ore absolute political
insignificance. His grandson tells us that while the letters addressed
to him in the year prior to March 1st, 1801, may be counted by the
thousands, those of the next year scarcely numbered a hundred, while he
wrote even less than he received. Nor was mere neglect the worst of it.
He sank, loaded with the jibes, the sneers, the execrations even, of
both political parties into which the nation was divided. In his
correspondence, which appears to have gradually increased and extended
itself, Mr. Adams loved to re-explain his theoretical ideas of
government, on some points of which he pushed Jefferson hard, and which
the result of the French revolution so far as then developed seemed to
confirm.

Another subject in which he continued to feel a great interest was
theology. He had begun as an Arminian, and the more he had read and
thought, and the older he grew to be, the freer views he took. Though
clinging with tenacity to the religious institutions of New England, it
would seem from his correspondence that he finally curtailed his
theology to the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount. Of his
views on this point, he gave evidence in his last public act, to which
we now approach.

Mrs. Adams had died in 1818, but even that shock, severe as it was, did
not loosen the firm grasp of the husband on life, its enjoyments and its
duties. When, in consequence of the erection of the district of Maine
into a State, a convention was to meet in 1820 to revise the
constitution of Massachusetts, in the framing of which Mr. Adams had
taken so leading a part, though in his eighty-sixth year, he was chosen
a delegate by his townsmen. Upon his first appearance, with a form yet
erect, though tremulous with age, in this Convention, which was
composed of the very cream of the great minds with which the State
abounded, Mr. Adams was received by members standing, and with every
demonstration of affection and esteem; and a series of resolutions were
forthwith passed, containing an enumeration and warm acknowledgement of
some of his principal public services, and calling on him to preside.
But this, while duly acknowledging the compliment, he declined, on the
score of his age and infirmities. The same cause also prevented his
taking any active part in the proceedings. Yet he labored to secure a
modification of the third article of the bill of rights, on the subject
of public worship and its support, an article which,