The constitutions of
the United States and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are both the
work of the people--one of the Union, the other of the State--not of
the whole people by the phantom of universal suffrage, but of the whole
people by that portion of them capable of contracting for the whole.
They are not democracy, nor aristocracy, nor monarchy, but a compound
of them all, of which democracy is the oxygen, or vital air, too pure
in itself for human respiration, but which in the union of other
elements, equally destructive in themselves and less pure, forms that
moral and political atmosphere in which we live, and move, and have our
being.

The preceding abstract, given almost wholly in the language of Mr.
Adams, shows the general drift of this characteristic essay.

On the 17th of September, 1842, a convention of delegates from the
district he represented received Mr. Adams at Braintree, and expressed
their thanks for his services on the floor of Congress, especially for
his fidelity in their defence "against every attempt of Southern
representatives and their Northern allies to sacrifice at the altar of
slavery the freedom of speech and the press, the right of petition, the
protection of free labor, and the immunities and privileges of Northern
citizens." Mr. Adams, in reply, after expressing his sensibility at
their unabated confidence in the integrity of his intentions, and in his
capacity to serve them, declared that it had been his endeavor to
discharge all the duties of his station "faithfully and gratefully to
them; faithfully to our native and beloved Commonwealth; faithfully to
our whole common country, the North American Union; faithfully to the
world of mankind, in every quarter of the globe, and under every variety
of condition or complexion; faithfully to that creator, God, who rules
the world in justice and mercy, and to whom our final account must be
made up by the standard of those attributes." He then proceeded to
state, that on receiving their invitation to attend that meeting, it had
been his intention to avail himself of the opportunity to unfold to them
the professions, principles, and practices, of the federal
administration of these United States, under the successive Presidents
invested with executive power, from the day when he took his seat as
their representative in Congress to the then present hour.

"I trusted it would be in my power to present to your contemplation,
not