, which produced a high
degree of mutual respect and esteem between Mr. Adams and myself.
Certainly no man was ever truer than he was, in that day, to those
principles of rational republicanism, which, after the necessity of
throwing off our monarchy, dictated all our efforts in the establishment
of a new government. And although he swerved, afterwards, towards the
principles of the English constitution, our friendship did not abate on
that account. While he was Vice-President, and I Secretary of State,
I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount Vernon,
desiring me to call together the Heads of departments, and to invite Mr.
Adams to join us (which, by the bye, was the only instance of that being
done) in order to determine on some measure which required despatch; and
he desired me to act on it, as decided, without again recurring to him.
I invited them to dine with me, and after dinner, sitting at our wine,
having settled our question, other conversation came on, in which a
collision of opinion arose between Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton,
on the merits of the British Constitution, Mr. Adams giving it as his
opinion, that, if some of its defects and abuses were corrected, it
would be the most perfect constitution of government ever devised by
man. Hamilton, on the contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices,
it was the most perfect model of government that could be formed;
and that the correction of its vices would render it an impracticable
government. And this you may be assured was the real line of difference
between the political principles of these two gentlemen. Another
incident took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate
Hamilton's political principles. The room being hung around with a
collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of
Bacon, Newton, and Locke. Hamilton asked me who they were. I told
him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever
produced, naming them. He paused for some time: 'The greatest man,'
said he, 'that ever lived, was Julius Caesar.' Mr. Adams was honest as
a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a
politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to
govern men.

You remember the machinery which the federalists played off, about
that time, to beat down the friends to the real principles of our
constitution, to silence by terror every expression in their favo