Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams Part 15

"What, sir, I ask, is the object of this resolution? To inquire of the President of the United States whether any officer of the army, or the Attorney-General of the United States, since the 4th of March last, has visited the State of New York for any purpose connected with the trial of Alexander McLeod. What then? Has not the President a right to send the Attorney-General to New York on that or any other subject? Where is the const.i.tutional provision prohibiting him from sending the Attorney-General to New York on that or any other of the subjects which are before the judicial courts of that state?

Yes, the Attorney-General has been sent there, and we have his instructions. And I have heard here, on the part of some of my forty friends from New York, a great deal about the conscious dignity and honor of this _Empire State_ of New York. I am not very fond of that term 'empire state,' in the language of this Union; and I say that if there is an 'empire state' in the Union, it is Delaware. To be magniloquent, and talk about the empire state, may well become the forty gentlemen who represent the state on this floor, having reference to their own numbers, and the numbers of their const.i.tuents, or to the extent, fertility, and beauty, of her soil; yet this is a distinction not recognized in the const.i.tution of the United States. They are all, as members of this Union, equal, and the State of Delaware has as good a right to be called the 'empire state' as New York. Now, if my forty friends from New York choose to call it the 'empire state,' I will not quarrel with them. It is only as to consequences that I enter my caveat against the too frequent use of those terms on this floor; for there is meaning in those words, 'empire state,' when used among co-estates, more than meets the ear.

"Suppose that it was in Delaware that such an event had occurred; do you suppose my friend here (Mr. Rodney) from Delaware would have offered such a resolution as this? And, by the terms of the resolution, I should presume my friends from New York think there is a little more dignity and power in forty representatives than only one."

In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented Commonplace Book, as an improvement upon Locke's, was brought to Mr. Adams for his recommendatory notice; which he declined, from a general rule he had adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might be very useful, if a practical system of such a manual could be simplified to the intellect and industry of common minds, which he doubted. "I had occupied and amused a long life," said he, "in the search of such a compendious wisdom-box, but without being able to find or make it. I had made myself more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but never used any one of them. I had learnt and practised Byrom's Shorthand Writing, but no one could read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double entry,--day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash-book, bank-book, house-book, and letter-book. I had made extracts, copies, translations, and quotations, more perhaps than other man living, without ever being able to pack up my knowledge or my labors in any methodical order; and now doubt whether I might not have employed my time more profitably in some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pursuit, adapting every hour of labor to the attainment of some great end."

In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society a lecture on the war then existing between Great Britain and China. The principles stated and maintained in that lecture were so much in advance of the opinions entertained at the time, that it is believed to have been published in but a single newspaper in this country or in Europe, and never in a pamphlet form, except by the proprietors of the _Chinese Repository_, published in Macao, China, in May, 1842. Though his views were ridiculed or repudiated by many when delivered, they are at this day acknowledged; and are made some of the chief grounds of the justification of that invasion of the Chinese empire now apparently in successful progress. The subject is of preeminent importance, and is canva.s.sed with that laborious research and independence eminently characteristic of the author.

In this lecture, after controverting the doctrine of an eminent French writer, who contended that there was no such thing as international law, and that the word law is not applicable to the obligations inc.u.mbent upon nations, on the ground that law is a rule of conduct prescribed by a superior; and that nations, being independent, acknowledge no superior, and have no common sovereign from whom they can receive law,--Mr. Adams proceeds to maintain that "by the law of nations is to be understood, not one code of laws, binding alike on all the nations of the earth, but a system of rules varying according to the character and condition of the parties concerned." There is a law of nations, among Christian communities, which is the law recognized by the const.i.tution of the United States as obligatory upon them in their intercourse with European states and colonies. But we have a different law of nations regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on this continent; another, between us and the woolly-headed natives of Africa; another, with the Barbary powers; another, with the flowery land, or Celestial empire. This last is the nation with which Great Britain is now at war.

