Quincy, September 18, 1818.

DEAR SIR,

THE English doctrine of allegiance is so mysterious, fabulous and enigmatical, that it is difficult to decompose the elements of which it is compounded. The priests, under the Hebrew economy, especially the sovereign pontiffs, were anointed with consecrated oil, which was poured upon their heads in such profusion, that it ran down their beards, and they were thence called "the Lord's anointed." When kings were permitted to be introduced, they were anointed in the same manner by the sovereign pontiff; and they too were called "the Lord's anointed." When the pontiffs of Rome assumed the customs, pomps and ceremonies of the Jewish priesthood, they assumed the power of consecrating things, by the same ceremony of "holy oil." The pope, who, as vicar of God, possessed the whole globe of earth in supreme dominion and absolute property, possessed also the power of sending the holy ghost wherever he pleased. To France it pleased his holiness to send him in a phial of oil; to Rheims in the beak of a dove. I have not heard, that my friend, Louis 18th. has been consecrated at Rheims by the pouring on of this holy oil; but his worthy elder brother, Louis 16th. was so consecrated at a vast expense of treasure and ridicule. How the holy bottle was conveyed to England, is worth inquiry. But there it is, and is used at every coronation; and is demurely, if not devoutly shewn to every traveller who visits the tower. These ideas were once as firmly established in England, as they were in Rome; and no small quantity of the relicks of them remain to this day. Hence the doctrines of the divine right of kings, and the duties in subjects of unlimited submission, passive obedience and non-resistance, on pain (Oh, how can I write it) of eternal damnation. These doctrines have been openly and boldly asserted and defended, since my memory, in the town of Boston, and in the town of Quincy, by persons of no small consideration in the world, whom I could name, but I will not, because their posterity are much softened from this severity.

This indelible character of sovereignty in kings, and obedience in subjects, still remains. The rights and duties are inherent, unalienable, indefeasible, indestructible and immortal. Hence the right of a lieutenant or midshipman of a British man of war, to search all American ships, impress every seaman his judgeship shall decree by law, and in fact to be a subject of his king, and compel him to fight, though it may be against his father, brother or son. My countrymen! will you submit to these miserable remnants of priestcraft and despotism?

There is no principle of law or government, that has been more deliberately or more solemnly adjudged in Great Britain, than that allegiance is not due to the king in his official capacity or political capacity, but merely to his personal capacity. Allegiance to parliament is no where found in English, Scottish or British laws. What, then, had our ancestors to do with parliament? Nothing more than with the Jewish Sanhedrim, or Napoleon's literary and scientific Institute at Grand Cairo. They owed no allegiance to parliament as a whole, or in part. None to the house of lords, as a branch of the legislature, nor to any individual peer or number of individuals. None to the house of commons, as another branch, nor to any individual commoner or group of commoners. They owed no allegiance to the nation, any more than the nation owed to them; and they had as good and clear a right to make laws for England, as the people of England had to make laws for them.

What right, then, had king James 1st. to the sovereignty, dominion, or property of North America? No more than king George 3d. has to the Georgium Sidus, because Mr. Herschell discovered that planet in his reign. His only colour, pretension or pretext is this. The pope, as head of the church, was sovereign of the world. Henry 8th. deposed him, became head of the church in England; and consequently became sovereign master and proprietor of as much of the globe as he could grasp. A group of his nobles hungered for immense landed estates in America, and obtained from his quasi holiness a large tract. But it was useless and unprofitable to them. They must have planters and settlers. The sincere and conscientious protestants had been driven from England into Holland, Germany, Switzerland, &c. by the terrors of stocks, pillories, croppings, scourges, imprisonments, roastings and burnings, under Henry 8th. Elizabeth, Mary, James 1st. and Charles 1st. The noblemen and gentlemen of the council of Plymouth wanted settlers for their lands in America, and set on foot a negotiation with the persecuted fugitive religionists abroad, promised them liberty of conscience, exemption from all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical, civil and political, except allegiance to the king, and the tribute, moderate surely, of one fifth of gold and silver ore. This charter was procured by the council at Plymouth, and displayed off as a lure to the persecuted, fugitive Englishmen abroad; and they were completely taken into the snare, as Charles 2d. convinced them in the first year of his actual, and the twelfth of his imaginary reign. Sir Josiah Child, enemy as he was, has stated, in the paragraphs quoted from him in a former letter fairly and candidly the substance of these facts.

Our ancestors had been so long abroad, that they had acquired comfortable establishments, especially in Holland, that singular region of toleration, that glorious asylum for persecuted Hugunots and Puritans; that country where priests have been enternally worrying one another; and alternately teazing the government to persecute their antagonists, but where enlightened statesmen have constantly and intrepidly resisted their wild fanaticism.

The first charter, the charter of James 1st. is more like a treaty between independent sovereigns, than like a charter of grant of privileges from a sovereign to his subjects. Our ancestors were tempted by the prospect and promise of a government of their own, independent in religion, government, commerce, manufactures, and every thing else, excepting one or two articles of trifling importance.

Independence of English church and state, was the fundamental principle of the first colonization, has been its general principle for two hundred years, and now I hope is past dispute.

Who then was the author, inventor, discoverer of independence? The only true answer must be the first emigrants; and the proof of it is the charter of James 1st. When we say, that Otis, Adams, Mayhew, Henry, Lee, Jefferson, &c. were authors of independence, we ought to say they were only awakeners and revivers of the original fundamental principle of colonization.

I hope soon to relieve you from the trouble of this tedious correspondence with your humble servant,

JOHN ADAMS.