the chair of the Presidency, you assumed the merit of every
thing to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution
began to appear. You commenced your Presidential career by encouraging
and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you travelled America from
one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You
have as many addresses in your chest as James the II. As to what were
your views, for if you are not great enough to have ambition you are
little enough to have vanity, they cannot be directly inferred from
expressions of your own; but the partizans of your politics have
divulged the secret.

John Adams has said, (and John it is known was always a speller after
places and offices, and never thought his little services were highly
enough paid,)--John has said, that as Mr. Washington had no child, the
Presidency should be made hereditary in the family of Lund Washington.
John might then have counted upon some sinecure himself, and a provision
for his descendants. He did not go so far as to say, also, that the
Vice-Presidency should be hereditary in the family of John Adams. He
prudently left that to stand on the ground that one good turn deserves
another.(*)

John Adams is one of those men who never contemplated the origin of
government, or comprehended any thing of first principles. If he had,
he might have seen, that the right to set up and establish hereditary
government, never did, and never can, exist in any generation at any
time whatever; that it is of the nature of treason; because it is an
attempt to take away the rights of all the minors living at that time,
and of all succeeding generations. It is of a degree beyond common
treason. It is a sin against nature. The equal right of every generation
is a right fixed in the nature of things. It belongs to the son when of
age, as it belonged to the father before him. John Adams would himself
deny the right that any former deceased generation could have to
decree authoritatively a succession of governors over him, or over his
children; and yet he assumes the pretended right, treasonable as it is,
of acting it himself. His ignorance is his best excuse.

John Jay has said,(**) (and this John was always the sycophant of
every thing in power, from Mr. Girard in America, to Grenville in
England,)--John Jay has said, that the Senate should have been appointed
for life. He would then have been sure of never wanting a lucrative
appointment f