It argued a noble consciousness of virtue to express, on such an occasion,
so ingenuously, the emotions of a generous ambition.

He displayed the same great quality no less when he called to the post of
chief Minister, in spite of clamors of corruption, Henry Clay, that one of
his late rivals who alone among his countrymen had the talents and
generosity which the responsibilities of the period exacted.

John Quincy Adams signalized his accession to the post of dangerous
elevation by avowing the sentiments concerning parties by which he was
inflexibly governed throughout his administration:--

Of the two great political parties [he said] which have divided the
opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now
admit, that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity,
ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices, to the formation and
administration of the Government, and that both have required a liberal
indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary
wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government of
the United States first went into operation under the constitution,
excited collisions of sentiments, and of sympathies, which kindled all the
passions and embittered the conflict of parties, till the nation was
involved in war, and the Union was shaken to its centre. This time of
trial embraced a period of five-and-twenty years, during which the policy
of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis
of our own political divisions, and the most arduous part of action of the
Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars of the French
Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain,
this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time no
difference of principle, connected with the theory of government, or with
our intercourse with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in
force sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties, or given
more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative debate.
Our political creed, without a dissenting voice that can be heard, is that
the will of the people is the source, and the happiness of the people is
the end, of all legitimate government upon earth--that the best security
for the beneficence, and the best guaranty against the abuse of power,
consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of pop