Chapter XIII (1)

REPORT ON PRESIDENT TYLER'S APPROVAL, WITH OBJECTIONS, OF THE BILL FOR THE APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATIVES.--REPORT ON HIS VETO OF THE BILL TO PROVIDE A REVENUE FROM IMPORTS.--LECTURE ON THE SOCIAL COMPACT, AND THE THEORIES OF FILMER, HOBBES, SYDNEY, AND LOCKE.--ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS ON THE POLICY OF PRESIDENT TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION.--ADDRESS TO THE NORFOLK COUNTY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.--DISCOURSE ON THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY OF 1643.--LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.--ORATION ON LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE CINCINNATI OBSERVATORY.

On the 23d of June, 1842, President Tyler announced to the House of Representatives that he had signed and approved an act for the apportionment of representatives among the several states, and had deposited the same in the office of the Secretary of State, accompanied with his reasons for giving to it his sanction; by which it appeared that, after having officially "approved" that act, he had declared, in effect, that _he did not approve of it_, having doubts concerning both its constitutionality and expediency, and that he had signed it only in deference to the opinions of both houses of Congress. Mr. Adams, from the committee to whom these proceedings of the President had been referred, in a report to the House severely scrutinizes the course of the President in this respect. He declares that the duty of the President, in exercising the authority given him by the constitution to sign and approve acts of Congress, is prescribed in terms equally concise and precise; and that it has given him no power to alter, amend, comment upon, or assign his reasons for the performance of his duty. These views he illustrates by a minute examination of the language of that instrument, and shows that what the President had done was a departure not only from the language but from the substance of the law prescribing to him his duties in that respect. Mr. Adams then, in behalf of the committee, after showing that the proceeding of the President in this instance is without precedent or example, and imminently dangerous in its tendencies, proceeds to remark:

"The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved: John Tyler;' and that entry
makes it the law of the land; and then, by a private note deposited
with the law in the Department of State, the same hand which, under
the sacred obligation of an official oath, has written the word
'_approved_,' and added the sign-manual of his name, feels it due
to himself to declare that the bill is not approved, and that he
doubts both its constitutionality and its policy, and that he signs
it only in deference to the declared _will_ of both houses of
Congress; not from assent to their reasons, but in submission to
their _will_.

"And he feels it due to himself to say this,--first, that his
motives for signing it may be rightly understood; secondly, that his
opinions may not be liable to be misunderstood, or, thirdly, quoted
hereafter erroneously as a precedent. The motives of a President of
the United States for signing an act of Congress can be no other
than because he approves it; and because, in that event, the
constitution enjoins it upon him to sign it as a duty, which he has
sworn to perform, and with which he cannot dispense.

"But no; in the present case the President feels it due to himself
to say that his motives for signing the bill were not because he
approved it, or because it was made by the constitution his duty to
sign it, but to prove his submission to the will of Congress. He
feels it due also to himself to guard against the liability of his
opinions to misconstruction, or to be quoted hereafter erroneously
as a precedent. His signature to the bill, preceded by the word
'_approved_,' taken in connection with the duties prescribed to the
President of the United States by the constitution, certainly was
liable to the construction that his opinions were favorable to the
bill. They were, indeed, liable to no other construction respectful
to him, or trustful to his honor and sincerity; nor can there be a
doubt that they would have been quoted hereafter as a precedent. No
man living could have imagined that the word '_approved_' could be
construed to mean either doubt or obsequious submission to the will
of others; and it is with extreme regret that the committee see, in
the President's exposition of his reasons for signing an act of
Congress, the open avowal that, in his vocabulary, used in the
performance of one of the most solemn and sacred of his duties, the
word '_approved_' means not approval, but doubt; not the expression
of his own opinions, but mere obsequiousness to the will of
Congress."

The report proceeds to deny that the example of the advice given by the first Secretary of State to the first President of the United States, which the President adduces in his support, and the following that advice by that President, gave any "sanction to such recorded duplicity." It asserts that such an example is of dangerous tendency--an encroachment by the Executive on legislative functions; that the reasons given by President Tyler are a running commentary against the law, against its execution according to the intention of the legislature, and forestalling the appropriate action of the judicial tribunals in expounding it. These and consentaneous views the report largely illustrates, and concludes with a resolution declaring the proceedings of the President in this case to have been unwarranted by the constitution and laws of the United States, injurious to the public interest, and of evil example in future; solemnly protesting against its ever being repeated, or adduced as a precedent hereafter.

On the 9th of August, 1842, President Tyler returned to the House of Representatives the bill to provide a revenue from imports, and changing the existing laws imposing duties on them, accompanied with his objections to it. The house referred the subject to a select committee, of which Mr. Adams was chairman. On the 16th of August he reported that the message was the last of a series of executive measures, the result of which had been to defeat and nullify the whole action of the legislative authority of the Union upon the most important interests of the nation;--that, at the accession of the late President Harrison, the revenue and the credit of the country were so completely disordered, that a suffering people had commanded a change in the administration; and the elections throughout the Union had placed in both houses of Congress majorities, the natural exponents of the principles which it was the will of the people should be substituted instead of those which had brought the country to a condition of such wretchedness and shame;--that there was a perfect harmony between the chosen President of the people and this majority; but that, by an inscrutable decree of Providence, the chief of the people's choice, in harmony with whose principles the majorities of both houses had been constituted, was laid low in death. A successor to the office had assumed the title, with totally different principles, who, though professing to harmonize with the principles of his immediate predecessor, and with the majorities in both houses of Congress, soon disclosed his diametrical opposition to them.

