nal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavour to investigate every just cause, and remove every colourable pretence of complaint; if an intention to pursue, by amicable negotiation, a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow citizens by whatever nation, and if success cannot be obtained, to lay the facts before the legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honour and interest of the government and its constituents demand; if a resolution to do justice, as far as may depend upon me, at all times, and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship and benevolence with all the world; if an unshaken confidence in the honour, spirit and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all, and never been deceived; if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country, and of my own duties towards it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people, deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age; and, with humble reverence, I feel it my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people, who profess and call themselves christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for christianity, among the best recommendations for the public service -can enable me, in any degree, to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavour," &c.

The administration of Mr. Adams should be left to the historian, within whose province, rather than that of biography, it is properly confined. A very slight notice of some of the prominent circumstances will be permitted, however, to this imperfect sketch of his eventful life.

His public measures as president have been often compared with those of his predecessor and his successor; and because he was not re-elected as they were, the comparison has been

supposed to show his fitness for that high office to a disadvantage. But the circumstances were widely different; he fell on evil days, and it is not conceivable that any possible course of conduct, on his part, could have prevented the overthrow of the party with which his name was connected. Without disparaging the character of Mr. Jefferson, it is nevertheless true, that his defects were concealed in the glare of his success, while the virtues of Mr. Adams were obscured in the gloom of his fall, or rather in the fall of the federal party.

Notwithstanding the extraordinary popularity of Washington, scarcely any important act of his administration had escaped the most bitter invective. Mr. Adams, of course, was not exempted from the same hostility. He found a cabinet composed of able men, but not of his choosing, therefore not bound to him by any tie of gratitude, and not personally attached to him. He continued them in their offices from the best motives, but the policy was unfortunate. He found, too, the government embroiled in a dispute with France, and one of his earliest communications to congress had to comprise the information of an outrageous insult offered to the minister of the United States by the government of that country. The speech of the president on this occasion was dignified and eloquent; it was calculated to rouse those indignant feelings which a high spirited people, insulted and injured by a foreign power, can never fail to display, if their sensibility to external wrongs is not blunted by invincible prejudice. On the manifestation of such feelings he relied for the success of any further negotiation, and on their real existence he depended for the defence of the national honour, if further negotiation should be fruitless.

An enthusiastic admiration of France, however, prevailed among a very large portion of the American people; an ad

miration which all are now willing to allow was excessive, By this part of the community it was

though generous. insisted that the provocation had been given by the preceding administration, and that the United States owed the first apology. After the hearty approbation of Washington's public conduct, manifested at the time by a large majority of the people, it would have been impossible to undo what he had done. To yield to the wishes of this party was therefore out of the question. Mr. Adams was compelled by the force of circumstances, as well as by the dictates of his own judgment, to persist in a manly and dignified deportment towards the French rulers, who had been endeavouring to excite among the American people a dissatisfaction with their chosen legislators and magistrates.

He was encouraged by addresses from all quarters, and among the rest by the approving voice of Washington. He did not abandon hope, however, of a pacification. Congress and the people, excepting the party opposed to him, went much further than he did in their view of the extent to which the national honour required the United States to go towards actual war. He offended many of the zealous federalists by appointing a new commission, consisting of three envoys, to France, in consequence of an informal intimation from the French government that they would give a respectful reception to such an embassy.

The gentlemen selected for this mission, Messrs. Pinckney, Marshall and Gerry, were treated with insult by the French Directory. History hardly furnishes an example of such open contumely suffered by one nation from another, as the United States now received, in the persons of their ministers, from France. Yet it is certain that the popularity of Mr. Adams was affected by the measures, moderate as they were, that he recommended for upholding the national character. VOL. I.-X

He was unfortunate, if not being re-elected was a misfortune, in other particulars than the prevailing sympathy for republican France. In his enlarged views of policy, a naval establishment was considered necessary to protect our commerce and defend our territory. The nation has since done justice to his wisdom, in this particular, by adopting the same policy; but during his administration, and for some years afterwards, the navy was not regarded with general good will. The intemperate abusiveness of the press was looked upon, at that time, with a degree of uneasiness that has disappeared since the true corrective has been better understood; and laws were made to restrain the publication of falsehoods calculated to injure the government. Other measures were adopted, with a view to strengthen the executive power in a season of national peril and difficulty. The people had not been accustomed to see such restraints imposed even upon the seditious; and imputed indiscriminately to the president the blame which belonged to the leaders of a party in Congress.

He proceeded, meanwhile, in the honest discharge of his duties, without courting popularity by any sacrifices. He dismissed the secretary of state, when he thought the national interests required a change, without fearing the effect of a division among his friends. His manners and address were as unbending as his public principles; he was neither possessed of the grand and imposing presence of Washington, nor the fascinating vivacity of conversation that distinguished Mr. Jefferson. His figure was low and ungraceful, his address often abrupt and repulsive. Nor did he always know how to conceal his sentiments when concealment would have been prudent. Of this failing he was himself well aware, and once when in the room of Stuart the painter, he looked at the portraits of Washington and himself standing side by side, and observed the tightly closed mouth in the picture of

Washington, and the severed lips in his own, "Ah," said he with a smile, "that fellow," pointing to his own likeness, "never could keep his mouth shut."

Of the particulars in public policy to which he lent his influence or concurrence, some have been since adopted as the permanent politics of the nation; the wisdom of others is still a subject of dispute among men of sense and patriotism, but the perfect purity of his intentions has been admitted even by Mr. Jefferson, when he was the active leader, as well as the candidate of the opposing party. During the heat of the political contests which resulted in the elevation of that distinguished person to the presidency, he rebuked the violence of some young politicians, who were imputing to Mr. Adams designs injurious to the republican institutions of his country. "Gentlemen," said Mr. Jefferson, "you do not know that man; there is not upon this earth a more perfectly honest man than John Adams. Concealment is no part of his character; of that he is utterly incapable. It is not in his nature to meditate any thing that he would not publish to the world. The measures of the general government are a fair subject for difference of opinion, but do not found your opinions on the notion that there is the smallest spice of dishonesty, moral or political, in the character of John Adams, for I know him well, and I repeat that a man more perfectly honest never issued from the hands of his Creator."

With integrity thus vouched for and not disputed, talents of a high order, great experience in public affairs, and unbounded patriotism, he was a candidate for re-election, and was not re-elected. It is probable that nothing in his power to do, nor his possessing a hundred fold the talents, experience and virtue, if that were possible, could have prevented the defeat of the party with which he was unfortunately connected, and whose rashness in the use of power 800n consigned them, as a party, to a final overthrow, and