Hollis's main contribution to public service was protecting and advancing English liberty by circulating appropriate books on government. From 1754 he reprinted and distributed literature from the seventeenth-century, including works such as Toland's "Life of Milton", tracts by Marchamont Nedham, Henry Neville, and Philip Sidney, and John Locke's "Two Treatises of Government". From 1760, he had commissioned the bookseller Andrew Millar to publish works advocating republican government, including John Milton (1760), John Toland (1760), Algernon Sidney (1763), Henry Neville (1763) and John Locke (1764). The books were elegantly bound to give them greater effect and tooled with libertarian ornaments such as the liberty cap and owl. He also published writings by American colonists on the Stamp Act crisis, including John Adams's "Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law "(1765).