The report then proceeds to show the several developments of this new and most unfortunate condition of the general government, effected by "a system of continual and unrelenting exercise of executive legislation,"--by the alternate gross abuse of constitutional power, and bold assumption of powers never vested in him by any law,--resulting in four several vetoes, which, in the course of fifteen months, had suspended the legislation of the Union. It then states and comments upon the reasons assigned by the President for returning this bill to the House of Representatives, with his objections to it, as specified in the veto message referred to this committee; and, after a rigid analysis and course of argument, pronounces them "feeble, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory;" after which the report proceeds:

"They perceive that the whole legislative power of the Union has
been, for the last fifteen months, with regard to the action of
Congress upon measures of vital importance, in a state of suspended
animation, strangled by the _five_ times repeated stricture of
the executive cord. They observe that, under these unexampled
obstructions to the exercise of their high and legitimate duties,
they have hitherto preserved the most respectful forbearance towards
the Executive Chief; that while he has time after time annulled, by
the mere act of his will, their commission from the people to enact
laws for the common welfare, they have forborne even the expression
of their resentment for these multiplied insults and injuries. They
believed they had a high destiny to fulfil, by administering to the
people, in the form of law, remedies for the sufferings which they
had too long endured. The will of one man has frustrated all their
labors, and prostrated all their powers. The majority of the
committee believe that the case has occurred, in the annals of our
Union, contemplated by the founders of the constitution, by the
grant to the House of Representatives of the power to impeach the
President of the United States; but they are aware that the resort
to that expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs,
prove abortive. They see the irreconcilable difference of opinion
and of action between the legislative and executive departments of
the government is but sympathetic with the same discordant views and
feelings among the people. To them alone the final issue of the
struggle must be left. In sorrow and mortification, under the
failure of all their labors to redeem the honor and prosperity of
their country, it is a cheering consolation to them that the
termination of their own official existence is at hand; that they
are even now about to return to receive the sentence of their
constituents upon themselves; that the legislative power of the
Union, crippled and disabled as it may now be, is about to pass,
renovated and revivified by the will of the people, into other
hands, upon whom will devolve the task of providing that remedy for
the public distempers which their own honest and agonizing energies
have in vain endeavored to supply.

"The power of the present Congress to enact laws essential to the
welfare of the people has been struck with apoplexy by the executive
hand. Submission to his will is the only condition upon which he
will permit them to act. For the enactment of a measure, earnestly
recommended by himself, he forbids their action, unless coupled with
a condition declared by himself to be on a subject so totally
different that he will not suffer them to be coupled in the same
law. With that condition Congress cannot comply. In this state of
things he has assumed, as the committee fully believe, the exercise
of the whole legislative power to himself, and is levying millions
of money upon the people, without any authority of law. But the
final decision of this question depends neither upon legislative nor
executive, but upon judicial authority; nor can the final decision
of the Supreme Court upon it be pronounced before the close of the
present Congress. In the mean time, the abusive exercise of the
constitutional power of the President to arrest the action of
Congress upon measures vital to the welfare of the people has
wrought conviction upon the minds of a majority of the committee
that the veto power itself must be restrained and modified by an
amendment of the constitution itself; a resolution for which they
accordingly herewith respectfully report."

The report was signed by ten members of the committee, including the chairman. The resolution with which it closed provided for submitting to the States a proposed modification of the constitution, by substituting the words "majority of the whole number," instead of the words "two thirds," by which the power of the House of Representatives to pass a law, notwithstanding the veto of the President, is at present restricted.

The report was agreed to in the house by a majority of one hundred ayes to ninety nays, and the resolution itself passed by a majority of ninety-eight ayes to ninety nays; but the constitution, in such cases, requiring two thirds majority, it was of consequence rejected.

In November, 1842, Mr. Adams delivered a lecture before the Franklin Lyceum, at Providence, Rhode Island, on the Social Compact, in which he enters into "an examination of the principles of democracy, aristocracy, and universal suffrage, as exemplified in a historical review of the present constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with some notice of the origin of human government, and remarks on the theories of divine right, as maintained by Hobbes and Sir Robert Filmer, on one side, and by Sydney, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, on the other."

