o the United
States; not from any spirit of encroachment or of ambition on our part,
but because it was a physical, and moral, and political absurdity, that
such fragments of territory, with sovereigns fifteen hundred miles
beyond sea, worthless and burdensome to their owners, should exist,
permanently, contiguous to a great, powerful, enterprising, and
rapidly-growing nation. Most of the territories of Spain in our
neighborhood had become ours by fair purchase. This rendered it more
unavoidable that the remainder of the continent should ultimately be
ours. It was but very lately we had seen this ourselves, or that we had
avowed the pretension of extending to the South Sea; and, until Europe
finds it to be a settled geographical element that the United States and
North America are identical, any effort on our part to reason the world
out of the belief that we are an ambitious people will have no other
effect than to convince them that we add to our ambition hypocrisy."

Concerning the discords which arose in the cabinet, on policy to be
pursued, Mr. Adams remarked: "I see them with pain, but they are sown in
the practice which the Virginia Presidents have taken so much pains to
engraft on the constitution of the Union, making it a principle that no
President can be more than twice elected, and whoever is not thrown out
after one term of service must decline being a candidate after the
second. This is not a principle of the constitution, and I am satisfied
it ought not to be. Its inevitable consequence is to make every
administration a scene of continuous and furious electioneering for the
succession to the Presidency. It was so through the whole of Mr.
Madison's administration, and it is so now."

The signature of the treaty for the acquisition of Florida, sanctioned
by the unanimous vote of the Senate, had greatly contributed to the
apparent popularity of Mr. Monroe's administration. But the postponement
of its ratification by Spain soon clouded the prospect; and the question
whether Missouri should be admitted into the Union as a slave or free
state, in which Mr. Adams took a deep interest, immediately rendered the
political atmosphere dark and stormy. "There is now," Mr. Adams
observed, "every appearance that the slave question will be carried by
the superior ability of the slavery party. For this much is certain,
that if institutions are to be judged by their results in the
composition of the councils of the Union,