During the years that followed his graduation from college he was a businessman and a poor one, for a man who looks after public affairs much can not attend to his own.  But he managed to make shift; and when too closely pressed by creditors, a loan from Hancock, or John Adams, Hancock’s attorney, relieved the pressure.  In fact, when he went to Philadelphia “on that very important errand,” he rode a horse borrowed from John Adams, and his Sunday coat was the gift of a thoughtful friend.

In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-three, it became known that the British Government had on foot a scheme to demand a tribute from the Colonies.  On invitation of a committee, possibly appointed by Adams, Adams was requested to draw up instructions to the Representatives in the Colonial Legislature.  Adams did so and the document is now in the archives of the old State House at Boston, in the plain and elegant penmanship that is so easily recognized.  This document calls itself, “The First Public Denial of the Right of the British Parliament to tax the Colonies without their Consent, and the first Public Suggestion of a Union on the part of the Colonies to Protect themselves against British Aggression.”

The style of the paper is lucid, firm and logical; it combines in itself the suggestion of all there was to be said or could be said on the matter.  Adams saw all over and around his topic—­no unpleasant surprise could be sprung on him—­twenty-five years had he studied this one theme.  He had made himself familiar with the political history of every nation so far as such history could be gathered; he was past master of his subject.

However, when he was forty years of age his followers were few and mostly men of small influence.  The Calkers’ Club was the home of the sedition, and many of the members were day-laborers.  But the idea of independence gradually grew, and, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-five, Adams was elected a member of the Massachusetts Colonial Legislature.  In honor of his writing ability, he was chosen clerk of the Assembly, for in all public gatherings orators are chosen as presidents and newspapermen for secretaries.  Thus are honors distributed, and thus, too, does the public show which talent it values most.

On November Second, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, on motion of Adams, a committee of several hundred citizens was appointed “to state the Rights of the Colonies and to communicate and publish them to the World as the sense of the Town, with the infringements and violations thereof that have been or may be made from time to time; also requesting from each Town a free communication of their sentiments on this Subject.”

This was the Committee of Correspondence from which grew the union of the Colonies and the Congress of the United States.  It is a pretty well attested fact that the first suggestion of the Philadelphia Congress came from Samuel Adams, and the chief work of bringing it about was also his.