Speeches, Addresses, And Occasional Sermons Volume Ii Part 12

[15] _Answer to Paine's Rights of Man_ (London, 1793), originally published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears the name of _John Adams_ on the t.i.tle-page.

[16] Mr. Atherton.

[17] See _Oration at Quincy_, 1831, p. 12, _et seq._ (Boston, 1831.)

[18] The _Social Compact_, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p. 24.

[19] See Pickering's _Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the Embargo_.

Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's _Letter to the Hon. H. G. Otis_, etc.

Boston, 1808. Pickering's _Interesting Correspondence_, 1808. _Review of the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William Cunningham_, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's "Appendix" to the above letter, published _sixteen_ years after the vote on the embargo.

Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's _Brief Remarks on the Appendix_.

August, 1824.

[20] Reference is here made to British "_Orders in Council_" of Nov.

22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American Congress till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the National Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the Senate, Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that doc.u.ment, nor in the debate.

[21] I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr. Adams wrote a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering, but said nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in an appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment"

which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he _does not deny the words themselves_. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The "sentiment" speaks for itself.

[22] Adams's _Remarks in the House of Representatives_, Jan. 5, 1846.

[23] _Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William Cunningham, Esq._ Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.

[24] March 15th, 1826.

[25] See Mr. Adams's _Message_, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was $1,197,422.18.

[26] See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th, 1825; to Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of Russia, May 10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and June 19th, 1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. _Executive Doc.u.ments_, Second Session of the 20th Congress, Vol. I.

[27] Report of Mr. Adams's _Lecture on the Chinese War_, in the Boston Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.

[28] Genesis i. 26-28.

[29] Psalms ii. 6-8.

[30] See Mr. Adams's _Speech on Oregon_, Feb. 9th, 1846. Arguments somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration delivered at Newburyport, before cited.

[31] _Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l._

[32] _Jubilee of the Const.i.tution_, p. 99.

[33] _Lecture on China._

[34] See his defence of this in his _Address to his Const.i.tuents at Braintree_, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, _et seq._

[35] In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), _Par negotiis neque supra_,--applying them to a distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that they might be well translated in five--_Equal to, not above, duty_, but better in three--JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

[36] _Remarks_ of Mr. Cambreleng.

[37] Mr. Van Buren.

[38] See the _Debates of the House_, January 23d and following, 1837; or Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his _Letters to his Const.i.tuents_, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his _Series of Speeches on the Right of Pet.i.tion and the Annexation of Texas_, January 14th and following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)

[39] "Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira voca.s.set, Ferre manum, et nunquam temerando parcere ferro; Successus urgere suos; instare favori Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina."

[40] _Clarum et venerabile nomen._

[41] The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John Pierpont.

VII.

SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.

MR. CHAIRMAN,--The Gentleman before me[42] has made an allusion to Rome.

Let me also turn to that same city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors, there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men.

Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the Caesars, with her markets and her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city, she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men, in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was another population, another Rome, with other thoughts; yes, a devout body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very lives illegal. Time pa.s.sed on; and gradually Rome of the Pagans disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.

So underneath the laws and the inst.i.tutions of each modern nation, underneath the monarchy and the republic, there is another and unseen State, with sentiments not yet become popular, and with ideas not yet confirmed in actions, not organized into inst.i.tutions, ideas scarcely legal, certainly not respectable. Slowly from its depths comes up this ideal State, the State of the Future; and slowly to the eternal deep sinks down the actual State, the State of the Present. But sometimes an earthquake of the nations degrades of a sudden the actual; and speedily starts up the ideal Kingdom of the Future. Such a thing has just come to pa.s.s. In France, within five-and-forty days, a new State has arisen from underneath the old. Men, whose words were suppressed, and their ideas reckoned illegal but two months ago, now hold the sceptre of five-and-thirty millions of grateful citizens, hold it in clean and powerful hands. A great revolution has taken place; one which will produce effects that we cannot foresee. It is itself the greatest act of this century. G.o.d only knows what it will lead to. We are here to express the sympathy of republicans for a new republic. We are here to rejoice over the rising hopes of a new State, not to exult over the fallen fortunes of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe has done much which we may thank him for. He has kept mainly at peace the fiercest nation of the world; has kept the peace of Europe for seventeen years. Let us thank him for that. He has consolidated the French nation, helped to give them a new unity of thought and unity of action, which they had not before. Perhaps he did not intend all this. Since he has brought it about, let us thank him for it, even if his conduct transcended his intention. But, most of all, I would thank this "Citizen King" for another thing. His greatest lesson is his last. He has shown that five-and-thirty millions of Frenchmen, in this nineteenth century, are only to be ruled by Justice and the Eternal Law of Right. We have seen this crafty king, often wise and always cunning, driven from his throne.