He shows, from the history of Massachusetts, that the fundamental principle asserted in the fifth article of our declaration of rights, that all power resides originally in _the people_, is derived from the above-named writers, and explains how this power has been practically exercised by the people of that state. The assertion of Rousseau, that the social compact can be formed only by unanimous consent, because the rule itself that a majority of votes shall prevail can only be established by agreement, that is, by compact, Mr. Adams controverts, maintaining in opposition to it that the social compact constituting the body-politic is, and by the law of nature must be, a compact not merely of individuals, but of families. On this view of the subject he largely animadverts. The philosophical examination of the foundations of civil society, of human governments, and of the rights and duties of man, he views as among the consequences of the Protestant Reformation. The question raised by Martin Luther involved the whole theory of _the rights_ of individual man, paramount to all human authority. The talisman of _human rights_ dissolved the spell of political as well as of ecclesiastical power. The Calvinists of Geneva and the Puritans of England contested the right of kings to prescribe articles of faith to their people, and this question necessarily drew after it the general question of the origin of all human government. In search of its principle, Hobbes, a royalist, affirmed that the state of nature between man and man was a state of war, whence it followed that government originated in _conquest_. This theory is directly opposite to that of Jesus Christ. It cuts the gordian knot with the sword, extinguishes all the rights of man, and makes fear the corner-stone of government. It is the only theory upon which slavery can be justified, as conformable to the law of nature. This is Sir John Falstaff's law, when, speaking of Justice Shallow, he says, "If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in _the law of nature_ why I may not snap at _him_." Sir Robert Filmer, by a theory far more plausible, though not more sound, than that of Hobbes, derived the origin of human government from the Scriptures of the Old Testament, from the grant of the earth to Adam, and afterwards to Noah.

But the vital error of Filmer was in assuming that the natural authority of the father over the child was either permanent or unlimited; and still more that the authority of the husband over the wife was unlimited. Sir Robert Filmer did not perceive that by the laws of nature and of God every individual human being is born with rights which no other individual, or combination of individuals, can take away; that all exercise of human authority must be under the limitation of right and wrong; and that all despotic power over human beings is exercised in _defiance_ of the laws of nature and of God--all, Sir John Falstaff's law of nature between the young dace and the old pike.

The history of Filmer's work was remarkable. It was composed and published in the heat of the struggle between King Charles the First and the Commons of England, which terminated in the overthrow of the monarchy, and in the death of King Charles upon the scaffold. It was the theory of government on which _the cause_ of the house of Stuart was sustained. No man can be surprised that such a cause was swept away by a moral and political whirlwind; that it carried with it all the institutions of civil society, so that its march was a wild desolation. James, by relying on the principles of Filmer's theory, fell back into the arms of the Church of Rome, and vainly struggled to turn back the tide of religious reformation, and revive the divine right of kings, and passive obedience, and non-resistance. The republican spirit had slumbered on the white cliffs of Albion, and in his sleep, like the man-mountain in Lilliput, had been pinned down to the earth by the threads of a spider's web for cords. On the first reäppearance of Filmer's book, he awoke, and, like the strong man in Israel, at the cost of his own life, shook down the temple of Dagon, and buried himself and the Philistines again under its ruins.

The discourses of John Locke concerning government demolished while they immortalized the work of Filmer, whose name and book are now remembered only to be detested. But the first principles of morals and politics, which have long been settled, acquire the authority of self-evident truths, which, when first discussed, may have been vehemently and portentously contested. John Locke, a kindred soul to Algernon Sydney, seven years after his death published an elaborate system of government, in which he declares the "false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown." Subsequently, he published an essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government. "The principles," says Mr. Adams, "of Sydney and Locke constitute the foundation of the North American Declaration of Independence; and, together with the subsequent writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau, that of the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and of the constitution of the United States." Neither of these constitutions separately, nor the two in combined harmony, can, without a gross and fraudulent perversion of language, be termed a _Democracy_. They are neither democracy, aristocracy, nor monarchy. They form together a mixed government, compounded not only of the three elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, but with a fourth added element, _Confederacy_. The constitution of the United States when adopted was so far from being considered as a democracy, that Patrick Henry charged it, in the Virginia Convention, with an awful squinting towards monarchy. The tenth number of the Federalist, written by James Madison, is an elaborate and unanswerable essay upon the vital and radical difference between a democracy and a republic. But it is impossible to disconnect the relation between names and things. When the anti-federal party dropped the name of Republicans to assume that of _Democrats_, their principles underwent a corresponding metamorphosis; and they are now the most devoted and most obsequious champions of executive power--the very life-guard of the commander of the armies and navies of this Union. The name of Democracy was assumed because it was discovered to be _very taking_ among the multitude; yet, after all, it is but the investment of the _multitude_ with absolute power. The constitutions of the United States and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are both the work of the people--one of the Union, the other of the State--not of the whole people by the phantom of universal suffrage, but of the whole people by that portion of them capable of contracting for the whole. They are not democracy, nor aristocracy, nor monarchy, but a compound of them all, of which democracy is the oxygen, or vital air, too pure in itself for human respiration, but which in the union of other elements, equally destructive in themselves and less pure, forms that moral and political atmosphere in which we live, and move, and have our being.

The preceding abstract, given almost wholly in the language of Mr. Adams, shows the general drift of this characteristic essay.

