case of the civilian. Look at the labors of Adams, of which we have given you but a defective and imperfect view. Not an hundred men in the country could have been acquainted with any part of them-they appeared anonymously, or under assumed titles; they were concealed in the secret conclaves of Congress, or the more secret cabinets of Princes.Such services are never known to the public; or if known, only in history, when the actors of the day have passed from the stage, and the motives for longer concealment cease to exist.

In the office of Vice President, Mr. Adams presided with great dignity. He was uniformly consulted by Washington as if he had been a member of the cabinet. At the close of Washington's administration, when he left the Senate to assume the Presidency, as his successor, he states in his address "It is a recollection of which nothing can ever deprive me, and it will be a source of comfort to me through the remainder of my life, that on the one hand, I have for eight years held the second situation under our Constitution, in perfect and uninterrupted harmony with the first, without envy in the one, or jealousy in the other, so on the other hand, I have never had the smallest misunderstanding with any member of the Senate."

The same motives which induced us to pass over the administration of Mr. Jefferson, direct us to a similar course with that of his predecessor. Nothing however can be more unjust, than to charge any President with the whole odium. of the measures adopted by Congress during his administration. When Congress is divided into parties, and at all other times, many measures will pass, to which the President (although he disapproves them) must give his signature.The Constitution, indeed, gives the President in the first instance equal power in the enactment of laws, with either House of Congress. But this power no President has yet exercised, unless he considered the measure as trenching on the Constitution. Of those measures which rendered Mr. Adams'

administration unpopular, some yet remain unrepealed, some have been adopted by his successors, and others are said to have passed contrary to his wishes. No one will now question his enlightened policy in relation to the navy, of which he is justly styled the father. None can now doubt the necessity of a different organization of the Judiciary. When the curtain is withdrawn which conceals the motives of human conduct, it may be seen, that Mr. Adams has deserved most where he has been most severely censured.

No other individuals have held both of the first offices in the country, except Jefferson and Adams. None have held them for so long a period. Each was three times elected by the people, and each continued twelve years in these offices. After Mr. Adams' retirement to private life, the foreign relations of our country were again very much involved. But with true magnanimity he came forward and advocated her rights, although at the same time he knew he was yielding support to the administration of his successful rival. With his nervous pen he sustained our commercial rights, but most of all the rights of our mariners. His letter on the inadmissible principles of the British King's proclamation, is an argument against impressment which cannot be answered. It is an act of justice to his political opponents to state that they became sensible of his merits, and solicited him to become the Governor of this Commonwealth. In 1820 he was President of the Electoral College. The same year he was elected almost unanimously President of the Convention for amending our Constitution; and in this assembly of the first men of all parties, a spontaneous tribute was paid to his exalted worth, in a series of resolutions which were unanimously adopted.*

Such, fellow-citizens, have been the services of John Adams, and such are the solid foundations of his fame. As we ascend the mount of history, and rise above the vapors of party prejudice, which floating at its base, refract the rays of light, and give to every thing a colored hue, we shall all

* Note N.

acknowledge that we owe our Independence more to John Adams than to any other created being, and that he was the GREAT LEADER of the American Revolution.

Of all the enjoyments heaven allots to man, none exceeds that of a parent at the prosperity and virtues of his child.How full then must have been Mr. Adams' cup, at seeing those who opposed him, elevate his son to the most exalted station on earth, and at witnessing that son's administration.

In paying the tribute of justice to John Adams, we cannot forget that most heroic, accomplished and excellent woman, who cheered him through the dark hours of the revolution, and supported him under all the trials of life, whose name he could never hear repeated without his eyes being suffused with tears, and his heart swelling so as to choak his utterance. In no way can we do more justice to her heroic spirit than by presenting you an extract from her Spartan letter to a gentleman in London, dated on her husband's birth-day, "Heaven is our witness, that we do not rejoice in the effusion of blood or the carnage of the human species; but having forced us to draw the sword, we are determined never to sheathe it slaves of Britain. Our cause, Sir, is, I trust, the cause of truth and justice, and will finally prevail, though the combined force of earth and hell shall rise against them. To this cause I have sacrificed much of my own personal happiness, by giving up to the councils of America one of my nearest connexions, and living for more than three years in a state of widowhood."

