and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter-of-fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How is this disorder in the machine to be rectified? While it exists its movements must stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary one of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the Constitution and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal-as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissensions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and the happy consequences of all this array of horrors. They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or resources, in "the calm lights of mild philosophy."

But whatever they may anticipate as the next measure of prudence and safety, they have explained nothing to the House. After rejecting the treaty, what is to be the next step? They must have foreseen what ought to be done; they have doubtless resolved what to propose. Why then are they silent? Dare they not avow their plan of conduct,

or do they wait till our progress toward confusion shall guide them in forming it?

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which it is yet in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved, it? Will he not feel some dread that a change of system will reverse the scene? The wellgrounded fears of our citizens in 1794 were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered, at that day, as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general desire of our people was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our disputes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negotiation after the end of the European war. This was gaining everything, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining everything. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentrated in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale-it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest and

war.

Let us not hesitate, then, to agree to the appropriation

to carry it into faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and, some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast, and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proofs of their industry-as the instruments of their future success. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

I rose to speak under impressions that I would have resisted if I could. Those who see me will believe that the reduced state of my health has unfitted me almost equally for much exertion of body or mind. Unprepared for debate, by careful reflection in my retirement, or by long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent, was imposed by necessity, and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet, when I come to the moment of deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I have spent in expostulation have their value, because they protract the crisis, and the short period in which alone we may resolve to escape it.

I have thus been led, by my feelings, to speak more at length than I intended. Yet I have, perhaps, as little

personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote shall pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and Constitution of my country.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, the eldest son of John Adams, was born at Brain

tree in 1767. He visited Europe with his father in 1778 and again in 1780, when he attended for a time the University of Leyden. At the age of fifteen he went as Secretary of Legation with Francis Dana to St. Petersburg. Returning home after an interval spent in Holland, Paris and London, he graduated at Harvard in 1788, and three years later was admitted to the bar. In 1794 he was appointed by President Washington Minister to The Hague. On his father's accession to the Chief Magistracy, John Quincy Adams was made Minister to Prussia, with which power he negotiated a commercial treaty. He was recalled after Jefferson's accession to the Presidency, and resumed the practice of law in Boston; but in 1802 he was chosen a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and in the following year was sent to Congress. Hitherto he had acted with the Federalists, but he separated from them by voting for Jefferson's Embargo, a step which brought about his temporary retirement from public life. For three years he discharged the duties of Professor of Rhetoric and BellesLettres at Harvard College, but in 1809 he was intrusted by Madison with the mission to St. Petersburg. He was one of the plenipotentiaries who concluded the treaty of peace with Great Britain in December, 1814. After serving for two years as American Minister in London, he again entered the arena of home politics as Secretary of State under President Monroe. While in office he brought about the treaty with Spain by which Florida was ceded to the United States. In 1824 he was one of four candidates for the Presidency, and, as none of them received an absolute majority of the electoral votes, the election fell to the House of Representatives, by which Adams was chosen. Defeated for re-election in 1828 by Jackson, he withdrew to Quincy, but two years later was returned to the Federal House of Representatives by the district in which he lived and which he continued to represent until his death. Throughout the later part of his life he stood forth as the bold and uncompromising advocate of the abolition of slavery. He died on February 23, 1848, having been stricken with paralysis two days previously on the floor of the House.