On the 17th of September, 1842, a convention of delegates from the district he represented received Mr. Adams at Braintree, and expressed their thanks for his services on the floor of Congress, especially for his fidelity in their defence "against every attempt of Southern representatives and their Northern allies to sacrifice at the altar of slavery the freedom of speech and the press, the right of petition, the protection of free labor, and the immunities and privileges of Northern citizens." Mr. Adams, in reply, after expressing his sensibility at their unabated confidence in the integrity of his intentions, and in his capacity to serve them, declared that it had been his endeavor to discharge all the duties of his station "faithfully and gratefully to them; faithfully to our native and beloved Commonwealth; faithfully to our whole common country, the North American Union; faithfully to the world of mankind, in every quarter of the globe, and under every variety of condition or complexion; faithfully to that creator, God, who rules the world in justice and mercy, and to whom our final account must be made up by the standard of those attributes." He then proceeded to state, that on receiving their invitation to attend that meeting, it had been his intention to avail himself of the opportunity to unfold to them the professions, principles, and practices, of the federal administration of these United States, under the successive Presidents invested with executive power, from the day when he took his seat as their representative in Congress to the then present hour.

"I trusted it would be in my power to present to your contemplation,
not only the outward and ostensible indications of federal policy,
proclaimed and trumpeted abroad as the maxims of the Jackson, Van
Buren, and Tyler administrations, but to lay bare their secret
purposes, and never yet divulged designs for the future government
or dissolution of this Union.

"Further reflection convinced me that this exposition would require
more time than you could possibly devote to one meeting to hear me.
My friend and colleague, Mr. Appleton, has, in an answer to an
invitation of his constituents to a public dinner, lifted a corner
of the veil, and opened a glance at the monstrous and horrible
object beneath it; but South Carolina nullification itself, with its
appendages of separation, secession, and the forty-bale theory, was
but the struggles of Quixotism dreaming itself Genius, to erect on
the basis of state sovereignty a system for seating South Carolina
slavery on the throne of this Union in the event of success; or of
severing the present Union, and instituting, with a tier of embryo
Southern States to be wrested from the dismemberment of Mexico, a
Southern slaveholding confederation to balance the free Republic of
the North.

"'The passage,' says Mr. Appleton, 'of the revenue bill imposing
discriminating duties with a view to the protection and
encouragement of American industry, is, under the circumstances, an
event of the very highest importance. Notwithstanding the system had
been formerly established in 1816, and fortified by succeeding
legislation; notwithstanding its success in the development of our
resources and the establishment of manufactures and arts, surpassing
the expectation of the most sanguine; notwithstanding the immense
investments of capital made on the faith of the national legislation
inviting such application, the attempt was seriously entertained of
breaking down this whole system, with a reckless disregard of
consequences, either in the wanton destruction of capital, or, what
is far more important, in the general paralysis of the industry of
the country. _The origin of this attempt may be traced to the mad
ambition of certain politicians of South Carolina, who, in 1832,
formed the project of a Southern Confederacy, severed from the rest
of the Union, with that state for its centre, as affording more
security to the slave states for their peculiar institutions than
exist under the general government._

"'This project led to the invention of a theory of political
economy, which was maintained with an ingenuity and perseverance
worthy of a better cause, founded on the assumption that all imports
are, in effect, direct taxes upon exports. So indefatigable were the
promulgators of this theory, that the whole South was made to
believe that a protective tariff was a system of plunder levied upon
their productions of cotton, rice, and tobacco, which constituted
the bulk of our exports to foreign markets.'"

Mr. Adams then proceeds to state that the principles of nullification were never more inflexibly maintained, never more inexorably pursued, than they had been by all that portion of the South which had given them countenance, from the day of the death of William Henry Harrison to the present, and that nullification is the creed of the executive mansion at Washington, the acting President's _conscience_, and the woof of all his vetoes.

"Nullification," he adds, "portentous and fatal as it is to the prospects and welfare of this Union, is not the only instrument of Southern domination wielded by the executive arm at Washington. The dismemberment of our neighboring republic of Mexico, and the acquisition of an immense portion of her territories, was a gigantic and darling project of Andrew Jackson, and is another instrument wielded for the same purpose.

"Within five weeks after the proclamation of the constitution of the
Republic of Texas followed the battle of San Jacinto; and from that
day the struggles of the Southern politicians, who ruled the
councils of this nation, were for upwards of two years unremitting,
and unrestrained by any principles of honor, honesty, and truth:
openly avowed, and audaciously proclaimed, whenever they dared;
clandestinely pursued, under delusive masks and false colors,
whenever the occasion required.

