mankind, and sent from home on a mission to foreign parts.

"From that time, the fourth year after my admission to the bar of my
native state, and the first year of my admission to the bar of the
Supreme Court of the United States, I was deprived of the exercise
of any further industry or labor at the bar by this distinction; a
distinction for which a previous education at the bar, if not an
indispensable qualification, was at least a most useful
appendage."[3]

[3] See _Niles' Weekly Register_, New Series, vol. xv., pp. 218,
219.

While waiting for professional employment, he was instinctively drawn
into political discussions. Thomas Paine had just then published his
"Rights of Man," for which Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State,
took upon himself to be sponsor, by publishing a letter expressing his
extreme pleasure "that it is to be reprinted here, and that something is
at length to be publicly said against the _political heresies_ which
have sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens will rally a
second time round the standard of _Common Sense_."

Notwithstanding the weight of Jefferson's character, and the strength of
his recommendation, in June, 1791, young Adams entered the lists against
Paine and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on the National
Assembly of France, and a commentary on the rights of man, inferring
questionable deductions from unquestionable principles. In a series of
essays, signed Publicola, published in the _Columbian Centinel_, he
states and controverts successively the fundamental doctrines of Paine's
work; denies that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do it has a right
to do," and maintains, in opposition, that "nations, no less than
individuals, are subject to the eternal and immutable laws of justice
and morality;" declaring that Paine's doctrine annihilated the security
of every man for his inalienable rights, and would lead in practice to a
hideous despotism, concealed under the parti-colored garments of
democracy. The truth of the views in these essays was soon made manifest
by the destruction of the French constitution, so lauded by Paine and
Jefferson, the succeeding anarchy, the murder of the French monarch, and
the establishment of a military despotism.

In April, 1793, Great Britain declared war against France, then in the
most violent frenzy of her revolution. In this war, the feelings of the
people of the Unit