2. Another beautiful instance followed ten years later. In the beginning of 1765, Jeremy Gridley, the eminent lawyer of Colonial days, formed a law club, or Sodality, at Boston, for the mutual improvement of its members. Here John Adams produced the original sketch of his “Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” which appeared in the “Boston Gazette” of August, 1765, was immediately and repeatedly reprinted in London, and afterwards in Philadelphia.[360] The sketch began:—
“This Sodality has given rise to the following speculation of my own, which I commit to writing as hints for future inquiries rather than as a satisfactory theory.”[361]
In this Dissertation, the writer dwells especially upon the settlers of British America, of whom he says:—
“After their arrival here, they began their settlement, and formed their plan, both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direct opposition to the canon and the feudal systems.”[362]
This excellent statement was followed, in the original sketch communicated to the Sodality, by this passage, which does not appear in the printed Dissertation:—
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”[363]
On these prophetic words, his son, John Quincy Adams, remarks:—
“This sentence was perhaps omitted from an impression that it might be thought to savor not merely of enthusiasm, but of extravagance. Who now would deny that this magnificent anticipation has been already to a great degree realized? Who does not now see that the accomplishment of this great object is already placed beyond all possibility of failure?”[364]
His grandson, Charles Francis Adams, alluding to the changes which took place in the original sketch, says:—