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A Quiet Christmas with Mr. Adams

By E.L. Lipman

With the courts adjourned for Christmas Day, I have curled alongside a roaring fire with my very favorite book ? The Portable John Adams ? which, as it turns out, was a loving holiday gift from Mrs. Within the Scope last year.

A regulatory repealer that a young Mr. Adams posed in a diary entry, written on a similarly quiet day in 1756, while he was studying the law under James Putnam, had me thinking. The 21 year-old law clerk posited this set of legal reforms for his era (and perhaps for ours):

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law-book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance and frugality and industry; to justice and kindness and charity towards his fellow men. And to piety, love and reverence towards Almighty God. In this Commonwealth no man would impair his health by gluttony, drunkenness or lust; no man would sacrifice his most precious time to cards or any other trifling and mean amusement; no man would steal or lie, or in any way defraud his neighbor, but would live in peace and good will with all men; no man would blaspheme his Maker or profane his worship; but a rational and manly, a sincere and unaffected piety and devotion would reign in all hearts. What a utopia, what a paradise would this region be!?

Wishing everyone who reads the pages of WTS a joyous holiday ? and if you can manage it, time for reflection and your favorite books.

Full post as published by Within the Scope on December 25, 2007 (boomark / email).