"No sooner was the event of the battle of San Jacinto known than
memorials and resolutions, from various parts of the Union, were
poured in upon Congress, calling upon that body for the immediate
recognition of the independence of the Republic of Texas. Many of
these memorials and resolutions came from the free states, and one
of them from the Legislature of Connecticut, then blindly devoted to
the rank Southern, sectional policy of the Jackson administration,
by that infatuation of Northern sympathy with Southern interests,
which Mr. Appleton points out to our notice, and the true purposes
of which had already been sufficiently divulged in an address of Mr.
Clement C. Clay to the Legislature of Alabama. But there was another
more hidden impulse to this extreme solicitude for the recognition
of the independence of Texas working in the free states, quite as
ready to assume the mask and cap of liberty as the slave-dealing
champions of the rights of man. The Texan land and liberty jobbers
had spread the contagion of their land-jobbing traffic all over the
free states throughout the Union. Land-jobbing, stock-jobbing,
slave-jobbing, rights-of-man-jobbing, were all, hand in hand,
sweeping over the land like a hurricane. The banks were plunging
into desperate debts, preparing for a universal suspension of specie
payment, under the shelter of legislative protection to flood the
country with irredeemable paper. Gambling speculation was the
madness of the day; and, in the wide-spread ruin which we are now
witnessing as the last stage of this moral pestilence, Texan bonds
and Texan lands form no small portion of the fragments from the
wreck of money corporations contributing their assets of two or
three cents to the dollar. All these interests furnished vociferous
declaimers for the recognition of Texan independence."

Mr. Adams next states the proceedings of Congress on this subject during the whole of the residue of the Jackson administration, terminating with the recognition by Congress of the independence of Texas. At this period Mr. Van Buren--a Northern man with Southern principles--assumed the functions of President of the United States. But the recognition of the independence of Texas availed nothing without her annexation to the United States. In October, 1837, a formal proposition from the Republic of Texas for such annexation was communicated to Congress, with the statement that it had been declined by Mr. Van Buren. But the passion for the annexation of Texas was not to be so disconcerted. Memorials for and against its annexation poured into Congress, and were referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. "In the debate which arose from their report," says Mr. Adams, "I exposed the whole system of duplicity and perfidy towards Mexico, which had marked the Jackson administration from its commencement to its close. It silenced the clamors for the annexation of Texas to this Union for three years, till the catastrophe of the Van Buren administration. The people of the free states were lulled into the belief that the whole project was abandoned, and that they should hear no more of the slave-trade cravings for the annexation of Texas. Had Harrison lived, they would have heard no more of it to this day. But no sooner was John Tyler installed into the President's house than nullification, and Texas, and war with Mexico, rose again upon the surface, with eye steadily fixed upon the polar star of Southern slave-dealing supremacy in the government of the Union."

Mr. Adams then comments upon the history of the Santa Fé expedition, which was fitted out in the summer of 1841, shortly after the accession of Mr. Tyler, by the then President of Texas, having been originated and concerted within these states, and carried on chiefly by citizens of the United States. That it was known, countenanced, and encouraged, at the presidential house, was, said Mr. Adams, more than questioned; for, while it was on foot, and before it was known, frequent hints were given in public journals, moved by Executive impulse, that at the coming session the annexation of Texas was to be introduced by a citizen of the highest distinction. "But the Texan expedition was ill-starred. Instead of taking and rioting upon the beauty and booty of Santa Fé, they were all captured themselves, without even the glory of putting a price on their lives. They surrendered without firing a gun." The failure of this expedition discomfited the war faction in Congress, and injured for a moment, and only for a moment, the project to which Southern nullification clung with the grasp of death.

Mr. Adams next proceeds to exhibit the evidence to show "the participation of the administration at Washington with this incursion of banditti from Texas against Santa Fé," and to explain "the legislative exploit" by which the treasury of the United States was made to contribute to "the dismemberment of Mexico, and the annexation of an immense portion of its territory to the slave representation of the Union." The internal evidence he regarded as irresistible that "the expedition against Santa Fé was planned within your boundaries, and committed to the execution of your citizens, under the shelter of Mexican banners and commissions."

In the subsequent portion of this address Mr. Adams, regarding the principles of nullification as being at the basis of Mr. Tyler's whole policy, enters at large into its nature, and thus speaks of its origin and association with democracy:

"Let me advert again to the important disclosure in the letter of
Mr. Appleton to his constituents, from which I have taken the
liberty of reading to you an extract. Nullification was generated
in the hot-bed of slavery. It drew its first breath in the land
where the meaning of the word democracy is that a majority of the
people are the goods and chattels of the minority; that more than
one half of the people are not men, women, and children, but
things, to be treated by their owners, not exactly like dogs and
horses, but like tables, chairs, and joint-stools; that they are
not even fixtures to the soil, as in countries where servitude is
divested of its most hideous features,--not even beings in the
mitigated degradation from humanity of beasts, or birds, or
creeping things,--but destitute not only of the sensibilities of
our own race of men, but of the sensations of all animated nature.
That is the native land of nullification, and it is a theory of
constitutional law worthy of its origin. _Democracy_, pure
democracy, has at least its foundation in a generous theory of
human rights. It is founded on the natural equality of mankind. It
is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. It is the first
_element_ of _all_ lawful government upon earth. Democracy is
self-government of the community by the conjoint will of the
majority of numbers. What communion, what affinity, can there be
between that principle and nullification, which is the despotism of
a corporation--unlimited, unrestrained, _sovereign_ power? Never,
never was amalgamation so preposterous and absurd as that of
nullification and democracy."

