John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. VII 
he was engaged as counsel after he had come to the court, and 
next by an argument at Boston, when one of the judges at the 
court dinner after the trial, asking who this new advocate was, 
was answered, “ You and I shall live to see him the first man in 
this country.” 
In 1764 he formed the conjugal connexion, which proved so 
great a blessing to his life, and which was prolonged to within 
eight years of his decease. 
About this time he began to take an active concern in public 
affairs, although himself a private man. The cry of endangered 
liberty began to be uttered through the land; and could he hear it 
unmoved? His sympathetic nature made the interest, the honour, 
and danger of his country his own. He had been a writer in the 
newspapers in favour of American rights, but had not appeared for 
the cause in any public capacity, when, as his diary states, he 
received an invitation to join the counsel of the town of Boston 
in an argument, to be had before the judges, in favour of opening 
the courts for the administration of justice without the use of 
stamped paper. He regarded this as one of the eras of his life. 
He had not contemplated civil station. By accepting this call he 
would enter into the field of strife, might feel a necessity perma- 
nently to forego the quiet and security of privacy, and the benefits 
of his professional standing, opening before him in his chosen 
career, and possibly become the property of the public during 
the long agony that was threatened. Notwithstanding all these 
misgivings, he could not bring himself to reject the call. “Should 
such a man as I flee? —I, in principle, in feeling, by descent, by 
every pledge, a son of Liberty, a man of the people?” No; he 
would meet the hazard of the times. He said afterwards — « ] 
was never fond of public life, but on the contrary I avoided it 
