The Copley head seems also to have been used in the sitting figure, which appeared in the _Impartial History of the War in America_ (London, 1780, p. 207), of which a fac-simile is elsewhere given. The same picture was reëngraved in even poorer manner in the Boston edition of the book with the same title (1781, p. 346). Other contemporary engravings are found in the _European Magazine_ (iv. p. 105); in the _Royal American Magazine_ (March, 1774, reproduced in fac-simile in the _Mem. Hist. Boston_, iii. 46); and in Murray's _Impartial History of the present War_ (1778, vol. i. p. 144). Cf. Drake's _Tea Leaves_, p. 286.
The character of Hancock had pettinesses that have served to lower his popular reputation, and this last is well reflected in the drawing of his traits in Wells's _Sam. Adams_ (ii. 381). John Adams, whose robustness of character was quite at variance with that of his friend, was not blinded to sterling qualities in the rich man, who gave an adherence to a cause that few of his position in Massachusetts did (_John Adams's Works_, x. 259, 284). Adams's grandson speaks of the biography of Hancock in Sanderson's _Signers_ as a curious specimen of unfavorable judgment in the guise of eulogy, and a sketch by this same grandson, C. F. Adams, is in the _Penna. Mag. of Hist._, p. 73, and a memoir by G. Mountfort in Hunt's _American Merchants_, vol. ii. The accounts in Loring's _Hundred Boston Orators_, p. 72, and by Gen. W. H. Sumner in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, April, 1854 (viii. 187), are rambling antiquarian tales.]
[Illustration: JOHN HANCOCK. (_From the "Geschichte der Kriege."_)]
John Adams (_Works_, ii. 507; ix. 617) said of _Common Sense_ that it embodied a "tolerable summary of the arguments for independence which he had been speaking in Congress for nine months", and which Mahon (vi. 96) has called "cogent arguments" "in clear, bold language;" but Adams deemed unwise some of its suggestions for the governments of the States, and to counteract their influence he published anonymously his _Thoughts on Government_ (Philadelphia, 1776; Boston, 1776; often since, and also in _Works_, iv. 193; ix. 387, 398), which he says met the approval of no one of any consideration except Benjamin Rush. He added his name to the second edition, and records that it soon had due influence upon the Assemblies of the several States, when about this time they adopted their constitutions. Adams's views were first embodied in a letter to R. H. Lee, Nov. 15, 1775 (_Works_, iv. 185; Sparks's _Washington_, ii., App.). What seems an anonymous reply from a native of Virginia—that colony being then engaged in framing a constitution—was _An address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia_, which was an attempt to counteract the tendency to popular features in government, which Adams had inculcated. It is in Force, 4th ser., vi. 748, and was written by Carter Braxton (Hildeburn's _Issues of the press in Pennsylvania_, Philad., 1886, no. 3,340).