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-this report touches the new president very sensibly in his tenderest point he cannot tell

'whether this weeping was from joy or grief-whether from the loss of their beloved President, or from the accession of an unbeloved one. Everybody talks of the tears, the full eyes, the trickling eyes, &c., but all is enigma to me. No one descends into particulars to say why or wherefore I am therefore left to suppose that it is all grief for the loss of their beloved!'-vol. ii. p. 247.

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What!-John Adams could not understand the emotions of a grateful people-a people created by Washington's genius and virtue-on seeing the beloved' father of his country descending into, as it were, the tomb of retirement! and could fancy in it something of a personal slight to himself!

In the same spirit, though in a less offensive form, he shows his appetite for personal applause, and something like mortification that his accession did not make more noise :

And now, [a fortnight after the inauguration,] the world is as silent as the grave. All the federalists seem to be afraid to approve anybody but Washington. The Jacobin papers damn with faint praise, and undermine with misrepresentation and insinuation. If the federalists go to playing pranks, I will resign the office, and let Jefferson lead them to peace, wealth, and power if he will.'-vol. ii. p. 252.

These traits (and many others could be quoted) certainly prove that Governor Hutchinson's early appreciation of his character was strikingly just; and we cease to wonder at Mrs. Adams's wish that so accurate a painter were hanged. Il n'y a que la vérité qui blesse. They also tend to corroborate the suspicion that the peculiar sourness with which he always alludes to his diplomatic reception in London may have had its origin in some trivial or perhaps groundless personal jealousy. We say trivial or groundless, because we think that if it had been otherwise it would have been by this time avowed.

But bating these weaknesses-for the exhibition, if intentional, of which we are bound to acknowledge the candour of the editorMr. Adams won his eminent station honourably, and filled it respectably in talent and honestly in principle. As Mrs. Adams soon joined him at the seat of Government, the letters during his Presidency are few and unimportant, which we the more regret, because the details of Mr. Adams's administration are but imperfectly known, and are skipped over as it were by the biographer: we know, indeed, generally, that he inherited from Washington the enmity of the French party, and at last found himself forced, as we think, into hostilities with France-from which he had little prospect of retreating with honour, or of advancing with much hope of ultimate success; but, fortunately,

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the profligate sway of the Directory was overthrown, and Buonaparte was too happy to relieve his new-born power from the difficulties and unpopularity of a war with America.

We believe that Mr. Adams's conduct in all this affair was not only justifiable but laudable; that indeed it was almost inevitable; and we regret that we have no record of his own personal feelings and views in that important crisis. It shook, however, his popularity so much, that, instead of being pressed, as he once dreamed, to a third presidency, he was even refused a second: towards the close of 1800, Mr. Jefferson, the avowed champion of French principles and the head of the French party, was elected in his room; though, in justice to Mr. Adams and his country, we must add, by a majority of only one; and on the 4th of March, 1801, Mr. Adams retired into private life, not unhonoured, though unaccompanied by any of those higher emotions which he had envied to Washington!

Indeed, in reply to a birthday address in 1802, the year after, he reverted with bitterness to the treatment he had received :

Under the continual provocations breaking and pouring on me, from unexpected as well as expected quarters, during the two last years of my administration, he must have been more of a modern epicurean philosopher than ever I was or ever will be, to have borne them all without some incautious expressions, at times, of an unutterable indignation.'-Biog. tit.

He, however, was generally and justly respected in his retirement; and there can be no doubt that his name and fame contributed to the subsequent election of his able and excellent son to the presidential chair-in which he was destined like his father -and from much the same honourable causes-to receive the affront, as it had become, of non-re-election.

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Mr. Adams died in 1826, at the venerable age of ninety-one -very remarkably-on the anniversary of the declaration of Independence. On that morning he was roused by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, and when asked if he knew what day it was, replied—'Oh, yes, the glorious 4th of July!' In the forenoon he was visited by the orator of the day, the minister of the parish, who found him seated in an arm-chair, and asked him for a sentiment to be given at the public table. I will give you,' said the patriarch, Independence for ever!' Towards the close of the day he exclaimed Jefferson survives!' but it was not so-for, strange to say, Jefferson had already died at one o'clock of that same day on which Mr. Adams expired at six in the evening; and by a still more wonderful coincidence another Ex-President, Munroe, also died on the same anniversary in 1830.

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Mr. Adams was a warm professor of republican principles, but moderate and sober in their application: a friend of liberty, but not less the advocate of order and discipline in the state; and it will be happy for his country if his example and his precepts shall be so far remembered as to tend to moderate and control that spirit of unbounded democracy which has been growing, we fear, in America, and which we believe to be incompatible with any permanent system of rational government.

Mr. Adams expresses on many occasions his fears on this subject with an earnestness and sagacity that do him honour; and, in spite of his little personal dissatisfaction against England, he was always ready to do ample justice to the merits of our form of government.

