Extract from John Adams to Uriah Forrest

I received yesterday your favor of the 23rd ... The paper inclosed in it is a serious thing. It will be a motive, in addition to many others, for me to be upon my guard. It is evidence of a mind, soured, yet seeking for popularity, and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition, yet weak, confused, uninformed, and ignorant. I have been long convinced that this ambition is so inconsiderate as to be capable of going great lengths.

Published in Charles Francis Adams, ed., Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States (1853), 8:546–7.