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.

ORATION AT PLYMOUTH

DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS

A

MONG the sentiments of most powerful operation

upon the human heart, and most highly honor

able to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is interwoven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries. By the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other. Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No, he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social compact; he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of universal charity; he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future times, by the

impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of these principles,

"Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign."

They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space; he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and im mortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.

The voice of history has not, in all its compass, a note but answers in unison with these sentiments. The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concluded his persuasion by an appeal to these irresistible feelings: "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity." The Romans themselves, at the pinnacle of civilization, were actuated by the same impressions, and celebrated, in anniversary festivals, every great event which had signalized the annals of their forefathers.

To multiply instances where it were impossible to adduce an exception would be to waste your time and abuse your patience; but in the sacred volume, which contains the substance of our firmest faith and of our most precious hopes, these passions not only maintain their highest efficacy, but are sanctioned by the express injunctions of the Divine Legislator to his chosen people.

The revolutions of time furnish no previous example of a nation shooting up to maturity and expanding into greatness with the rapidity which has characterized the growth of

the American people. In the luxuriance of youth, and in the vigor of manhood, it is pleasing and instructive to look backward upon the helpless days of infancy; but in the continual and essential changes of a growing subject, the transactions of that early period would be soon obliterated from the memory but for some periodical call of attention to aid the silent records of the historian. Such celebrations arouse and gratify the kindliest emotions of the bosom. They are faithful pledges of the respect we bear to the memory of our ancestors and of the tenderness with which we cherish the rising generation. They introduce the sages and heroes of ages past to the notice and emulation of succeeding times; they are at once testimonials of our gratitude, and schools of virtue to our children.

These sentiments are wise; they are honorable; they are virtuous; their cultivation is not merely innocent pleasure, it is incumbent duty. Obedient to their dictates, you, my fellow-citizens, have instituted and paid frequent observance to this annual solemnity. And what event of weightier intrinsic importance, or of more extensive consequences, was ever selected for this honorary distinction?

In reverting to the period of our origin, other nations have generally been compelled to plunge into the chaos of impenetrable antiquity, or to trace a lawless ancestry into the caverns of ravishers and robbers. It is your peculiar privilege to commemorate, in this birthday of your nation, an event ascertained in its minutest details; an event of which the principal actors are known to you familiarly, as if belonging to your own age; an event of a magnitude be fore which imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in those eminent characters, who were most conspicuous in accom