box, but without being able to find or make it. I had made myself
more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but never used any one of
them. I had learnt and practised Byrom's Shorthand Writing, but no one
could read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double
entry,--day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash-book, bank-book,
house-book, and letter-book. I had made extracts, copies, translations,
and quotations, more perhaps than other man living, without ever being
able to pack up my knowledge or my labors in any methodical order; and
now doubt whether I might not have employed my time more profitably in
some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pursuit, adapting every
hour of labor to the attainment of some great end."
In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before the Massachusetts
Historical Society a lecture on the war then existing between Great
Britain and China. The principles stated and maintained in that lecture
were so much in advance of the opinions entertained at the time, that
it is believed to have been published in but a single newspaper in this
country or in Europe, and never in a pamphlet form, except by the
proprietors of the _Chinese Repository_, published in Macao, China, in
May, 1842. Though his views were ridiculed or repudiated by many when
delivered, they are at this day acknowledged; and are made some of the
chief grounds of the justification of that invasion of the Chinese
empire now apparently in successful progress. The subject is of
preeminent importance, and is canvassed with that laborious research
and independence eminently characteristic of the author.
In this lecture, after controverting the doctrine of an eminent French
writer, who contended that there was no such thing as international law,
and that the word law is not applicable to the obligations incumbent
upon nations, on the ground that law is a rule of conduct prescribed by
a superior; and that nations, being independent, acknowledge no
superior, and have no common sovereign from whom they can receive
law,--Mr. Adams proceeds to maintain that "by the law of nations is to
be understood, not one code of laws, binding alike on all the nations of
the earth, but a system of rules varying according to the character and
condition of the parties concerned." There is a law of nations, among
Christian communities, which is the law recognized by the constitution
of the United States as obligatory upon them in their intercourse with
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