John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

328

24. IV. and IV:30. Thursday.

Brown James Currier Solomon H. Wood

After a very uneasy Night I rose at four, and again half an hour afterwards, suffering with an oppression of phlegm upon the lungs, which depresses the Spirits beyond the Power of Philosophy.— I began writing an Essay without any distinct purpose, which occupied me till my usual hour for walking— Received a Letter from Joseph Blunt which I answered. Mr Brown late Minister of the United States in France, whence he has recently returned called and spent an hour with me this Evening— Mrs Brown is in bad health and has been so ill that it was one cause of their returning home— They have taken up a temporary residence in Philadelphia— Mr Currier was nominated by me last winter as Collector of the Customs at Newbury-Port, and confirmed by the Senate— In June he was removed and a Mr Phillips of Andover appointed in his place— He Currier had one of the largest lists of recommendation from the merchants of Newbury-Port that I ever received; and he says his friends could not conceive that he should have been removed without cause— Mr William Bartlett in particular he said had expressed that opinion, and advised him to demand what the cause was he therefore came here, and applied to the Secretary of the Treasury Ingham, who refused to assign to him any other reason, but that there had been a great political contest— I had never seen Mr Currier before, but he said he called to return me thanks for my nomination of him. He had been the deputy of the preceding Collector, and the whole business of the Office, had been for some years transacted by him. I finished reading the second and began the third Dialogue de Oratore— The introduction to the third is an eloquent and pathetic lamentation, at the tragical end of most of the Interlocutors of the Work— He says that Crassus died within ten days after the time at which he has fixed the Dialogues as held— Died of a fever occasioned by high political excitement; and that Catulus, Antonius, Julius Caesar, Cotta and Sulpicius all afterwards died violent Deaths— And as if with a prophetic forecast of his own fate, he acknowledges that the advice which his brother Quintus had often given him to take warning from all these cruel Catastrophes, and abstain from exposing himself to the same calamities had been wise and good— But he says it is no longer possible for him to chuse his course— That his labours and dangers have been in some degree compensated by glory, and that in the midst of them he turns with delight to the studies and meditations of his youth.