CHAPTER III.

John Quincy Adams, President of the United States-The Nation.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS was already unpopular on his father's account. Introduced at an early period into the most important public offices, he became accustomed to look down upon the people. A Tory by birth and by education, he is as staunch as his father; but with less mental capacity he is infinitely more dangerous. His father's political errors and the embassies of London, St. Petersburgh, and Paris, were the schools in which he was trained; cold, circumspect, and free from passion, he disregards the censures as well as the approbation of the people, above whom he considers himself elevated. This pride or rather arrogance, is a family failing, and so little is he able to suppress it, that previously to his elevation, and while yet but a candidate, he so far forgot himself as to threaten an officer of the Bank, who presumed to consider his indorsement as no better than that of another citizen, with the full weight of his displeasure. In private life he seems anxious to conceal this passion under the mask of republican carelessness, and a certain nonchalance. His countenance betrays a cold ambitious mind, his dark eye exhibits the heartless diplomatist. As a politician, he adopts the axiom that the means are justified by the end. Neither a Democrat nor a Federalist, he joined both parties, and left them as he found it best suited to his interest. When Secretary of State he uttered the following memorable words : "The United States will not be ranked among nations till the Presidency becomes hereditary." When one of the representatives was introduced to a nightly interview with him, and expressed his scruples respecting the manner of the election, the characteristic reply of Adams was, "Sir, the time will come, even with the United States, when the government, and not a prejudiced populace destitute of character, will determine the public opinion. The question is, whether you, Sir, are sensible of the importance and the advantages which must necessarily accrue to you from the present course, or whether you prefer the old system. Your determination in regard to the election is decisive."

Adams is reputed by his party and the majority of the people, to possess a great mind: this is far from being the case. His talents are rather of an ordinary kind, but they are not the less dangerous on that account; for it is not the greatest, but the coldest and most persevering statesman, alike insensible to contempt and to praise, who is most obnoxious to the freedom of a nation. His style, a mixture of the elegant and the diplomatic, is admired, because it is new to the United States. It cannot be denied, that it is the most fit to disguise his political opinions and his deep-laid schemes. This motive and his predilection for everything coming from the eastern courts, may sufficiently account for his adoption of and fondness for it. If taken upon the whole, he may be considered a most dangerous man to the freedom of the Union, and if he had been sent by Metternich himself, he could not pursue more closely the principles of the Holy Alliance*.

It was to be presumed that the temper of the nation towards the new President would be somewhat different from that which was manifested towards his predecessors (his father excepted); not that the people expect to have a President chosen without the ordinary intrigues incident to electioneering. To these they are accustomed, and there will hardly be found a constable in the United States who obtains his petty office without intrigues.

But the manner in which the new President had obtruded himself upon the nation, bespoke such an utter disregard for the established and fundamental principle of the constitution-the sovereignty of the people, to whose will, its organs, the representatives, are bound to conform, was, through the price with which Adams purchased their treachery, so trampled upon, and so strongly attacked in its foundations, that the nation could not but be wholly alienated from him. The innate arrogance of Mr. Adams, always kept him aloof from the people. He never mingled with his fellow-citizens on equal terms. Pretty much in the manner of European grandees, who effect through their dependents what they think beneath their own sphere, he endeavoured to work upon them by his public journals. But as brother Jonathan is not yet so happy as to have Washington grandees, and as he appreciates the heavy burden of sovereignty too well not to keep it on his own shoulders, the coup-de-main by which Adams endeavoured to ease him of this trouble, and, by the assistance of his followers and the honourable Speaker in his own cabinet, to settle his fate, was far from being looked upon with that deference and respect to which he was accustomed in his diplomatic career. The citizen of the United States is habituated to scrutinize with an innate distrust the measures of his administration, even when enjoying his confidence. The Opposition generally take upon themselves this interested attention. Adams had no republican party in his favour; his election was the work of the Monarchists and of his own genius. The nation, as was to be expected, has shrunk from such an union, and the better part is waiting with impatience for the moment which shall deliver it from an administration, from whose hostile tendency it cannot look for any measures but such as are both dangerous to its political freedom and to its general welfare.

The new President soon after his election, had a good opportunity of ascertaining the public opinion, from the conduct of several distin