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The newspapers have represented my writings as monarchical, as having a monarchical tendency an aristocratical tendency. In answer to these charges, I only wish to have them read. I have represented the British constitution as the most perfect model that has yet been discovered or invented by human genius and experience for the government of the great nations of Europe. It is a master-piece. It is the only system that has preserved, or can preserve, the shadow, the colour, or the semblance of liberty to the people, in any of the great nations of Europe. Our own Constitution I have represented as the best for us, in our peculiar situation.'-Letter of John Adams to S. Perley, June 19, 1809.

We agree with Mr. Adams that the constitution of the United States was perhaps the best that they could have adopted in their 'peculiar situation.' The only question is whether it will be found so when the peculiarity' of that situation shall have worn out.

We have not the slightest desire that the great American experiment of cheap-elective-and federative government should fail. On the contrary, we think it of great importance to the future welfare of mankind that it should succeed; that is, that the general government should have both constitutional and practical authority to ensure peace and justice at home-peace and justice abroad. Our doubts are whether the present elective and federative forms afford a sufficient guarantee for those great objectsand in these doubts we only concur with the wisest and most patriotic of the statesmen of America-of the authors of the experiment-of the very founders of the constitution! We have heretofore often stated our reasons for thinking that the experiment has never yet reached its crisis-we have indicated the various temporary and local causes which have tended to preserve the federal government-the various subsidiary accidents which have helped to lubricate the working of what we suspect to be an imperfect machine. These causes and accidents must gradu

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ally wear out; and whenever they shall be exhausted-then, and not fully till then, will the intrinsic efficacy of the American system be brought to the test. We ourselves sincerely wish that the day of crisis may be distant, and that some intermediate correctives may be found for that laxity of principle and conflict of authority of which we have had so many recent indications.

One danger, however, both to America and England, may be nearer at hand than any arising from the natural course of circumstances we mean a hostile collision between the two countriesand it is our prayer and our hope that the wisdom of the respective Governments may prevent-and it is, we have no doubt, in their power to do so-so great a misfortune to the civilised world.

It is impossible that any other two independent nations can have such a community of interests as England and America. In truth, we know of no material and substantial interest in which they are opposed-nay, in which they are separated: their origin, their laws, and their language are the same; their business, their prosperity, are identified: New York is but a suburb of Liverpool, or, if you will, Liverpool of New York: the failure of the Pennsylvanian bank ruined more fortunes in England than in America; the manufactures of Manchester share more wealth with Carolina than with Middlesex. We are not merely brothers and cousins-the ties of consanguinity, we know, are not always the bond of friendship—but we are partners-joint tenants, as it were, of the commerce of the world; and we have had, as we have just hinted, melancholy experience that distress on either shore of the Atlantic must be almost equally felt on the other.

And why should we quarrel? What are the grounds or objects of any difference between us? We know of but two, or at most three, points of difference on which the most captious on either side of the Atlantic have raised even a question-and what are they? Matters which, we firmly believe, two intelligent and honest negotiators might settle in a fortnight, and which owe their chief interest to their being made the pretexts of those who wish, for private or personal objects, to blow up a conflagration.

The vast importance to the peace and happiness of the world of our relations with the United States will, we hope, be a sufficient apology for our taking this occasion of making some, as we hope, conciliatory observations on these pending questions.

The first is that of the Canadian boundary; and there is, we believe, another boundary question down in the Far West. We are not now going to repeat our recent argument on the Canadian boundary, but we cannot allude to it without expressing our conviction of its utter unimportance to the great American nation, however interesting it may be to the land-jobbers or popularity

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hunters of the State of Maine. The difficulty has arisen out of the terms of a treaty made in utter ignorance on both sides, and now, by both sides, admitted to be inconsistent and impracticable;-what then remains but-if we adhere to this bungled treaty at all-to look to the intention and meaning of the parties? On this point we beg leave, as the best argument we can use, to reproduce once more a diagram of the disputed and the adjacent territories.

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The shaded triangular space, C A B, represents the disputed territory; and can any rational man believe that it was the intention of the parties to protrude this shapeless and incongruous horn up into the regions watered by the River St. John-cutting off the course of that river from its maritime outlet, and blocking up the direct communication between the capitals and territories of our most important North American colonies? No man does or can believe so monstrous a proposition-General Jackson did not-Mr. Secretary Livingstone did not; and we cannot but hope that some arrangement, on the fair, rational, and honourable basis (as we understand it) proposed by those gentlemen, may be still practicable. The principle of the treaty was rationally conceived, though it was so unfortunately and obscurely expressed namely, that the party which possessed the mouth of a river should also possess its course, and that the boundary-line should pass between the sources of the rivers which eventually flowed

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