diplomacy under the Higher Law; that we consider the whole of this continent appropriated, and that we will hold any attempted intervention of European powers for the sake of controlling affairs in America an injury to ourselves, which we shall resent or resist as we think proper. This system of doctrine is substantially identical with the immortal policy of Washington, as exhibited in his proclamation of neutrality-the sublimest act of his government-and laid down so explicitly in his farewell address, in words of almost superhuman wisdom: Europe has a set of primacy which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to preserve a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality. we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own, to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our prosperity in the toils of European. ambition, rivalry, interest, humor or caprice?'

"It comprises, in substance, also the principle of non-intervention, which the liberals of continental Europe long for, and which Kossuth argued for so effectively in this country. It is not, however, a namby-pamby sentimentalism of non-intervention, which idly weeps for the sufferings of the oppressed, but lifts neither hand nor voice for their deliverance. It is not the cold selfishness of Cain, when he whined out, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' It is not the cowardice of imbecility which shrinks from speaking the truth, or doing what is right through base and servile fear of loss. It is intervention withstood manfully and prevented energetically. In proper circumstances it bids the oppressor, Hold!' and if that is ineffectual, boldly takes him by the throat and hurls him back from his victims. It means that we will not submit to wrong toward ourselves, and when duty calls we will censure and even resent a wrong done to others. It includes what Kossuth termed Intervention for non-intervention.' The closing declaration by President Monroe produced an effect upon Europe which it is impossible for the present generation to realize. That whole continent was then firmly united in one political system, devised by the highest human sagacity, fortified by the most solemn compacts, and

sustained by veteran armies, and all actuated by a common conviction that the one grand political danger of the civilized world was in the spread of liberal principles, of which the United States were the source and the seed-bed. And while they were actually negotiating among themselves for the commencement of operations that it was expected would cripple and ultimately crush us, behold! they are suddenly confronted by the young Republic looking all Europe boldly in the face and crying 'Hands off, ruffians!' And they very prudently kept hands off for forty years.

"Mr. Monroe's administration may be deemed to have culminated in the utterance of the great declaration. Its boldness fairly stunned the holy alliance, and by taking from that huge conspiracy its prestige of irresistibleness, took it down from the height of its arrogance, and was the first blow toward its dissolution. The last year of his term was rendered unhappy by personal divisions among the members of his cabinet, three out of the four being eager candidates for the next succession, in addition to his favorite speaker of the house and the most distinguished general whom he had promoted."

Mr. Adams speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Monroe's character and history, and eulogizes his whole career as characteristic "of a mind anxious and unwearied in the pursuit of truth and right; patient of inquiry, patient of contradiction, courteous, even in the collision of sentiment; sound in its ultimate judgments, and firm in its final conclusions." Referring to his course while President, he makes use of the following strong and complimentary terms: "There behold him for a term of eight years, strengthening his country for defense by a system of combined. fortifications, military and naval; sustaining her rights, her dignity and honor abroad; soothing her dissensions and conciliating her acerbities at home; controlling by a firm, though peaceful policy the hostile spirit of the European alliance against republican southern America; extorting by the mild compulsion of reason the shores of the Pacific from the stipulated acknowledgment of Spain, and leading back the imperial autocrat of the north to his lawful boundaries from his hastily asserted dominion over the southern ocean, thus strengthening and consolidating the federative edifice of his country's union, till he was entitled to say, like Augustus Cæsar, of his imperial city, that he had found her built of brick and left her constructed of marble."

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

J

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE-ENTRANCE UPON A PUBLIC CAREER.

OHN QUINCY ADAMS was born at Braintree, (now Quincy), Mas sachusetts, some ten miles from Boston, July 11, 1767. His father was John Adams, and his mother, Abigail Smith. He was fourth in descent from Heary Adams, who emigrated from England in 1640, and settled at Braintree, where he had a grant of forty acres of land. Adams was named after a grandfather of his mother, John Quincy, a man of more than local reputation among the primitive settlements of Massachusetts colony. A deep affection existed between him and his granddaughter, and her son being born while the old man was dying, she insisted on perpetuating the name, with the hope that the second John Quincy would inherit the sterling integrity and sound judgment that made his namesake conspicuous. In the lists of the pioneers of Massachusetts, both the Adamses and the Quincys stand without the significant "Mr." marking the patricians. The Quincys ranked socially above the Adamses, as did also the Smiths, with the advantage derived from the Quincy alliance.

