Such parties are dangerous only in the decline, not in the vigor of Republics. Rome was no longer fit for freedom, and needed a Dictator and a Sovereign, when Pompey and Cæsar divided the citizens. What though the magnanimity of Adams was not appreciated, and his contemporaries preferred his military competitor in the subsequent election? The sword gathers none but ripe fruits, and the masses of any people will sometimes prefer them to the long maturing harvest, which the statesmen of the living generations sow, to be reaped by their successors. For all this Adams cared not. He had extinguished the factions which for forty years had endangered the State. He had left on the records of history instructions and an example teaching how faction could be overthrown, and his country might resort to them when danger should recur. self he knew well, none knew better, that

"He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find

For him

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,

Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,

And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow

Contending tempests on his naked head,

And thus reward the toils which to their summits led."

The federal authority had so long been factiously opposed, that the popular respect for its laws needed to be renewed. The State of Georgia presented the fit occasion. She insisted on expelling, forcibly, rem

nants of Indian tribes, within her limits, in virtue of a treaty which was impeached for fraud, and came for revision before the Supreme Court and the Senate. The President met the emergency with boldness and decision. The demonstration thus given that good faith should be practised, and the law have its way, no matter how unequal the litigating parties, operated favorably toward restoring the moral influence of the Government. That influence, although sometimes checked, has recently increased in strength, until the federal authority is universally regarded as final, and liberty again walks confidently hand in hand with law.

John Quincy Adams "loved peace and ensued it." He loved peace as a Christian, because war was at enmity with the spirit and precepts of a religion which he held to be divine. As a statesman and magistrate, he loved peace, because war was not merely injurious to national prosperity, but because, whether successful or adverse, it was subversive of liberty. Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them. He favored, therefore, all the philanthropic efforts of the age to cultivate the spirit of peace, and looked forward with benevolent hope to the ultimate institution of a General Congress of nations for the adjustment of their controversies. But he was no visionary and no enthusiast. He knew that as yet war was often inevitable-that pusillanimity provoked it, and that national honor was national property of the highest value; because it was the best national defence. He admitted only de

fensive war-but he did not narrowly define it. He held that to be a defensive war, which was waged to sustain what could not be surrendered or relinquished without compromising the independence, the just influence, or even the proper dignity of the State. Thus he had supported the war with Great Britain-thus in later years he sustained President Jackson in his bold demonstration against France, when that power wantonly refused to perform the stipulations it had made in a treaty of indemnity; and thus he yielded his support to what was thought a warlike measure of the present administration in the diplomatic controversy with Great Britain concerning the Territory of Oregon. The living and the dead have mutual rights, and therefore it must be added that, he considered the present war with Mexico as unnecessary, unjust, and criminal. His opinion on this exciting question is among those on which he referred himself to that future age which he so often constituted the umpire between himself and his contemporaries.

With such principles on the subject of war, he regarded the establishment of a system of national defence as a necessary policy for consolidating the Republic. He prosecuted, therefore, on a large scale, the work of fortification, and defended against popular opposition the institution for the cultivation of military science, which has so recently vindicated that early favor through the learning, valor, patriotism and humanity exhibited by its pupils on the fields of Mexico.

But with that jealousy of the military spirit which never forsakes the wise republican statesman, he cooperated in reducing the army to the lowest scale commensurate with its necessary efficiency:

It was a vain and dangerous delusion (he said) to believe that in the present or any probable condition of the world, a commerce so extensive as ours could exist without the continual support of a military marine -the only arm by which the power of a confederacy could be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing force which could never be dangerous to our own liberties.

The enlargement of our navy, under the influence of these opinions, is among the measures of national consolidation we owe to him; and the institution for naval education we enjoy, is a recent result of his early suggestions.

But John Quincy Adams relied for national security and peace mainly on an enlightened and broad system of civil policy. He looked through the future combinations of States, and studied the accidents to which they were exposed, that he might seasonably remove causes of future conflict. His genius, when exercised in this lofty duty, played in its native element. He had cordially approved the measures by which Washington had secured the free navigation of the Mississippi. He approved the acquisition of Louisiana, although with Jefferson he insisted on a preliminary amendment of the constitution for that purpose. He had no narrow bigotry, concerning the soil to which the institutions of our fathers should be confined, and

no local prejudice against their extension in any direction required by the public security, if the extension should be made with justice, honor, and humanity.

The acquisition of Louisiana had only given us additional territory, fruitful in new commerce, to be exposed to dangers which remain to be overcome. Spain still possessed, beside the Island of Cuba, the Peninsula of the Floridas, and thus held the keys of the Mississippi. The real independence, the commercial and the moral independence, of the United States, remained to be effected at the close of the European wars, and of our own war with England. Our political independence had been confirmed, and that was all. John Quincy Adams addressed himself, as Secretary of State, to the subversion of what remained of the colonial system. He commenced by an auspicious purchase of the Floridas, which gave us important maritime advantages on the Gulf of Mexico, while it continued our Atlantic sea-board unbroken from the Bay of Fundy to the Sabine.

ment.

The ever-advancing American Revolution was at the same time opening the way to complete disinthralThe Spanish-American Provinces revolted, and seven new Republics, with constitutions not widely differing from our own-Buenos Ayres, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Chili, Central America, and Peru-suddenly claimed audience and admission among the nations of the earth. The people of those countries were but doubtfully prepared to maintain their