 this is preposterous. Good heavens John, you sound even more disagreeable than usual. Cale, you try being the president after George Washington and see how agreeable you become. Oh dear, what is it this time? What is it every time? Politicians blindly following their factions, ambition and intrigue are all I say around me. How did we ever come to this place from the birth of our independence? I would never renounce our independence but all your troubles do make me long for the simpler times before we began the fight for our liberties. Oh my dearest friend, you are sounding like an old man. Oh I beg your pardon. I'm simply reminded of a part of a John Wesley sermon. Is it not the common practice of old men to praise the past and condemn the present time? And old women. I often think about the days when I Diana was courted by her dashing Lysander before the cares of parenthood and statesmanship. It felt like we were living in our own utopian dream. Massachusetts was certainly no utopia, particularly once George III ascended on his dark cloud to the throne. Suddenly all the old men of Parliament wished to return to the past themselves. At least they did so with the acts and taxes upon the colonies. There was that war that needed to be paid for. Oh yes, the cleverly titled Seven Years War that lasted for nine years. Yes but it did benefit those of us in the colonies. There was no small amount of fighting on our soil and Americans profited greatly by supplying the army. And that is precisely why the Parliament thought that we colonists should repay the debt they incurred in the war. I have a providential that you should bring this up now John. I've been going through some of your old papers and came upon your radical writings from the 60s. I believe you were every bit as masterful as Barrister Otis. From a dissertation on Canon and feudal law to Humphrey Plough Jogger. You were a rebel before the word was fashionable. You flatter me Mrs. Adams. Oh good old Mr. Plough Jogger. I liked him. Even with the poor spelling he was easy to understand. Poor simple Mr. Plough Jogger. He was every American farmer after the Seven Year War. He'd prospered during the war because there was a market for his goods. But then afterwards when it came to having to pay more taxes in support of the thing he wondered how he might do that. Even he could see that the crown was determining where money should be spent. Taking New England tax money and spending it on things like hemp from the southern colonies. When our New England farmers could grow that cash crop just as well as any other colonial property. Yes they just needed the parent country to be the responsible steward. Educate the farmers on the crop then work them into the empire's market. Instead the crown would create debtors out of honest working men and throw them in prison where they would have no chance of repaying the debt. It was a ridiculous cycle. And for what? To pay for a standing army? Humphrey wrote they say there's going to be a standing army to be kept in pay all peacetime. And I'm glad of it for I'm sure for then money will be plenty and we could sell off our source and meet. But some other people says we shall be forced to pay him and that will be bad on other hand because if we have paid taxes enough already amongst us and they say we are desperately in debt now. You have a fine Mr. Plow Jogger impression. I do wish the Prime Minister had read Mr. Plow Jogger. He might have realized that after the war we were still grateful to be English subjects. We were still willing to pay our share. Heart of oak are our ships. Heart of oak are our men. Our purses are ready. Steady friends steady. Not as slaves but as free men our money we will give. After all we were still at heart British colonists. Although I am fifth generation New England Bond Adams so there is not one drop of blood in my veins but that which is American. Yes you've made that abundantly clear John. But you were also quite vocal at the time that we as the children of Great Britain deserved the same rights as our brethren and fellow subjects. Well it was not abundantly clear that we were British citizens. In England they seemed to forget that the charters our charters gave us authority to govern and tax ourselves yet they continued to treat us as children. Children who must presume that the parent is right even when that parent seems to us to shake the foundations of government. Were we the children of Great Britain any more than the cities of London, Exeter, Bath. But admitting we were children have not the children the right to complain when their parents are attempting to break their limbs or administer poison or to sell them to their enemies for slaves. That is rather dramatic but we were still subject to the acts of parliament. Were we truly though? Our colonies had no representation in parliament and that went against our rights set forth in the Magna Carta. Centuries later the Prince of Orange was created King William by the people on purpose that their rights might be eternal and inviolable. Thank you for mentioning Magna Carta dearest. You know how I feel about my worthy ancestor Sire de Quincy's contributions to the venerable compact between the King and the people. Clause 38 to 42 are of particular importance. The right to face one's accusers, the right to a speedy trial by a jury of equals and the rights of our country's merchants to free trade. Yes dear but as it was written to the Boston representatives in 1764 for if our trade may be taxed why not our lands? Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our charter to govern and tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges which as we have never forfeited them we hold in common with our fellow subjects who are natives of Britain. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are made are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? Were those the instructions written in response to the sugar act? Ah yes yes which the old men of Parliament took from the Malazas Act of 1733. Those were about to expire and they renewed those import taxes with vigor even though they reduced the tax from six pence per gallon to three. When you put it that way it seems as if they were almost trying to do us a favor. But it was the principle of the matter. I know not why we should blush to confess that Malazas was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes and besides the taxes were for Malazas and sugar and wine and iron and it made trading all the more difficult with other countries. I believe it spurred the earliest non-importation agreements among American consumers. Yes and while we were suffering financially they reintroduced the Currency Act. Wasn't that already an existing law? Oh yes but it was scarce they enforced. The Parliament gave some strength to it and suddenly the colonies were not supposed to print their own currency. Use foreign coin pieces of eight Indian shell or anything else but British money which was already scarce here. Why did they think we were trying to use other currency to begin with? Our paper money was so ephemeral. I do believe that government securities are the most sound investment. I prefer to invest in land. Well I would run you into debt for as much land as you want provided you would stay at home long enough to farm it. Mrs. Adams you are an excellent farmeress. Well yes but I never want any more land than I can handle on my own. But land is what our forefathers came here for. Land and liberty recollect the civil and religious principles and hopes and expectations which constantly supported and carried our ancestors through all hardships and patience and resignation. Let us recollect it was liberty. The hope of liberty for themselves and us and ours which conquered all discouragements, dangers and trials. The liberty that our forefathers had come to enjoy was being encroached upon every time the crown sought to renew and bolster some old and previously unenforced acts of government. I fear that most people in British government were looking for the slightest provocation to force their grasping hands into our purses. Pelham and Fat George gave them all the motivation they needed. There was no one to represent us, no one to speak for us. I believe you are forgetting there was someone who stood for our rights, our liberties, our very standing as citizens. Oh that is very sweet of you to say Abigail but I merely wrote a few articles and instructions. I would ghastly say I was some grand hero at that time. Of course you are my hero John. However I was referring to James Otis. Oh Otis? Yes of course. Mr Otis demonstrated how these articles of molasses and sugar especially the former entered into all and every branch of our commerce. Fisheries, even manufacturers and agriculture. He asserted this act to be a taxation law made by those who had no feeling for us and whose interest prompted them to tax us to the quick. He was masterful in advocating for our rights. Even when doing so put him at a great risk. Remember his sacrifices for defending against the rits of assistance? The rits of assistance? What a miserable attempt at a law. To be able to claim someone was harboring contraband and force a search, even without the slightest thing resembling proof. It was scarcely less malicious than claiming someone to be a witch. Thankfully Mr Otis eloquently defended against those terrible rits and without payment. And without winning his arguments. Do not forget that. He added injury to injury after he resigned his post as advocate general. The British wanted him to enforce those dreadful rits and instead he renounced his advocacy and fought for the opposite side. Our side? He proclaimed what we all believed that a person's house is his castle, his fortress. Indeed. Yet despite his loss Otis was so masterful that I believe that the child independence was then and there born. I thought you said independence was born from the molasses act. But it was a lengthy birth Mrs Adams. The molasses act, the sugar act, the currency act, the rits of assistance. The quartering act. Although in fairness the quartering act was not fully enforced. I do not believe fairness and the quartering act should be in the same sentence. The simple fact of parliament even considering that colonists should be forced to give housing to their own occupying soldiers. My blood boils. My blood isn't. Articles seem to do no