The younger Adams must have had but a gleam of childhood and youth. Before he was ten he wrote grand letters of self-reproof, for his conscious short-comings. At eleven he wanted a blank book, in which to begin a diary, and he actually made the first entry when he was twelve. The work, however, had a longer infancy than its famous author. His father was appointed commissioner to France, and sailed for that kingdom in February, 1778, taking with him his son, then in his eleventh year. The pas sage, made in the old Boston frigate, was tempestuous and protracted,

and the land journey rapid and fatiguing. He enjoyed many months of school near Paris, and returned home with his father during the following year, in a French frigate, which brought the ambassador, Chevalier Luzerne and his suite, to the new republic. He is said to have made himself useful and interesting to the diplomats, to whom he gave needed lessons in the English tongue, the Frenchmen laughingly complaining of the exacting nature of his lessons.

Three months and a half at home, when the same ship bore him with his father, on a second mission to the court of Louis XVI. He arrived in Paris in February, 1780, then in his thirteenth year of age. During this second visit, he was at school near Paris, accompanied his father to Holland, had some months of school in Amsterdam, and was then placed in the University of Leyden. During these months he associated much with the prominent men about his father, and saw much of the European world and life. In perfect health, good natured and cheerful, acute and observing, all his opportunities were improved. He was not yet fourteen when he entered upon his first diplomatic employment. Francis Dana, afterward chief justice of Massachusetts, and father of R. H. Dana, the poet, at that time secretary to the American commission, was commissioned minister to Russia, and appointed young Adams his secretary of legation. Nothing came of the mission, as the minister did not obtain recognition. The youth remained connected with the legation more than a year, acquitting himself with credit, and then alone made a leisurely journey, of many months, from St. Petersburg through Sweden and Denmark, visiting Hamburg, Bremen, and other cities. When he rejoined his father he found him with Franklin and Jefferson, negotiating the treaty of peace of October, 1783, which ended the war. After his arrival, he was enlisted as a secretary, and had a hand in preparing the papers by which Great Britain conceded the independence of the United States. After the signing of the treaty he attended his father on his first visit to England, and returned with him to Paris. Meantime his mother and the rest of the family went to Europe, and together they spent the year 1784 in Paris.

In April, 1785, arrived the French packet, Le Courier de l'Orient, with the news of the appointment of John Adams minister to the court of St. James. John Quincy was then nearly eighteen, mature for his years, and had reached a point in his career where he decided its future course. To be secretary of legation, reside in London, continue in the rich, full tide of old world life, would have been too alluring to any other young man of that or this time; and might have been the wiser thing to do. The glitter of the position had little effect on the Puritan nature of the young man. Austerely he turned his back upon it, accompanied the family to London, saw them established, and sailed away alone to the thin and comparatively meager life of the New England metropolis.

He entered the junior class of Harvard in 1786, and graduated in 1787, as the last authority is. He was predetermined to the law, and there being no law school, he entered the office of Theophilus Parsons, at Newburyport, afterward a famous chief justice, where he remained three years, and was admitted to the bar in 1790, being then twenty-three years of age.. His father was admitted at the same age. He opened an office in Boston, and sat down to endure the anxious solitude, that always does its best to overwhelm the young lawyer, compelled to await the approach of clients, who, in his case, showed no unbecoming eagerness to interrupt it. He was not one to attract. He had strong will and industry, and began slowly and certainly to make his way.

Meantime his thought and hand were in other work. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man appeared in 1791, and attracted much attention in this country and in England. The work was assailed by young Adams in a series of papers, signed Publicola, which also attracted attention in both countries, and were ascribed to his father, one of the most vigorous writers of that day. He also reviewed the course of the French minister, Genet, in this country, in newspaper articles of much vigor, and, in a third set, sustained the course of Washington's administration in maintaining the neutrality of the republic in the European wars. Although all these productions were given with fictitious signatures, the young writer became known, and attracted the attention of the President, who on the 29th of May, 1794, nominated him minister resident at the Hague, in which office he was unanimously confirmed the next day. He was then in his twenty-seventh year. The appointment was a great relief to him. Passages of his diary of a preceding date, show him chafing under enforced idleness and obscurity. He was one of the most ambitious of men.

After a voyage of much peril in a leaky ship, he reached the Hague on the last day of October. Those were the days of the uprising and arming of the French people against their neighbors. All Europe was arming; at the first, to subdue them, finally, in self defense. Holland was a republic, her chief the stadtholder. Scarcely had the young minister presented his credentials, when the stadtholder was obliged to flee. Pichegrue, who overrun Holland in ten days, came marching into the capital, brought out the tri-colored flag of blood and conquest, and established the Batavian republic. There was a flight of the diplomats. Mr. Adams was inclined to go also; though not for reasons which controlled the rest. He was cordially treated by the French and their native allies, and nothing but his shrewdness and prudence, saved him from the entanglements of their dangerous favor. In the changed condition of the country he was left without employment, a condition most irksome to him; and he thought he ought to return home. Washington, whose entire confidence he had gained, directed him to stay at his post, telling him he would soon be at the head of the