In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented Commonplace Book, as an improvement upon Locke's, was brought to Mr. Adams for his recommendatory notice; which he declined, from a general rule he had adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might be very useful, if a practical system of such a manual could be simplified to the intellect and industry of common minds, which he doubted. "I had occupied and amused a long life," said he, "in the search of such a compendious wisdom-box, but without being able to find or make it. I had made myself more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but never used any one of them. I had learnt and practised Byrom's Shorthand Writing, but no one could read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double entry,--day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash-book, bank-book, house-book, and letter-book. I had made extracts, copies, translations, and quotations, more perhaps than other man living, without ever being able to pack up my knowledge or my labors in any methodical order; and now doubt whether I might not have employed my time more profitably in some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pursuit, adapting every hour of labor to the attainment of some great end." In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before the Massachusetts Historical Society a lecture on the war then existing between Great Britain and China. The principles stated and maintained in that lecture were so much in advance of the opinions entertained at the time, that it is believed to have been published in but a single newspaper in this country or in Europe, and never in a pamphlet form, except by the proprietors of the _Chinese Repository_, published in Macao, China, in May, 1842. Though his views were ridiculed or repudiated by many when delivered, they are at this day acknowledged; and are made some of the chief grounds of the justification of that invasion of the Chinese empire now apparently in successful progress. The subject is of preeminent importance, and is canvassed with that laborious research and independence eminently characteristic of the author.