Of the hostility of nullification to the prosperity of the free states he thus speaks:

"The root of the doctrine of nullification is that if the internal
improvement of the country should be left to the legislative
management of the national government, and the proceeds of the
sales of the public lands should be applied as a perpetual and
self-accumulating fund for that purpose, the blessings unceasingly
showered upon the people by this process would so grapple the
affections of the people to the national authority, that it would,
in process of time, overshadow that of the state governments, and
settle the preponderancy of power in the free states; and then the
undying worm of conscience twinges with terror for the fate of _the
peculiar institution_. Slavery stands aghast at the prospective
promotion of the general welfare, and flies to nullification for
defence against the energies of freedom, and the inalienable rights
of man."

After stating and commenting upon the policy of General Jackson, as having for its object the "dismembering of Mexico, and restoring slavery to Texas, and of surrounding the South with a girdle of slave states, to eternize the blessings of the peculiar institution, and spread them like a garment of praise over the whole North American Union," he explained the effect of party divisions always operating in the United States, and the character of the several proportions of their power. Their results, in tending to revive and strengthen slavery and the slave-trade, which Mr. Adams then foretold, excited melancholy anticipations in the mind of every reflecting freeman. What was then prophecy is now history.

"There are two different party divisions always operating in the
House of Representatives of the United States,--one sectional,
North and South, or, in other words, slave and free; the other
political--both sides of which have been known at different times
by different names, but are now usually denominated Whigs and
Democrats. The Southern or slave party, outnumbered by the free,
are cemented together by a common, intense interest of property to
the amount of twelve hundred millions of dollars in human beings,
the very existence of which is neither allowed nor tolerated in the
North. It is the opinion of many theoretical reasoners on the
subject of government that, whatever may be its form, the ruling
power of every nation is its property. Mr. Van Buren, in one of his
messages to Congress, gravely pointed out to them the
anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth. Reflect now upon
the tendencies of twelve hundred millions of dollars of associated
wealth, directly represented in your national legislature by one
hundred members, together with one hundred and forty members
representing persons only--freemen, not chattels. Reflect, also,
that this twelve hundred millions of dollars of property is
peculiar in its character, and comes under a classification once
denominated by a Governor of Virginia _property acquired by crime_;
that it sits uneasy upon the conscience of its owner; that, in the
purification of human virtue, and the progress of the Christian
religion, it has become, and is daily becoming, more and more
odious; that Washington and Jefferson, themselves slaveholders,
living and dying, bore testimony against it; that it was the dying
REMORSE of John Randolph; that it is renounced and abjured by the
supreme pontiff of the Roman Church, abolished with execration by
the Mahometan despot of Tunis, shaken to its foundations by the
imperial autocrat of all the Russias and the absolute monarch of
Austria;--all, all bearing reluctant and extorted testimony to the
self-evident truth that, by the laws of nature and nature's God,
man cannot be the property of man. Recollect that the first cry of
human feeling against this unhallowed outrage upon human rights
came from ourselves--from the Quakers of Pennsylvania; that it
passed from us to England, from England to France, and spread over
the civilized world; that, after struggling for nearly a century
against the most sordid interests and most furious passions of man,
it made its way at length into the Parliament, and ascended the
throne, of the British Isles. The slave-trade was made piracy first
by the Congress of the United States, and then by the Parliament of
Great Britain.

"But the curse fastened by the progress of Christian charity and of
human rights upon the African slave-trade could not rest there. If
the African slave-trade was piracy, the coasting American
slave-trade could not be innocent, nor could its aggravated
turpitude be denied. In the sight of the same God who abhors the
iniquity of the African slave-trade, neither the American
slave-trade nor slavery itself can be held guiltless. From the
suppression of the African slave-trade, therefore, the British
Parliament, impelled by the irresistible influence of the British
people, proceeded to point the battery of its power against slavery
itself. At the expense of one hundred millions of dollars, it
abolished slavery, and emancipated all the slaves in the British
transatlantic colonies; and the government entered upon a system of
negotiation with all the powers of the world for the ultimate
extinction of slavery throughout the globe.

"The utter and unqualified inconsistency of slavery, in any of its
forms, with the principles of the North American Revolution, and the
Declaration of our Independence, had so forcibly struck the Southern
champions of our rights, that the abolition of slavery and the
emancipation of slaves was a darling project of Thomas Jefferson
from his first entrance into public life to the last years of his
existence. But the associated wealth of the slaveholders outweighed
the principles of the Revolution, and by the constitution of the
United States a compromise was established between slavery and
freedom. The extent of the sacrifice of principle made by the North
in this compromise can be estimated only by its practical effects.
The principle is that the House of Representatives of the United
States is a representation only of the persons and freedom of the
North, and of the persons, property, and slavery, of the South. Its
practical operation has been to give the balance of power in the
house, and in every department of the government, into the hands of
the minority of numbers. For practical results look to the present
composition of your government in all its departments. The President
of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of
the House, are all slaveholders. The Chief Justice and four out of
the nine Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States are
slaveholders. The commander-in-chief of your army and the general
next in command are slaveholders. A vast majority of all the
officers of your navy, from the highest to the lowest, are
slaveholders. Of six heads of the executive departments, three are
slaveholders; securing thus, with the President, a majority in all
cabinet consultations and executive councils. From the commencement
of this century, upwards of forty years, the office of Chief Justice
has always been held by slaveholders; and when, upon the death of
Judge Marshall, the two senior justices upon the bench were citizens
of the free states, and unsurpassed in eminence of reputation both
for learning in the law and for spotless integrity, they were both
overlooked and overslaughed by a slaveholder, far inferior to either
of them in reputation as a lawyer, and chiefly eminent for his
obsequious servility to the usurpations of Andrew Jackson, for which
this unjust elevation to the Supreme Judicial bench was the reward.

