<P> Governor Thomas Hutchinson and his judges until 1772 received their salaries from the Massachusetts legislature . The Coercive Acts and the Tea Act were then passed by Parliament, and the British Crown assumed payment of those wages, drawn from customs revenues imposed upon that colony . According to biographer Ferling, the British government thus singled out Massachusetts for reprisals of previous rebellion and hoped in the process to force the other colonies into line . Boston radicals protested and asked John Adams to proclaim their objections . In "Two Replies of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Governor Hutchinson" Adams argued that the colonists had never been under the sovereignty of Parliament . Their original charter, as well as their allegiance, was exclusively with the king . If a workable line could not be drawn between parliamentary sovereignty and the total independence of the colonies, he continued, the colonies would have no other choice but independence from England . </P> <P> In 1775, in response to a set of essays by Daniel Leonard (writing under the pen name "Massachusettensis") defending Hutchinson's arguments for the absolute authority of Parliament over the colonies, Adams (writing as "Novanglus") composed a series of essays addressed to the people living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony . In them, he gave a point - by - point refutation of Leonard's essays, and then provided one of the most extensive and learned arguments made by the colonists against British imperial policy . It was a systematic attempt by Adams to describe the origins, nature, and jurisdiction of (unwritten) British concepts of constitutionality . Adams used his wide knowledge of English and colonial legal history to argue that the provincial legislatures were fully sovereign over their own internal affairs, and that the colonies were connected to Great Britain only through the king . (Full text of essays) </P> <P> The Boston Tea Party, a historic demonstration against the British enactments, took place on December 16, 1773 . The British schooner Dartmouth, loaded with tea to be traded subject to the new tea tax, had previously dropped anchor . By 9: 00 PM, the work of the protesters was done--they had demolished 342 chests of tea worth about ten thousand pounds--today's equivalent of about $1 million . Adams was briefly retained by the Dartmouth owners regarding the question of their liability for the destroyed shipment . Adams applauded the destruction of the tea . There had been no choice, he thought, and he called the defiant boarding of the vessels and the quick obliteration of the dutied beverage the "grandest Event" in the history of the colonial protest movement . He wrote the following day that the destruction of the dutied tea by the protesters had been an "absolutely and indispensably" necessary action . </P> <P> John Adams vehemently supported the right of all Americans to jury trials . Adams protested the 1765 passage of the Stamp Act, which gave jurisdiction to British Vice Admiralty Courts, rather than common law courts . Many colonists, including Adams, believed these courts, which operated without a jury, were corrupt and unfair . </P>

Which man served in the house of representatives for 17 years after his term as president