He was the richest man in Europe, and the embodiment of the idea of modern wealth. He had an army the best disciplined, probably, in the world, and, as he thought, completely in his power. He had a Chamber of Peers of his own appointment; a Chamber of Deputies almost of his own election. He ruled a nation that contained three hundred thousand office-holders, appointed by himself, and only two hundred and forty thousand voters! Who sat so safe as the citizen king on his throne, surrounded by republican inst.i.tutions! So confident was he, as the journals tell, that he bade a friend stop a day or two, "and see how I will put down the people!" For once, this shrewd calculator reckoned without his host.

Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army "fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children, ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus taught, let us thank him most of all.

Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come of good parentage, and gives signs of a good const.i.tution. Let us rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.

In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at, namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The actions I will say little of; you have all read of them in the newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime, eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries; to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!

I have said enough of the actions; but there was one deed too symbolical to be pa.s.sed by. In the garden of the Tuileries, before the great gate of the palace, there stands a statue of Spartacus, a colossal bronze, his broken chain in the left hand, his Roman sword in the right.

Spartacus was a Roman gladiator. He broke his chains; gathered about him other gladiators, fugitive slaves, and a.s.sembled an army. He and his comrades fought for freedom; they cut off four consular armies sent against them; at last the hero fell amid a heap of men, slain by his own well-practised hand. When the people took the old and emblematic French throne, and burned it solemnly with emblematic fire, they stripped off some of the crimson trappings of the royal seat, made a tiara thereof, and bound it on the gladiator's brazen head! But red is the color of revolution, the color of blood; the unconscious gladiator was an image too savage for new France. So they hid the Roman sword in his hand, and wreathed it all over with a chaplet of flowers!

Let us say a word of the ideas. Three ideas filled the mind of the nation: the idea of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Three n.o.ble words.

Liberty meant liberty of all. So, at one word, they set free the slaves, and, if my friend's ciphers are correct, at once three hundred thousand souls rise up from the ground disenthralled, free men. That is a great act. A population as large as the whole family of our sober sister Connecticut, all at once find their chains drop off, and they are free: not beasts, but men. This may not hold. Our Declaration of Independence was not the Confederation of '78--still less was it the Const.i.tution of '87. The French may be as false as the Americans to their idea of liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.

Equality means that all are equal before the law; equal in rights, however unequal in mights. So all t.i.tles of n.o.bility come at once to the ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men over twenty-one are voters. Men here in America say, "The French are not ready for that." No doubt the king thought so. At any rate, he was not ready for it. But it is not a thing altogether unknown in France. It has been tried several times before. The French Const.i.tution was accepted by the whole people in 1800; Napoleon was made Consul by the whole people; made Emperor by the whole people. Even in 1815, the "acte additionelle"

to the "Charte" was accepted by the whole people. To decree universal suffrage was the most natural thing in the world. Those two ideas, liberty and equality, have long been American ideas; they were never American facts. America sought liberty only for the whites. Our fathers thought not of universal suffrage.

But France has not only attempted to make our ideas into facts; she has advanced an idea not hinted at in the American Declaration; the idea of Fraternity. By this she means human brotherhood. This points not merely to a political, but to a social revolution. It is not easy for us to understand how a government can effect this. Here, all comes from the people, and the people have to take care of the government, meaning thereby the men in official power; have to furnish them with ideas, and tell them what application to make thereof. There all comes from the government. So the new provisional government of France must be one that can lead the nation; have ideas in advance of the nation. Accordingly, it proposes many plans which with us could never have come from any party in power. Here, the government is only the servant of the people.

There, it aims to be the father and teacher thereof; a patriarchal government with Christian thoughts and feelings. But as an eloquent man is to come after me, whose special aim is to develop the idea of human brotherhood into social inst.i.tutions, I will not dwell on this, save to mention an act of the provisional authorities. They have abolished the punishment of death for all political offences. You remember the guillotine, the ma.s.sacres of September, the drowning in the Loire and the Seine, the dreadful butchery in the name of the law.

Put this new decree side by side with the old, and you see why Spartacus, though crowned by a revolution, bears peaceful blossoms in his hand.

But let us hasten on; time would fail me to speak of the cause or point out the effect of this movement of the people. Only a word concerning the objections made to it. Some say, "It is only an extempore affair.

Men drunk with new power are telling their fancies, and trying in their heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France.

Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his political faith."[43]