Then, reasoning on the rights of property, established by labor, by occupancy, and by compact, he maintains that the right of exchange, barter,--in other words, of commerce,--necessarily follows; that a state of nature among men is a state of peace; the pursuit of happiness man's natural right; that it is the duty of men to contribute as much as is in their power to one another's happiness, and that there is no other way by which they can so well contribute to the comfort and well-being of one another as by commerce, or the mutual exchange of equivalents. These views and principles he thus ill.u.s.trates:

"The duty of commercial intercourse between nations is laid down in terms sufficiently positive by Vattel, but he afterwards qualifies it by a restriction, which, unless itself restricted, annuls it altogether. He says that, although the general duty of commercial intercourse is inc.u.mbent upon nations, yet every nation may exclude any particular branch or article of trade which it may deem injurious to its own interest. This cannot be denied. But, then, a nation may multiply these particular exclusions, until they become general, and equivalent to a total interdict of commerce; and this, time out of mind, has been the inflexible policy of the Chinese empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure upon it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position which he had previously laid down, that commercial intercourse between nations is a moral obligation inc.u.mbent upon them all.

"The empire of China is said to extend over three hundred millions of human beings. It is said to cover a s.p.a.ce of seven millions of square miles--about four times larger than the surface of these United States. The people are not Christians, nor can a Christian nation appeal to the principles of a common faith to settle the question of right and wrong between them. The moral obligation of commercial intercourse between nations is founded entirely and exclusively upon the Christian precept to love your neighbor as yourself. With this principle, you cannot refuse commercial intercourse with your neighbor, because, commerce consisting of a voluntary exchange of property mutually beneficial to both parties, excites in both the selfish and the social propensities, and enables each of the parties to promote the happiness of his neighbors by the same act whereby he provides for his own. But, China not being a Christian nation, its inhabitants do not consider themselves bound by the Christian precept to love their neighbors as themselves. The right of commercial intercourse with them reverts not to the execrable principle of Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state of war, where every one has a right to buy, but no one is obliged to sell. Commerce becomes altogether a matter of convention. The right of each party is only to propose; that of the other is to accept or refuse, and to his result he may be guided exclusively by the consideration of his own interest, without regard to the interests, the wishes, or other wants, of his neighbor.

"This is a churlish and unsocial system; and I take occasion here to say that whoever examines the Christian system of morals with a philosophical spirit, setting aside all the external and historical evidences of its truth, will find all its precepts tending to exalt the nature of the animal man; all its purpose to be peace on earth and good will towards men. Ask the atheist, the deist, the Chinese, and they will tell you that the foundation of their system of morals is selfish enjoyment. Ask the philosophers of the Grecian schools,--Epicurus, Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca,--and you will find them discoursing upon the Supreme Good.

They will tell you it is pleasure, ease, temperance, prudence, fort.i.tude, justice: not one of them will whisper the name of love, unless in its gross and physical sense, as an instrument of pleasure; not one of them will tell you that the source of all moral relation between you and the rest of mankind is to love your neighbor as yourself--to do unto him as you would that he should do unto you.

"The Chinese recognize no such law. Their internal government is a hereditary patriarchical despotism, and their own exclusive interest is the measure of all their relations with the rest of mankind.

Their own government is founded upon the principle that as a nation they are superior to the rest of mankind. They believe themselves and their country especially privileged over all others; that their dominion is the celestial empire, and their territory the flowery land.

"The fundamental principle of the Chinese empire is anti-commercial.

It is founded entirely upon the second and third of Vattel's general principles, to the total exclusion of the first. It admits no obligation to hold commercial intercourse with others. It utterly denies the equality of other nations with itself, and even their independence. It holds itself to be the centre of the terraqueous globe,--equal to the heavenly host,--and all other nations with whom it has any relations, political or commercial, as outside tributary barbarians, reverently submissive to the will of its despotic chief.

It is upon this principle, openly avowed and inflexibly maintained, that the princ.i.p.al maritime nations of Europe for several centuries, and the United States of America from the time of their acknowledged independence, have been content to hold commercial intercourse with the empire of China.

"It is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon the first principle of the rights of nations, should cease. These principles of the Chinese empire, too long connived at and truckled to by the mightiest Christian nations of the civilized world, have at length been brought into conflict with the principles and the power of the British empire; and I cannot forbear to express the hope that Britain, after taking the lead in the abolition of the African slave-trade and of slavery, and of the still more degrading tribute to the Barbary African Mahometans, will extend her liberating arm to the furthest bound of Asia, and at the close of the present contest insist upon concluding the peace upon terms of perfect equality with the Chinese empire, and that the future commerce shall be carried on upon terms of equality and reciprocity between the two communities parties to the trade, for the benefit of both; each retaining the right of prohibition and of regulation, to interdict any article or branch of trade injurious to itself, as for example the article of opium, and to secure itself against the practices of fraudulent traders and smugglers. This is the truth, and I apprehend the only question at issue between the governments and nations of Great Britain and China. It is a general, but I believe altogether a mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is merely for certain chests of opium, imported by British merchants into China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute, but no more the cause of war than the throwing overboard of the tea in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American Revolution.