"As to the house itself, if an article of the constitution had
prescribed, or a standing rule of the house had required, that no
other than a slaveholder should ever be its Speaker, the regulation
could not be more rigorously observed than it is by the compact
movements of the slave representation in the house. Of the last six
speakers of the house, including the present, every one has been a
slaveholder. It is so much a matter of course to see such a person
in the chair, that, if a Northern man but thinks of aspiring to the
chair, he is only made a laughing-stock for the house.

"With such consequences staring us in the face, what are we to think
when we are told that the government of the United States is a
democracy of numbers--a government by a majority of the people? Do
you not see that the one hundred representatives of persons,
property, and slavery, marching in solid phalanx upon every question
of interest to their constituents, will always outnumber the one
hundred and forty representatives only of persons and freedom,
scattered as their votes will always be by conflicting interests,
prejudices, and passions?

"But this is not all. The second party division in the house to
which I have alluded is political, and known at present by the
names of Whigs and Democrats, or Locofocos. The latter are
remarkable for an exquisite tenderness of affection for _the
people_, and especially for the poor, provided their skins are
white, and against the rich. But it is no less remarkable that the
princely slaveholders of the South are among the most thoroughgoing
of the Democrats; and their alliance with the Northern Democracy is
one of the cardinal points of their policy."

The residue of this address is devoted to a searching and severe examination of the whole course of President Tyler's administration, showing that "the sectional division of parties--in other words, the conflict between freedom and slavery--is the axle round which the administration of the national government revolves." "The political divisions with him, and with all Southern statesmen of his stamp, are mere instruments of power to purchase auxiliary support to the cause of slavery even from the freemen of the North."

In closing this most illustrative address, he apologizes to his constituents for any language he may have used in debate which might be deemed harsh or acrimonious, and asks them to consider the adversaries with whom he had to contend; the virulence and rancor, unparalleled in the history of the country, with which he had been pursued; and to remember that, "for the single offence of persisting to assert the right of the people to petition, and the freedom of speech and of the press, he had been twice dragged before the house to be censured and expelled." One of his assailants, Thomas F. Marshall, had declared, in an address to his constituents, his motives for the past, and his purposes for the future, in the following words:

"Though petitions to dissolve the Union be poured in by thousands,
I shall not again interfere on the floor of Congress, since the
house have virtually declared that there is nothing contemptuous or
improper in offering them, and are willing again to afford Mr.
Adams an opportunity of sweeping all the strings of discord that
exist in our country. I acted as I thought for the best, being
sincerely desirous to check that man, who, if he could be removed
from the councils of the nation, or _silenced_ on the exasperating
subject to which he seems to have devoted himself, _none other, I
believe, could be found hardy enough, or bad enough, to fill his
place_."

"Besides this special and avowed malevolence against me," Mr. Adams remarks,--"this admitted purpose to expel or silence me, for the sake of brow-beating all other members of the free representation, by establishing over them the reign of terror,--a peculiar system of tactics in the house has been observed towards me, by _silencers_ of the slave representation and their allies of the Northern Democracy."

The system of tactics to which he alludes was, first, to turn him out of the office of chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and, this failing, to induce a majority of the servile portion of that committee to refuse any longer to serve with him; their purpose being exactly that of Mr. Marshall, to remove him from the councils of the nation, or to silence him, for the sake of _intimidating_ all others by "an ostentatious display of a common determination not to serve with any man who would not submit to the gag-rule, and would persist in presenting abolition petitions." Mr. Adams then illustrates the powerful effect of such movements to overawe members from the free states.

"Another practice," he observed, "of this communion of Southern, sectional, and Locofoco antipathy against me is, that I never can take part in any debate upon an important subject, be it only upon a mere abstraction, but a pack opens upon me of personal invective in return. Language has no word of reproach or railing that is not hurled at me; and the rules of the house allow me no opportunity to reply till every other member of the house has had his turn to speak, if he pleases. By another rule every debate is closed by a majority whenever they get weary of it. The previous question, or a motion to lay the subject on the table, is interposed, and I am not allowed to reply to the grossest falsehoods and most invidious misrepresentations."

