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CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEEN THE

14364

HON. JOHN ADAMS, pres, US,

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

AND THE LATE

WM. CUNNINGHAM, Esq.

BEGINNING IN 1803, AND ENDING IN 1812.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY E. M. CUNNINGHAM,
Son of the late Wm. Cunningham, Esq.

True and Greene, Printers...........Merchants' Hall.

1823.

Е 310

A2

SEAL

DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT:

District Clerk's Office.

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the eighth day of August, A. D. 1823, in the forty eighth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Ephraim May Cunningham, of the said District, has deposited in this Office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as Proprietor, in the words following, to wit:

"Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams, late President of the United States and the late Wm. Cunningham, Esq. beginning in 1803 and ending in 1812."

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies, during the times therein men. tioned :" and also to an Act entitled, “An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the Arts of Designing, Engraving and Etching Historical, and other Prints."

JOHN W. DAVIS,

Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.

4

INTRODUCTION.

THIS correspondence is presented to the American people, with an exclusive view to their information and benefit. The seal of secrecy, which was imposed by the survivor, is broken by the triumph of death over his correspondent. It has now become the property of the public and of posterity. The Editor is influenced by a deep solicitude for the welfare of our republic, and an anxious wish, that its institutions and liberties may be transmitted to an interminable futurity. He deems it an imperative obligation upon every citizen of this great and free nation to contribute, according to his means, to the preservation and glory of this invaluable inheritance.

The history of nations, is little else, than the history of individuals; and, the existence and prosperity of the one, depend upon the purity, patriotism and public spirit of the other. In all nations, which have risen, flourished and fallen, the causes of their decline and overthrow, may be traced to individuals and families. An inordinate and unprincipled thirst for power, on the part of the few, at the expense of the many, has always been the inveterate bane of liberty-the semen dissolutionis of political communities.Men are, by nature, free and equal; but, there is, among them, a perpetual tendency to inequality. Society is constantly diverging into the extremes of affluence and power, on the one hand, and penury and weakness, on the other.

B

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