"The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or commercial, their superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and manifested in humiliating forms. It is not creditable to the great, powerful, and enlightened nations of Europe, that for several centuries they have, for the sake of a profitable trade, submitted to these insolent and insulting pretensions, equally contrary to the first principles of the law of nature and of revealed religion--the natural equality of mankind--

"'_Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?_'

"This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for being practised by Christian nations, which, in their intercourse with one another, push the principle of equality and reciprocity to the minutest punctilios of form."

This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treatment of Lord Macartney by the Chinese emperor, in 1792, when sent to that court as amba.s.sador from Great Britain, ill.u.s.trating and supporting its general argument.

The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the distinction with a very small difference between "the bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a token of homage,--admitted as to the first, denied as to the last, by the British amba.s.sador,--are characteristic.

"The narrative of Sir George Staunton distinctly and positively affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the presence of the Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without performing the prostration of the Kotow--the Chinese act of homage from the va.s.sal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816, another splendid emba.s.sy was despatched by the British government, in the person of Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed, without even being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or pa.s.sing a single hour at Pekin. A Dutch emba.s.sy inst.i.tuted shortly after the failure of that of Lord Macartney, fared no better, although the amba.s.sador submitted with a good grace to the prostration of the Kotow. A philosophical republican may smile at the distinction by which a British n.o.bleman saw no objection to delivering his credentials on the bended knee, but could not bring his stomach to the att.i.tude of entire prostration. In the discussion which arose between Lord Amherst and the celestials on this question, the Chinese, to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord Macartney had performed the Kotow; and Kiaking, the successor of Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney, personally pledged himself that he had seen his lords.h.i.+p in that att.i.tude. Against the testimony to the fact of the imperial witness in person, it may well be conjectured how impossible it was for the British n.o.ble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior, and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee in presenting his credentials to another. But the personal prostration of the amba.s.sador before the emperor was, in the Chinese principle of exaction, symbolical not only of the acknowledgment of subjection, but of the fundamental law of the empire prohibiting all official intercourse upon a footing of equality between the government of China and the government of any other nation. All are included under the general denomination of outside barbarians: and the commercial intercourse with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained through the exclusive monopoly of the Hong merchants."

At the opening of the session of Congress, on the 3d of December, 1841, Mr. Adams thus wrote concerning his own course and the country's prospects:

"Between the obligation to discharge my duty to the country and the obvious impossibility of accomplis.h.i.+ng anything for the improvement of its condition by legislation, my deliberate judgment warns me to a systematic adherence to inaction upon all the controverted topics which cannot fail to be brought into debate. Upon the rule-question (that is, refusing to receive or refer pet.i.tions on the subject of slavery) I cannot be silent, but shall be left alone, as heretofore.

I await the opening of the session with great anxiety; more from an apprehension of my own imprudence than from a belief that the fortunes of the country will be much affected, for good or evil, by anything that will be done. There is neither spotless integrity nor consummate ability at the helm of the s.h.i.+p, and she will be more than ever the sport of winds and waves, drifting between breakers and quicksands. May the wise and good Disposer send her home in safety!"

On the 24th of January, 1842, Mr. Adams presented the pet.i.tion of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Ma.s.sachusetts, praying that Congress would immediately take measures peaceably to dissolve the Union of these States. 1st. Because no Union can be agreeable which does not present prospects of reciprocal benefits. 2d. Because a vast proportion of the resources of one section of the Union is annually drained to sustain the views and course of another section, without any adequate return. 3d.

Because, judging from the history of past nations, that Union, if persisted in, in the present course of things, will certainly overwhelm the whole nation in utter destruction. Mr. Adams moved that the pet.i.tion be referred to a select committee, with instructions to report an answer showing the reasons why the prayer of it ought not to be granted.