good. James Otis' arguments and pamphlets seem to do no good. There was no room for debate. We understood the need for some taxes to borrow from Otis a quiescentis commotum centiure depot et onus. He who receives the benefit must also bear the burden. But a person who bears the burden for others as well as for himself without receiving the benefit cannot survive long. It is a common understanding of equity. If you order and then are served a deal of cider, you are under responsibility to pay for it. But if you are made to pay for your cider and the cider of the patrons on the other side of the room and you receive no cider at all, well then it is doubtful that you will continue to patronize such an establishment. Suddenly I'm rather thirsty. Oh, thank you. Welcome dear. Of course, if you desire to return to the older times my dear, you will have to return to the great George Grendel and his introduction of the Stamp Act. Oh, good times. It was dreadful. As a lawyer I was inundated with taxes on all my necessary papers. Pleased to court, bails, court orders, rits of entry, and attorney's licenses were the highest taxed of them all. Mr. Gridley admonished me to serve the law rather than the gain of it. But it was difficult with these stamps. They made it difficult for anyone to gain anything at all. It was as if by design they were keeping us from our success. I have a charming Mr. Plow jogger on that one. Here we go. I do say I won't buy one shilling worth of anything that comes from Old England till the Stamp Act is appealed. No, I won't let any of my sons and daughters. I'd rather the Spitlefield waivers should pull down all the houses of Old England and knock the brains out of all wicked great men there than this country should lose their liberty. Our forefathers come over here for liberty of conscience and we've been nothing better than servants to them all along this andred years. I know not if it was their intent but it certainly felt as though they were trying to subjugate the colonies as much as tax them. Taxing newspapers and pamphlets it made reading a wealthier man's pursuit and we were desperate enough for education on this continent. Fortunately you were not alone in your dissatisfaction with the Stamp Act. They were protests all along Massachusetts. Well, if there is anything we New Englanders know it is how to make our voices heard. Your cousin Samuel can make people shout rather loudly. He does have a power to him. He took mobs that were fighting each other and turned them into a force for liberty. The sons of liberty were sometimes as dangerous as they were loud. Do you remember the protesting in Boston when they hung an effigy of the Stamp Collector under that entry? The sheriff was told to take it down but the crowd wouldn't let him. They only took it down to give the effigy a funeral march and a funeral fire. Well, didn't that collector ask to resign? Oh, indeed he did after they beheaded and burned his effigy in front of his house. I was none too surprised though. We colonists were not exactly innocents in our protest. Well, it wasn't only Massachusetts. We read about protests and boycotts in New York, Rhode Island, Virginia. Oh no, it took many voices to be heard across the sea. Boston was simply louder than the others. Oh, thankfully they heard us and repealed that hateful Stamp Act. Oh yes, but we were cheering so loudly that when we heard the news we did not hear that Parliament had passed the Declaratory Act at the same time. There, you see John, they did read our laws and ancient compacts between the crown and colonies and not liking what they read they simply used their unchallenged prerogative to change the law to something that suited them better. Thus declaring that Parliament would determine colonial policy in all cases whatsoever. Yes, thus clearing the way for the Townsend Acts, more duties on lead, paper, glass, tea. Oh, why did they have to be so mean about the tea? It was the hardest thing for me to give up. My dearest, would you be a patriot or a tea drinker? Liberty tea just never had the same effect. Well, one good thing to come out of those acts was that John Hancock was accused of smuggling and brought before the Admiralty courts on several occasions, acting as his attorney in those years did secure our finances during the early years of our marriage. Admiralty courts, what a farce. Judges also not of our own local assemblies choosing were being given princely salaries by the Crown in whose favor they might pass judgment. And along with sending judges that we neither wanted nor needed nor elected the Crown and Parliament continued to manipulate the American Newton Act. A fancy name for quartering a standing army among peaceable subjects. That had also been around in some form or other since 1689, but it was intended to have limitations of one year after the declarations of peace. And yet the buildup of troops here after the 1763 Treaty of Paris continued for years unabated. Well, after all of this do you still wish to live in the old times? Well, I simply wish for people to learn from them so they may stop blindly fighting each other. I fear that as long as there are politics and politicians that may never happen.