the moral sense of the American people. It depends
not on the zeal and firmness only of the reformers, but on their wisdom
and moderation also. Stoicism, that had no charity for error, never
converted any human society to virtue; Christianity, that remembers the
true nature of man, has encompassed a large portion of the globe. How long
emancipation may be delayed, is among the things concealed from our
knowledge, but not so the certain result. The perils of the enterprize
are already passed--its difficulties have already been removed--when it
shall have been accomplished it will be justly regarded as the last noble
effort which rendered the Republic imperishable.

Then the merit of the great achievement will be awarded to John Quincy
Adams; and by none more gratefully than by the communities on whom the
institution of slavery has brought the calamity of premature and
consumptive decline, in the midst of free, vigorous, and expanding States.

If this great transaction could be surpassed in dramatic sublimity, it was
surpassed when the same impassioned advocate of humanity appeared, at the
age of seventy-four, with all the glorious associations that now clustered
upon him, at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and
pleaded, without solicitation or reward, the cause of Cinque and thirty
other Africans, who had been stolen by a Spanish slaver from their native
coast, had slain the master and crew of the pirate vessel, floated into
the waters of the United States, and there been claimed by the President,
in behalf of the authorities of Spain. He pleaded this great cause with
such happy effect, that the captives were set at liberty. Conveyed by the
charity of the humane to their native shores, they bore the pleasing
intelligence to Africa, that justice was at last claiming its way among
civilized and Christian men!

The recital of heroic actions loses its chief value, if we cannot discover
the principles in which they were born. The text of John Quincy Adams,
from which he deduced the duties of citizens, and of the republic, was the
address of the Continental Congress to the people of the United States, on
the occasion of the successful close of the American Revolution. He dwelt
often and emphatically on the words:

Let it be remembered, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of
America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human
nature. By the blessing of the Author of those righ