The excitement the presentation of this pet.i.tion produced was immediate and intense. Mr. Hopkins, of Virginia, moved to burn it in presence of the house. Mr. Wise, of the same state, asked the speaker if it was in order to move to censure any member for presenting such a pet.i.tion. Mr.

Gilmer, also of Virginia, moved a resolution, that Mr. Adams, for presenting such a pet.i.tion, had justly incurred the censure of the house. Mr. Adams said that he hoped the resolution would be received and discussed. A desultory debate ensued, and was continued until the house adjourned. A caucus was immediately held by the opponents of Mr. Adams among the representatives from the South and West, to take measures to effect his expulsion. It was feared that the two thirds vote requisite to expel a member could not be obtained. Three resolutions were therefore prepared, the adoption of which it was deemed would in popular effect be equivalent to an expulsion. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, consented to present them the next day. The consideration of these resolutions, which continued until the 5th of February, produced a series of as violent and personal debates as perhaps the halls of Congress ever witnessed. They were in these words:

"WHEREAS, The federal const.i.tution is a permanent form of government, and of perpetual obligation, until altered or modified in the mode pointed out in that instrument; and the members of this House, deriving their political character and powers from the same, are sworn to support it; and the dissolution of the Union necessarily implies the destruction of that instrument, the overthrow of the American republic, and the extinction of our national existence: a proposition, therefore, to the representatives of the people, to dissolve the organic laws framed by their const.i.tuents, and to support which they are commanded by those const.i.tuents to be sworn before they can enter into the execution of the political powers created by it and intrusted to them, is a high breach of privilege, a contempt offered to this House, a direct proposition to the legislature and each member of it to commit perjury, and involving necessarily in its execution and its consequences the destruction of our country, and the crime of high treason.

"_Resolved, therefore_, That the Honorable John Quincy Adams, member from Ma.s.sachusetts, in presenting for the consideration of the House of Representatives of the United States a pet.i.tion praying for the dissolution of the Union, has offered the deepest indignity to the House of which he is a member, an insult to the people of the United States, of which that House is the legislative organ; and will, if this outrage be permitted to pa.s.s unrebuked and unpunished, have disgraced his country, through their representatives, in the eyes of the whole world.

"_Resolved, further_, That the aforesaid John Quincy Adams, for this insult, the first of the kind ever offered to the government, and for the wound which he has permitted to be aimed, through his instrumentality, at the const.i.tution and existence of his country, the peace, the security, and liberty of the people of these States, might well be held to merit expulsion from the national councils; and the House deem it an act of grace and mercy when they only inflict upon him their severest censure for conduct so utterly unworthy of his past relations to the state, and his present position. This they hereby do, for the maintenance of their own purity and dignity. For the rest, they turn him over to his own conscience, and the indignation of all true American citizens."

The scene which occurred, on their presentation, is thus graphically described in the newspapers of the day:

"On the 25th of January, the whole body of Southerners came into the House, apparently resolved to crush Mr. Adams and his cause forever.

They gathered in groups, conversed in deep whispers, and the whole aspect of their conduct at twelve o'clock indicated a conspiracy portending a revolution. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, rose, and, having asked and received of Mr. Gilmer leave to offer a subst.i.tute for his resolution of censure which was pending at the adjournment, presented the three prepared resolutions. He a.s.sumed a manner and tone as if he felt the historical importance of his position; spoke with great coolness and solemnity,--a style wholly unusual with him; a.s.sumed a solemn, magisterial air, and judicial elevation, as if he thought, in the insolence of his conceit, that he was about to pour down the thunder of condemnation on the venerable object of his attack, as a judge p.r.o.nouncing sentence on a convicted culprit, in the sight of approving men and angels. Warming somewhat with the silent, imposing attention of the vast audience before whom he spoke, he expanded into an inflated exhibition of his own past relations to the object of his attack, and thus represented himself eminently qualified to act the part he had a.s.sumed of prosecutor, judge, and executioner. When he finished, the speaker announced to Mr. Adams that his position ent.i.tled him to the floor, bringing up to the imagination a parallel scene: 'Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thyself.'

"Up rose, then, that bald, gray old man, his hands trembling with const.i.tutional infirmity and age, upon whose consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he could seek no friends, and but a few among those immediately around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with him, but clear, untremulous, and firm. In a moment his infirmities disappeared, although his shaking hand could not but be noticed: trembling not with fear, but with age. At first there was nothing of indignation in his tone, manner, or words. Surprise and cold contempt were all.