1777.

In private life, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams were the delight of all those who visited them. Between them all rivalry had ceased, and given place to the purest friendship.What a sublime lesson to rival partizans! Each in turn had been the subject of the most gross misrepresentations, and the whole vocabulary of slander had been exhausted on each, by supporters of the other. Still it did not for a moment interrupt their harmonious intercourse. When we look back on the vehemence of party, and see how it assails without

cause the most exalted virtues, we should always distrust its guidance. It is but too often the expedient of worthless men to raise themselves into notice for the most selfish purposes. We have seen men of the most estimable characters, and correct ideas on other subjects, looking on each other as monsters, and the charities of life dissolved between the most genial spirits, merely from jealousy and suspicion, each imputing to others, opinions which neither entertained, and which both disclaimed. Such is the effect of viewing objects through the false mediums of passion and prejudice. Hence, let all learn that the characters of men in free states are not to be judged by what is said of them amid the canvass of elections.

Fellow-citizens-The work for which your fathers toiled is accomplished. He who stood foremost in the hour of peril, with his expiring breath has pronounced it good. Cherish the memories of your fathers. Imitate their virtues-practice their charities-sacrifice at their shrine party animosity— judge men more by their actions than by their professionsif others differ from you in opinion, learn also that you differ from them, and that "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle." If you thus act, you will not only insure the perpetuity of your institutions, but their universal adoption.

The Independence of his country was the ruling passion of Mr. Adams, and "he felt his ruling passion strong in death." His last sentiment to his countrymen was "INDEPENDENCE FOREVER." And his last words show that when he was sensible that the scene was closing, his thoughts still lingered on this subject-" JEFFERSON SURVIVES." This is unquestionably the translation of this sentence: "I am going --but Jefferson, he who acted with me on the great day of our country's deliverance, outlives me." Heaven, however, had otherwise ordered it, and Jefferson was first summoned to his rewards within the hour that Adams thus spoke of him, and at the same hour in which the Declaration of Indepen

dence was adopted. But Adams survived-and his career too terminated on the same day, and at the hour of the publication of that Declaration. Wonderful coincidence! *

Of all the conscript fathers whose names are enrolled on the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll alone survives. To him is due all the honors which the great actors of that day merit, but he was not one of those who voted for our Independence. He was then the richest man in the Colonies, and a Catholic. In February 1776, he was associated as a commissioner to Canada with Franklin and Chase, and he was requested to take with him his brother, the venerable Catholic Archbishop, (for they possessed great influence) in order to induce the Catholics in Canada to join us. He was elected to Congress after he returned from Canada, July 4, 1776, and he took his seat on the 18th. The Declaration of Independence was not engrossed or signed until August 2, when he signed at the same time with those who had voted for its adoption.†

On the Jubilee of our Independence, then, only two of those, by whose vote it had been decreed, were among the living, Jefferson and Adams-the two who had been selected to draft the Declaration. At noon, he whose mind had conceived and produced that instrument, was summoned by the angel of death. Adams then, its great advocate and defender, and the pillar of its suppport, alone survived; but the decree had gone forth, and he too was called on high. On the 4th of July 1776, the Heavens were covered with weeping clouds-but beyond those clouds these patriots discerned the sunshine of their country's triumph. On the 4th of July 1826, the Heavens again wept-but it was at the departure

* James Otis, the great Leader at the commencement of the revolution, who was deprived of his reason by the brutal attack of a band of ruffians, headed by a Commissioner of the Customs, for his patriotic course, was killed by lightning.

† Note O.