n
the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with
arrogance, and finish in contempt. May such be the fate of all such
characters.

I have had doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a
conversation with me at that time, concerning the pamphlet _Common
Sense_, he censured it because it attacked the English form of
government. John was for independence because he expected to be made
great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of
his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of
kings, queens, and knaves, as a pack of cards. But John has lost deal.

When a man has a concealed project in his brain that he wants to bring
forward, and fears will not succeed, he begins with it as physicians
do by suspected poison, try it first on an animal; if it agree with the
stomach of the animal, he makes further experiments, and this was the
way John took. His brain was teeming with projects to overturn the
liberties of America, and the representative system of government, and
he began by hinting it in little companies. The secretary of John Jay,
an excellent painter and a poor politician, told me, in presence of
another American, Daniel Parker, that in a company where himself was
present, John Adams talked of making the government hereditary, and that
as Mr. Washington had no children, it should be made hereditary in the
family of Lund Washington.(1) John had not impudence enough to propose
himself in the first instance, as the old French Normandy baron did,
who offered to come over to be king of America, and if Congress did not
accept his offer, that they would give him thirty thousand pounds for
the generosity of it(2); but John, like a mole, was grubbing his way to
it under ground. He knew that Lund Washington was unknown, for nobody
had heard of him, and that as the president had no children to succeed
him, the vice-president had, and if the treason had succeeded, and the
hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the
head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good
people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a
delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition.

1 See supra footnote on p. 288.--_Editor._

2 See vol. ii. p. 318 of this work.--_Editor._

Knowing, as I do, the consummate vanity of John Adams, and the
shallowness of his judgment, I can easily picture to mys