But anon a flash of withering scorn struck the unhappy Marshall. A single breath blew all his mock-judicial array into air and smoke.

In a tone of insulted majesty and reinvigorated spirit, Mr. Adams then said, in reply to the audacious, atrocious charge of 'high treason:' 'I call for the reading of the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Read it! read it! and see what that says of the right of a people to reform, to change, and to dissolve their government.'

"The look, the tone, the gesture, of the insulted patriot, at that instant were most imposing. The voice was that of sovereign command.

The burthen of seventy-five winters rolled off, and he rose above the puny things around him, who thought themselves his equals, from being his a.s.sociates.

"When the pa.s.sage of the Declaration was read that solemnly proclaims the right of reform, revolution, and resistance to oppression, the old man thundered out, '_Read that again!_' and he looked proudly round on the listening audience, as he heard his triumphant vindication sounded forth in the glorious sentences of the revolutionary Magna Charta.

"The sympathetic revulsion of feeling was intense, though voiceless.

Every drop of free, honest blood in that vast a.s.semblage bounded with high impulse, every fibre thrilled with excitement.

"A strong exhibition of the facts in the case, mostly in cold, calm, logical, measured sentences, concluded the high appeal of Mr. Adams, from the slaveholders of the present generation to the Father of that system of revolutionary liberty with which he is the coeval and the n.o.blest champion. And then he sat down vindicated, victorious."

Apart from the excited interest of friends, the malign aspersions of political enemies, and his own indignant response to the hollow tirade of his a.s.sailants, his defence, reduced to its elements, was simply this: that the pet.i.tion was sent to him for presentation; that it was a subject for which the signers of it had a const.i.tutional right to pet.i.tion, and that in presenting it he had proposed that the committee should be instructed to report reasons why it ought not to be granted.

He said that he should not enter further into his self-defence at that time, but should wait to see the action of the house upon those resolutions. But whenever the proper time for his defence should come, he pledged himself to show that "a portion of the country from which the a.s.sailants came was endeavoring to destroy the right of habeas corpus, and of trial by jury, and all the rights in which the liberties of the country consist;"--"that there was in that portion of country a systematic attempt even to carry it to the dissolution of the Union, with a continual system and purpose to destroy all the principles of civil liberty among the free states, and by power to force the detested principles of slavery on the free States of this Union;" a pledge which in the course of his subsequent argument he fully redeemed.

The last of January, Mr. Adams thus expressed himself concerning these proceedings: "My occupations during the month have been confined entirely to the business of the house, and for the last ten days to the defence of myself against an extensive combination and conspiracy, in and out of Congress, to crush the liberties of the free people of this Union, by disgracing me with the brand of censure, and displacing me from the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for my perseverance in presenting abolition pet.i.tions. I am in the midst of that fiery ordeal, and day and night absorbed in the struggle against this attempt at my ruin. G.o.d send me a good deliverance!"

Intemperate debates, with violence undiminished, succeeded, in which all the topics of party censure, from the adoption of the const.i.tution, were collected and heaped upon Mr. Adams by Marshall, Wise, Gilmer, and others.

On the 3d of February Mr. Adams took the floor, and spoke for two hours in his own defence, with an eloquence and effect to which no description can do justice. He touched the low underplot of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with pointed severity and bitter truth, and then gave amusing particulars of missives he had received from the South threatening him with a.s.sa.s.sination. Among other kindly hints sent through the post-office was a colored lithograph portrait of himself, with the picturesque annotation of a rifle-ball on the forehead, and a promise that such a remedy "would stop his music." He alluded to these communications with perfect good nature, some of them being identical with words used towards him by Mr. Gilmer. A further account of them will be given from the correspondent of the newspapers of the day.[1]

[1] See the _Boston Courier_ and _New York American_ of the period.

"Among the many strange impressions of these singular scenes, nothing is more striking than the total, disgraceful ignorance which prevails as to who John Quincy Adams _is_. That he has been President of the United States, and had previously borne high offices, seems occasionally to be vaguely remembered by a few of the most intelligent of his persecutors. But of the part which he has borne for half a century in the history of America and of the world they know no more than they do of the Vedas and Puranas.

"The thread of this great discourse was his present and past relations to Virginia and Virginians. After gratefully acknowledging his infinite obligations to the great Virginians of the first age of the federal republic, he modestly and unpretendingly recounted the unsought exalted honors heaped upon him by Was.h.i.+ngton, Madison, and Monroe, and detailed with touching simplicity and force some of his leading actions in the discharge of those weighty trusts. As he went back through the historic vista of patriotic achievements, he seemed to renew his youth like the eagles, and rose into a still loftier and bolder strain than in the withering retort with which he struck down Wise and Marshall. In pa.s.sing over the preliminaries of his discourse, he chanced to fix his eye on the latter, who was moving down one of the side aisles. Instantly, at the suggestion of the moment, he burst forth into a beautiful appeal to the hallowed memory of the venerated and immaculate Virginian who once bore the name of Marshall through a long career of judicial honor and usefulness. The general interest in this appeal to the past was impressive. The members of the house drew together around him; even his persecutors paid an involuntary tribute to 'the old man eloquent.'

"Lord Morpeth was an attentive spectator and auditor of these scenes of turbulence; and it was interesting to see a British statesman looking up to learn from such a source the unwritten history of his own country, as well as of Europe. For such it was, when Mr. Adams gave the history of the movements at the court of the Emperor Alexander, and his connection with them, which resulted in the Rus...o...b..itish alliance and in the overthrow of Napoleon. The early-chosen favorite of Was.h.i.+ngton, the trusted counsellor of Jefferson, the much-honored agent of Madison, the guide and chief support of Monroe, the restorer of the purity of the Was.h.i.+ngtonian epoch to the Presidential chair, and for the last ten years the bold champion of universal liberty, stood there baited by absurd charges of perjury and treason, by insignificant beings of yesterday.

"The monument of a past age, a beacon to the present, a landmark to the future, he towered above the little things around him. The beautiful poetic appeal to Virginia, with which he concluded, caused a thrill of delighted admiration in the whole a.s.sembly. The emphasis, the pathetic intonation, touched every heart. The triumph of Mr. Adams was complete."

On the eleventh day of this debate, Mr. Adams, in opening his defence, said that he had been charged by his a.s.sailant with consuming an unreasonable portion of the time of the house with his own affairs; but he thought that six days could not be deemed an extravagant requirement for the defence of a man situated as he was, when a great portion of that period had been consumed by his a.s.sailants, their a.s.sociates, and others. He did not desire to be responsible for any unnecessary consumption of the hours of debate. He wished, indeed, to state the whole affair; and, to accomplish this, he should require a great deal more time. He had laid out a great platform for his defence, if he was forced to continue it; but he was willing to forego it all, provided it could be done without sacrificing his rights, the rights of his const.i.tuents, and those of the pet.i.tioners. He then stated that if any gentleman would make a motion to lay the whole subject on the table, he would forbear to proceed any further with his defence. This motion was immediately made by Mr. Botts, of Virginia, and the house decided in its favor, by a vote of _one hundred and six_ to _ninety-three_. The pet.i.tion from Haverhill was then taken up and refused to be received; one hundred and sixty-six in the affirmative to forty in the negative.

On the 12th of April, 1842, Mr. Adams, as chairman of the committee on the Smithsonian fund, made a report in the form of a bill, the object of which was to settle three fundamental principles for the administration and management of the fund in all after time. The bill provided, First, that the princ.i.p.al fund should be preserved and maintained unimpaired, with an income secured upon it at the rate of six per cent. a year, from which all appropriations for the purposes of the founder should be made.

Second, that the portions of the income already accrued and invested in state stocks should be const.i.tuted funds, from the annual income of which an astronomical observer, with suitable a.s.sistants, should be supported. Third, that in the future management of this fund no part of it should be applied to any inst.i.tution of education, or religious establishment.

To the persevering spirit with which Mr. Adams on every occasion urged upon Congress and the people of the United States the observance of those fundamental principles which he had first a.s.serted and which he afterwards uninterruptedly maintained, notwithstanding a local and interested opposition to them, may be justly attributed the preservation of that fund, and its subsequent application to the objects of the founder's bequest, although in his prevailing desire that an astronomical observatory should be one of them, he did not succeed.