This course of party tactics Mr. Adams exhibits by a particular narrative of the misrepresentation to which he had been subjected, closing his statement with the following acknowledgment: "I must do many of the members of the House of Representatives from the South the justice to say that their treatment of me is dictated far more by the passions and prejudices of their constituents than by their own. Were it not for this curse of slavery, there are some of them with whom I should be on terms of the most intimate and confidential friendship. There are many for whom I entertain high esteem, respect, and affectionate attachment. There are among them those who have stood by me in my trials, and scorned to join in the league to sacrifice me as a terror to others."

In September, 1842, at the invitation of the Norfolk County Temperance Society, Mr. Adams delivered at Quincy an address,--not perhaps in coïncidence with the prevailing expectations of that society, but in perfect unison with his own characteristic spirit of independence. He instituted an inquiry into the effect of the _principles_ of total abstinence from the use of spirituous liquors, the administration of pledges, or, in other words, the contracting of engagements by vows; and examined the whole subject with reference to the essential connection which exists between temperance and religion. In the course of his argument he maintains that the moral principles inculcated by the whole tenor of the Old Testament, with regard to temperance, are,--1. That the _temperate_ use of wine is innocent, and without sin. 2. That excess in it is a heinous sin. 3. That the voluntary assumption of a vow or pledge of total abstinence is an effort of exalted virtue, and highly acceptable in the sight of God. 4. That the habit of excess in the use of wine is an object of unqualified abhorrence and disgust. He concluded with a warning to his fellow-citizens to "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage;" and, after applauding the members of the Norfolk County Temperance Society for their attempts to suppress intemperance, declaring it a holy work, and invoking the blessing of Heaven on their endeavors, he bids them "go forth as missionaries of Christianity among their own kindred. Go, with the commendation of the Saviour to his apostles when he first sent them forth to redeem the world: 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.' In the ardor of your zeal for moral reform forget not the rights of personal freedom. All _excess_ is of the nature of intemperance. Self-government is the foundation of all our political and social institutions; and it is by self-government alone that the laws of temperance can be enforced.... Above all, let no tincture of party politics be mingled with the pure stream from the fountain of temperance."

The spirit of this address, and the intimate knowledge of the Scriptures Mr. Adams possessed, will be illustrated by the following extract:

"Throughout the whole of the Old Testament the vine is represented
as one of the most precious blessings bestowed by the Creator upon
man. In the incomparable fable of Jotham, when he lifted up his
voice on the summit of Mount Gerizim, and cried to the men of
Shechem, 'Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken
unto you,' he told them that when the trees of the forest went
forth to anoint them a king to reign over them, they offered the
crown successively to the olive-tree, the fig-tree, and the _vine_.
They all declined to accept the royal dignity; and when it came to
the turn of the vine to assign the reasons for his refusal, he
said, 'Should I leave my _wine_, which cheereth God and man, and go
to be promoted over the trees?' In the one hundred and fourth
Psalm,--that most magnificent of all descriptions of the glory, the
omnipotence, and the goodness of the Creator, God,--wine is
enumerated among the richest of his blessings bestowed upon man.
'He causeth the grass to grow,' says the Psalmist, 'for the cattle,
and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out
of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil
to make his face to shine, and bread that strengtheneth man's
heart.'

"But, while wine was thus classed among the choicest comforts and
necessaries of life, the cautions and injunctions against the
inordinate use of it are repeated and multiplied in every variety
of form. 'Wine is a mocker,' says Solomon (Prov. 20:1); 'strong
drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.'
'He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man; he that loveth wine
and oil shall not be rich.' (21:17.) 'Who hath woe? who hath
sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds
without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry _long_ at
the wine; they that go _to seek_ mixed wine. Look not thou upon the
wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it
moveth itself aright,'--say, like sparkling Champagne.--'At the
_last_ it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine
eyes shall behold strange wonders, and thine heart shall utter
perverse things; yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the
midst of the sea, or as he that lieth on the top of a mast. They
have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have
beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it
yet again.' Never was so exquisite a picture of drunkenness and the
drunkard painted by the hand of man.

"Yet in all this there is no interdict upon the _use_ of wine.
The caution and the precept are against excess."

On the 29th of May, 1843, Mr. Adams delivered before the Massachusetts Historical Society a discourse in celebration of the Second Centennial Anniversary of the New England Confederacy of 1643. This work is characterized by that breadth and depth of research for which he was distinguished and eminently qualified. It includes traces of the early settlements of Virginia, New England, Pennsylvania, and New York; of the causes of each, and the spirit in which they were made and conducted, and of the principles which they applied in their intercourse with the aboriginals of the forest. He then proceeds to give an account of the confederation of the four New England colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, in 1643, with appropriate statements of the principles and conduct of the founders of each settlement, and of the character and motives of the leaders of each of them.

The origin, motives, and objects of that confederation, he explains; analyzing the distribution of power between the commissioners of the whole confederacy and among the separate governments of the colonies, and showing that it combined the same identical principles with those which gathered and united the thirteen English colonies as the prelude to the Revolution which severed them forever from their national connection with Great Britain; and that the New England Confederacy of 1643 was the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of 1774.

His sketch of the founder of the Colony of Rhode Island will give a general idea of the spirit and bearing of this discourse: