icate abroad the same
impartiality practised by Washington at home. There was one citizen
eminently qualified for such a trust in such a conjuncture. Need I say
that citizen was the younger Adams, and that Washington had the sagacity
to discover him?

John Quincy Adams successively completed missions at the Hague and at
Berlin, in the period intervening between 1794 and 1801, with such
advantage and success, that in 1802 he was honored by his native
commonwealth with a seat as her representative in the Senate of the United
States. The insults offered to our country by the belligerents increased
in aggravation as the contest between them became more violent and
convulsive. France, in 1804, laid aside even the name and forms of a
Republic, and the first consul, dropping the emblems of popular power,
placed the long-coveted diadem upon his brow, where its jewels sparkled
among the laurels he had won in the conquest of Italy. Washington's
administration had passed away, leaving the American people in sullen
discontent. John Adams had succeeded, and had atoned by the loss of power
for the offence he had given by causing a just but unavailing war to be
declared against France. Jefferson was at the head of the Government; he
thought the belligerents might be reduced to forbearance by depriving them
of our commercial contributions of supplies, and recommended, first an
embargo, and then non-intercourse. Britain was an insular and France a
continental power. The effects of these measures would therefore be more
severe on the former than on the latter, and, unhappily, they were more
severe on our own country than on either of the offenders.

Massachusetts was the chief commercial State in the Union. She saw the
ruin of her commerce involved in the policy of Jefferson, and regarded it
as an unworthy concession to the usurper of the French throne. In this
emergency John Quincy Adams turned his back on Massachusetts, and threw
into the uprising scale of the administration, the weight of his talents
and of his already eminent fame. Massachusetts instructed the recusant to
recant. He refused to obey, and resigned his place. His change of
political relations astounded the country, and, with the customary charity
of partisan zeal, was attributed to venality. It is now seen by us in the
light reflected upon it by the habitual independence, unquestioned purity,
and lofty patriotism of his whole life; and thus seen, constitutes only
the f