When Massachusetts admitted that she was under subjection to the King, yet
argued for the right to nullify the Acts of the English Parliament, she
took exactly the same ground that South Carolina did a hundred years
later. The logic of Samuel Adams and of Robert Hayne was one and the same.

Yet we are glad that Adams carried his point; and we rejoice exceedingly
that Hayne failed, so curious are these things we call "reasons."

The royalists who heard of this youth with a logical mind denounced him
without stint. A few newspapers upheld him and spoke of the right of free
speech and all that, reprinting the thesis in full. And in the controversy
that followed, young Adams was always a prominent figure. He was not an
orator in the popular sense, but he held the pen of a ready writer, and
through the Boston papers kept up a constant fusillade.

The tricks of journalism are no new thing belonging to the fag-end of this
century. Young Adams wrote letters over the "nom de plume" of Pro Bono
Publico, and then replied to them over the signature of Rex Americus. He
did not adopt as his motto, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right
hand doeth," for he wrote with both hands and each hand was in the secret.

During the years that followed his graduation from college he was a
businessman and a poor one, for a man who looks after public affairs much
can not attend to his own. But he managed to make shift; and when too
closely pressed by creditors, a loan from Hancock, or John Adams,
Hancock's attorney, relieved the pressure. In fact, when he went to
Philadelphia "on that very important errand," he rode a horse borrowed
from John Adams, and his Sunday coat was the gift of a thoughtful friend.

In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-three, it became known that the British