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of peace that yet endures, and, we willingly hope, may endure forever.

After fulfilling a subsequent mission at the Court of St. James, the pacificator entered the domestic service of the country as Secretary of State in the administration of James Monroe; and at the expiration of that administration became President of the United States. He attained the honors of the Republic at the age of fifty-seven, in the forty-ninth year of independence. He was sixth in the succession, and with him closed the line of Chief Magistrates who had rendered to their country some tribute of their talents in civil or military service in the war of independence.

John Quincy Adams, on entering civil life, had found the Republic unstable. He retired in 1829, leaving it firmly established. It was thus his happy fortune to preside at the completion of that work of consolidation the beginning of which was the end of the labors of Washington.

John Quincy Adams engaged in this great work while yet in private life, in 1793. He showed to his fellow-citizens, in a series of essays, the inability of the French people to maintain free institutions at that time, and the consequent necessity of American neutrality in the European war. Washington so much the pated his own decision.

These publications aided more because they anticiAdams sustained the same

great cause when he strengthened the administration

of Jefferson against the preponderating influence of

Great Britain. His diplomatic services in Holland and Russia secured, at a critical period, a favorable consideration in the Courts of those countries, which conduced to the same end; and his brilliant success in restoring peace to the country so sorely pressed, relieved her from her enemies, reassured her, and gave to sceptical Europe conclusive proof that her republican institutions were destined to endure.

The administration of John Quincy Adams blends so intimately with that of Monroe, in which he was chief Minister, that no dividing line can be drawn between them. Adams may be said, without derogation from the fame of Monroe, to have swayed the Government during his presidency; and with equal truth, Monroe may be admitted to have continued his administration through that of his successor.

The consolidation of the Republic required that faction should be extinguished. Monroe began this difficult task cautiously, and pursued it with good effect. John Quincy Adams completed the achievement. The dignity and moderation which marked his acceptance of the highest trust which a free people could confer, beautifully foreshadowed the magnanimity with which it was to be discharged. He confessed himself deeply sensible of the circumstances under which it had been conferred :

All my predecessors (he said) have been honored with majorities of the electoral voices, in the primary colleges. It has been my fortune to be placed, by the divisions of sentiment prevailing among

our countrymen, on this occasion, in competition, friendly and honorable, with three of my fellow-citizens, all justly enjoying, in eminent degrees, the public favor; and of whose worth, talents and services, no one entertains a higher and more respectful sense than myself. The names of two of them were, in the fulfilment of the provisions of the constitution, presented to the selection of the House of Representatives, in concurrence with my own, names closely associated with the glory of the nation, and one of them farther recommended by a larger majority of the primary electoral suffrages than mine. In this state of things, could my refusal to accept the trust thus delegated to me give an opportunity to the people to form and to express, with a nearer approach to unanimity, the object of their preference, I should not hesitate to decline the acceptance of this eminent charge, and to submit the decision of this momentous question again to their determination.

It argued a noble consciousness of virtue to express, on such an occasion, so ingenuously, the emotions of a generous ambition.

He displayed the same great quality no less when he called to the post of chief Minister, in spite of clamors of corruption, Henry Clay, that one of his late rivals who alone among his countrymen had the talents and generosity which the responsibilities of the period exacted.

John Quincy Adams signalized his accession to the post of dangerous elevation by avowing the sentiments concerning parties by which he was inflexibly governed throughout his administration :—

Of the two great political parties [he said] which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit, that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices, to the formation and administration of the Government, and that both have

error.

required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government of the United States first went into operation under the constitution, excited collisions of sentiments, and of sympathies, which kindled all the passions and embittered the conflict of parties, till the nation was involved in war, and the Union was shaken to its centre. This time of trial embraced a period of five-and-twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis of our own political divisions, and the most arduous part of action of the Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle, connected with the theory of government, or with our intercourse with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in force sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties, or given more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative debate. Our political creed, without a dissenting voice that can be heard, is that the will of the people is the source, and the happiness of the people is the end, of all legitimate government upon earth—that the best security for the beneficence, and the best guaranty against the abuse of power, consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections. That the General Government of the Union, and the separate Governments of the States, are all sovereignties of legitimate powers; fellow servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within their respective spheres-uncontrollable by encroachments on each other. If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy was a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled. If there have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds. If there have been dangerous attachments to one foreign nation, and antipathies against another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace at home and abroad have assuaged the animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion. There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by

the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing, as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence which, in times of contention for principle, was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.

During the administration of John Quincy Adams, he was really the Chief Magistrate. He submitted neither his reason nor his conscience to the control of any partisan cabal. No man was appointed to office in obedience to political dictation, and no faithful public servant was proscribed. The result rewarded his magnanimity. Faction ceased to exist. When South Carolina, a few years afterward, assumed the very ground that the ancient republican party had indicated as lawful and constitutional, and claimed the right and power to set aside, within her own limits, acts of Congress which she pronounced void, because they transcended the Federal authority, she called on the republican party throughout the Union in vain. The dangerous heresy had been renounced forever. Since that time there has been no serious project of a combination to resist the laws of the Union, much less of a conspiracy to subvert the Union itselt.

What though the elements of political strife remain? They are necessary for the life of free States. What though there still are parties, and the din and turmoil of their contests are ceaselessly heard? They are founded now on questions of mere administration, or on the more ephemeral questions of personal merit.

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