counselor to the new administration, the post of back- CHAPTER stairs adviser, a position which according to his estimate of Adams's character, could not but be very powerful. 1797. "I sincerely deplore," adds the same letter, "the situa tion of our affairs with France. War with them, and consequent alliance with Great Britain, will completely compass the object of the executive council from the commencement of the war between France and Engand, taken up by some of them from that moment, by others more latterly. I still, however, hope it will be avoided. I do not believe Mr. Adams wishes war with France, nor do I believe he will truckle to England as servilely as has been done. If he assumes this front at once, and shows that he means to attend to self-respect and national dignity with both nations, perhaps the depredations of both on our commerce may be amicably arrested. I think we should begin first with those who first began with us, and, by an example on them, acquire a right to redemand the respect from which the other party has departed." To the affectation of indifference to office, ultra Republican prudery, and maiden reluctance, of which Jefferson's above-quoted letters make such a display, the correspondence of John Adams, on the same subject, affords a most refreshing contrast. Adams indeed wrote. to his wife, who seems to have been his sole confidant, to whom he unbosomed himself without restraint, while Jefferson wrote to political co-operators, in many of whom he saw or feared political rivals, and with all of whom he had an object to accomplish. Yet, with all due allowance for this difference, and though Adams's letters show him self-deceived no less than Jefferson, they still exhibit in a strong light the contrast between his character and that of his rival. CHAPTER Applying to the approaching presidential election a quotation from Necker, Adams adds, in illustration of 1796. it, "a man who, like myself, has been many more years Feb. 10. than Mr. Necker ever was at the center of affairs, and that in a young country which has ever boasted of its simplicity, frugality, integrity, public spirit, public virtue, disinterestedness, &c., can judge from his own experience of the activity of private interest, and perceive in what manner the human heart is influenced, irritated, and soothed by hope. Neglects and sacrifices of personal interest are oftener boasted than practiced. The parade, and pomp, and ostentation, and hypocrisy have been as common in America as in France. When I hear these pretensions set up, I am very apt to say to myself, this man deceives himself, or is attempting to deceive me. "The various elections of the United States will soon call forth these personal interests in all their vigor, and all the arts of dissimulation to conceal them. I am weary of the game, yet I don't know how I could live out of it. I don't love slight, neglect, contempt, disgrace, nor insult more than others, yet I believe I have firmness of mind enough to bear it like a man, a hero, a philosopher. I might groan like Achilles, and roll from side to side abed sometimes at the ignorance, folly, injustice, and ingratitude of the world, but I should be resigned, and become more easy and cheerful, and enjoy myself and my friend better than ever I did." Lamentable indeed it was, that in this latter estimate of himself Adams proved so entirely mistaken, and that, when the time of trial came, his manliness, heroism, and Feb. 15. philosophy so totally failed him. In another letter a few days after, in reply to some suggestions on the part of his wife of apprehensions for the government if X. Washington should retire, and of the violence of oppo- CHAPTER sition, to which, if himself chosen president, he might be exposed, Adams writes,-not without exhibiting a little 1796. anxiety and trepidation lest, after all, Washington might yet be persuaded to stand for a third term,-"In my opinion, there is no more danger in the change than there would be in changing a member of the Senate, and whoever lives to see it will own me to be a prophet. If Jay or even Jefferson (and one or the other it certainly will be, if the succession should be passed over) should be the man, the government will go on as well as ever. Jefferson could not stir a step in any other system than that which is begun. Jay would not wish it. The votes will run for three persons. Two I have mentioned; the third, being heir-apparent, will not probably be wholly overlooked. If Jefferson and Jay are president and vice-president, as is not improbable, the other retires without noise, or cries, or tears to his farm. If either of these two is president and the other vice-president, he retires without murmur or complaint to his farm forever. If this other should be president, and Jefferson or Jay vice-president, four years more of residence in Philadelphia will be his and your portion, after which we shall probably be desirous of imitating the example of the present pair; or if, by reason of strength and fortitude, eight years should be accomplished, that is the utmost limit of time that I will ever continue in public life at any rate. "Be of good courage, therefore, and tremble not. I see nothing to appal one, and I feel no ill forebodings or faint misgivings. I have not the smallest dread of private life or of public. If private life is to be my portion, my farm and my pen shall employ the rest of my days." CHAPTER X. But though Adams professed a readiness to retire with a good grace to private life, he did not affect to represent 1796. that retirement as a matter of choice: "I hate to live in March 1. Philadelphia in summer, and I hate still more to relinquish my farm. I hate speeches, messages, addresses and answers, proclamations, and such affected, studied, constrained things. I hate levées and drawing-rooms. I hate to speak to a thousand people to whom I have nothing to say. Yet all this I can do. But I am too old to continue more than one, or, at most, more than two heats, and that is scarcely time enough to form, conduct, and complete any very useful system." The debate on Jay's treaty being then fully under way, we find him exhibiting, a few days after, the spirit of an old warhorse, pawing the ground and panting for the battle: March. 13. "There are bold and daring strides making to demolish. the president, Senate, and all but the House, which, as it seems to me, must be the effect of the measures which many are urging." "I sometimes think that if I were in the House of Representatives, and could make speeches there, I could throw some light upon these things. If Mr. Jefferson should be president, I believe I must put up as a candidate for the House. But this is my vanity I feel sometimes as if I could speechify among them; but, alas! alas! I am too old. It would soon destroy my health. I declare, however, if I were in that House, I would drive out of it some demons that haunt it. There are false doctrines and false jealousies predominant there at times that it would be easy to exorcise." As to the office of vice-president, which Jefferson professed to find so well suited to his wishes and his temper, Adams never lost an opportunity of expressing his disgust at its tedious and insipid insignificance. With respect to foreign relations, the opinions and X. feelings of Adams were precisely such as to place him CHAPTER beyond all possibility of foreign influence, and to fit him for carrying out with energy and impartiality the sys- 1797. tem of exact neutrality which Washington had adopted. Whatever might be his admiration for the British Constitution, his feelings were altogether too warm and unyielding to have entirely subsided from that high pitch of indignation against the British government to which the Revolutionary struggle had raised them, and which his experience as minister to England, baffled as he had been, had not tended to allay. These feelings, indeed, had lately received a fresh impulse from a slight, or imagined slight, to John Quincy Adams, then minister to Holland, during a temporary visit to England, in relation to which the elder Adams wrote: "I am glad of April 9. it, for I would not have my son go so far as Mr. Jay, and affirm the friendly disposition of that country to this. I know better. I know their jealousy, envy, hatred, and revenge, covered under pretended contempt." Yet on the other hand, he was entirely free from that political fanaticism which had so run away with Giles, Monroe and others, and had so distorted the judgment of Jefferson as to make him, keenly as he felt any wrong or imagined wrong from Great Britain, perfectly supple under the chidings and the lash of the French Directory; leading him, as in his letter above quoted, to denounce Washington's neutral policy as a servile truckling to England. Adams did not believe in French politics. He had predicted from the beginning the failure of the French in their attempts to establish a free government; and however his residence abroad might have inspired him with esteem for that people as individuals, he had brought home with him very little confidence in French political sincerity. In a letter to his wife, written on his |