PUBLICATIONS OF THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS
volume lxxv
Donald R. Friary, President
Daniel R. Coquillette, Vice President
Celeste Walker, Vice President
Robert J. Allison, Vice President
Leslie A. Morris, Recording Secretary
Martha J. McNamara, Corresponding Secretary
William B. Perkins, Treasurer
COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATIONS
Pauline R. Maier, Chair
Robert Anderson
Donald R. Friary
Christopher Jedrey
Kenneth P. Minkema
Conrad Edick Wright
EDITOR OF PUBLICATIONS
John W. Tyler
PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT
THE MAJOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PAPERS OF JOSIAH QUINCY JUNIOR
PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT
The Major Political and Legal Papers of Josiah Quincy Junior
EDITORS
DANIEL R. COQUILLETTE
J. Donald Monan, S.J. University Professor, Boston College Lester Kissel Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
NEIL LONGLEY YORK
Karl G. Maeser Professor of General Education Chair, History Department, Brigham Young University
volume two 
The Law Commonplace Book
boston 2007
The Colonial Society of Massachusetts
Distributed by the University of Virginia Press
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE QUINCY PAPERS
This series of volumes represents the tireless and invaluable work of our research and administrative assistants: Brandon Bigelow, Kevin Cox, Jane Downing, Natalia Fekula, Michael Hayden, Elizabeth Kamali, Christina Nolan, Nicole Scimone, Brian Sheppard, Susannah Tobin, and Elisa Underwood, with special recognition to the Editorial Assistants to the Boston College Monan Chair, Brendan Farmer, Charles Riordan, and Patricia Tarabelsi, and to Inge Burgess at Harvard. Their intelligence and enthusiasm are visible on every page. Of course, we are deeply in debt to John W. Tyler, Editor of Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, as well as to the Committee of Publications, without whose guidance and support this project would have been impossible. Finally, special thanks are also due to the guardians of the Quincy heritage: the Massachusetts Historical Society with its enormously helpful Librarian, Peter Drummey, and his staff, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Quincy family itself.
frontispiece:
Old State House, by James Brown Marston (1775–1817). Oil on Panel, Boston, 1801. For many years, this was the seat of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. Josiah Quincy Jr., John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, James Otis Jr. and many others learned and practiced law in this neighborhood. See Witness to America’s Past: Two Centuries of Collecting by the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1991), p. 135. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Copyright © 2007 by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts
isbn 978-0-9620737-8-6
Printed from the income of the Sarah Louise Edes Fund
JOSIAH QUINCY JR.
Political and Legal Works
VOLUME TWO
THE LAW COMMONPLACE
(COMMENCED, 1763)
CO-EDITORS:
Daniel R. Coquillette
Neil Longley York
volume editor:
Daniel R. Coquillette
“From LAW arises Security: From Security Curiosity: And from Curiosity Knowledge. The latter Steps of this Progress may be more accidental; but the former are altogether necessary.”
From the first page of Josiah Quincy Jr.’s Law Commonplace, (1763) n.p., p. [1], Quoting David Hume, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” vol. 2, Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political (1742). See note 3, p. [81], infra.