions about the advantage of "mixed government" (probably meaning rule by a combination of popularly elected and appointed officials) That form, he maintains, is proven by both by theory and experience to be superior to its counterpart, which he calls "simple democracy" (presumably democracy of the Jeffersonian stamp). The President, resting in Quincy after a disappointing and difficult session of Congress, comments bitterly on the neglect of his own writings. "I thank you for your favour of April 8th and especially for the Pamphlet inclosed with it. I have read it with great pleasure as a masterly Refutation of its Antagonist, in the style and manner of a Gentleman, and Seasoned with no more than was useful and agreable, of Attic Salt. Happy am I to find such just Sentiments countenenced, encouraged and prevailing in the North Western Territory.
"Although your Wish that my Writings were more generally read, is very flattering to me, I am nevertheless not very confident that they would do much good. Mankind will not learn wisdom by experience in matters of Government. They get rid of all such Systems by Slight Sarcasms: and say that Theory is in favour of Simple Democracy. I say, that Theory is altogether in favour of mixed Governments, as well as experience...But I am not about to write a Lecture...."
The recipient, Arthur St. Clair (1736-1818) had served as a general in the American Revolution, and was a delegate from western Pennsylvania to the Constitutional Convention. In 1787, when the Northwest Territory was created, St. Clair was appointed its first Governor, which post he held until 1802. He was a staunch Federalist, and "sought to enforce the spirit and the letter of the highly centralized and undemocratic Ordinance of 1787...He objected to statehood [for any of the regions comprising the territory] as premature...The result was a movement by the local Jeffersonians in 1801 to remove him from office and...to create the state of Ohio" (-DAB). He was finally removed from office in 1802 by Jefferson. The identity of the political pamphlet sent to Adams by St. Clair, mentioned here, is uncertain.