Such was the state of society when John Adams appeared on the political stage.  There were but few rich men in New England,—­like John Hancock and John Langdon, both merchants,—­and not many who were very poor.  The population consisted generally of well-to-do farmers, shopkeepers, mechanics, and fishermen, with a sprinkling of lawyers and doctors and ministers, most of whom were compelled to practise the severest economy, and all of whom were tolerably educated and familiar with the principles on which their rights and liberties rested.  Usually they were law-abiding, liberty-loving citizens, with a profound veneration for religious institutions, and contentment with their lot.  There was no hankering for privileges or luxuries which were never enjoyed, and of which they never heard.  As we read the histories of cities or states, in antiquity or in modern times, we are struck with their similarity, in all ages and countries, in everything which pertains to domestic pleasures, to religious life, to ordinary passions and interests, and the joys and sorrows of the soul.  Homer and Horace, Chaucer and Shakespeare, dwell on the same things, and appeal to the same sentiments.

So John Adams the orator worked on the same material, substantially, that our orators and statesmen do at the present day, and that all future orators will work upon to the end of time,—­on the passions, the interests, and the aspirations which are eternally the same, unless kept down by grinding despotism or besotted ignorance, as in Egypt or mediaeval Europe, and even then the voice of humanity finds entrance to the heart and soul.  “All men,” said Rousseau, “are born equal;” and both Adams and Jefferson built up their system of government upon this equality of rights, if not of condition, and defended it by an appeal to human consciousness,—­the same in all ages and countries.  In regard to these elemental rights we are no more enlightened now than our fathers were a hundred years ago, except as they were involved in the question of negro slavery.  When, therefore, Adams began his career as a political orator, it was of no consequence whether men were rich or poor, or whether the country was advanced or backward in material civilization.  He spoke to the heart and the soul of man, as Garrison and Sumner and Lincoln spoke on other issues, but involving the same established principles.

Little could John Adams have divined his own future influence and fame when, as a boy on his father’s farm in Braintree, he toiled in rural and commonplace drudgeries, or when he was an undistinguished student at Harvard or a schoolmaster in a country village.  It was not until political agitations aroused the public mind that a new field was open to him, congenial to his genius.

Still, even when he boarded with his father, a sturdy Puritan, at the time he began the practice of the law at the age of twenty-three, he had his aspirations.  Writes he in his diary, “Chores, chat, tobacco, apples, tea, steal away my time, but I am resolved to translate Justinian;” and yet on his first legal writ he made a failure for lack of concentrated effort.  “My thoughts,” he said, “are roving from girls to friends, from friends to court, and from court to Greece and Rome,”—­showing that enthusiastic, versatile temperament which then and afterwards characterized him.