Adams, Samuel (1722–1803)

AuthorDennis J. Mahoney
Pages31-32

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Samuel Adams was one of the greatest leaders of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION whose career flourished during the long struggle with Great Britain. His strength was in Massachusetts state politics; he was less successful as a national politician. His speeches and writings influenced the shape of American constitutional thought.

Adams's political career began in 1764 when he wrote the instructions of the Boston town meeting to Boston's representatives in the legislature. These included the first formal denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonists: "If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?"

The next year he was elected to the legislature and assumed leadership of the radical popular opposition to the governing clique headed by THOMAS HUTCHINSON. Adams maintained that he was defending not only the rights of British colonists but also the NATURAL RIGHTS of all men: "The leading principles of the British Constitution have their foundation in the Laws of Nature and universal Reason.? British rights are in great measure the Rights of the Colonists, and of all men else." Adams led the opposition to the Stamp Act and the TOWNSHEND ACTS. He denounced these acts as unconstitutional, since they involved TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.

In the MASSACHUSETTS CIRCULATION LETTER of 1768 Adams wrote of constitutions in general that they should be fixed and unalterable by ordinary legislation, and that under no constitution could subjects be deprived of their property except by their consent, given in person or by elected representatives. Of the British Constitution in particular he argued that, although Parliament might legislate on imperial matters, only the colonial assemblies could legislate on local matters or impose special taxes.

When the British government landed troops at Boston, Adams published a series of letters denouncing as unconstitutional the keeping of a standing army in peacetime without the consent of the people of the colony. "The Americans," he wrote, "as they were not and could not be represented in Parliament, were therefore suffering under military tyranny over which they were allowed to exercise no control."

In the early 1770s, Adams worked to create a network

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of committees of correspondence. In November 1772, on behalf of the Boston...

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