A testimony of this nature, coming voluntarily, and unsolicited from the President, could not but efface from Wolcott's mind, every sentiment of personal ill will. Rigid as he was in adherence to principle and the sense of duty, no man was more placable, when an atonement was voluntarily offered for individual injury. The appointment had been made by Mr. Adams, with the full knowledge of Wolcott's political views, which were indeed, no secret to any one; its acceptance, therefore, carried with it no humiliating sense of obligation to one who had been secretly undermined. The moderation which had always characterized Wolcott's language, as regarded even those measures which he opposed; the temperate and charitable constructions which he had put upon Mr. Adams' motives, while he disapproved of his acts, had placed no bar to his receiving from him an official station. which neither depended on the caprice, nor subjected him to the personal infirmities of the chief magistrate; and his guarded conduct in their intercourse, had subjected him to none of the grosser indignities which had so justly provoked the enmity of others. The office afforded an honorable, and independent retirement. His resolution was therefore easily taken.

TO JOHN MARSHALL.

MIDDLETOWN, March 2d, 1801.

I have received your favour of the 24th of February, and cordially thank you for the obliging expressions of your friendship. The appointment with which I have been honoured, was unexpected; and I learn with pleasure that it was unsolicited by my friends.

Being sensible that I owe this distinguished proof of confidence to the favour of the President, duty and inclination naturally inspire sentiments of gratitude and good will; and I assure you, that I yield to their influence, not only without reluctance or reserve, but with the highest satisfaction.

It is impossible that I should not feel the greatest diffidence of my qualifications for the appointment, yet, so far as diligence and fidelity can compensate for the deficiencies of which I am conscious, I may hope to render my services acceptable.

TO JAMES HILLHOUSE.

MIDDLETOWN, March 18, 1801.

I have not been able before now, since your return to Connecticut, to acknowledge your kind favours of Feb. 7, 18, and 19, from Washington. The part you have acted, has been that of a sincere and intelligent friend; and the opinions which you and the other gentlemen expressed, on the subject of the late appointment, with which I have been honoured, were sufficiently favourable. I feel the utmost diffidence of my qualifications, but under the influence of the most grateful sentiments, I shall certainly endeavour, by all the means in my power, to merit their confidence and approbation.

TO JOHN ADAMS.

MIDDLETOWN, March 28th, 1801.

I embrace the earliest opportunity which I have been able to improve, since your arrival at Quincy, to express my most sincere acknowledgements for the distinguished proof which I have received, of your confidence, in being appointed a Judge of the second circuit of the United States.

My friends have communicated to me the circumstances which attended the appointment; by which I hear with the highest satisfaction, that I owe the honourable station in which I have been placed, to your favourable opinion, and in no degree to their solicitation. Believing that gratitude to benefactors is among the most amiable, and ought to be among the most indissoluble of social obligations, I shall, without reserve, cherish the emotions which are inspired by a sense of duty and honour on this occasion.

FROM JOHN ADAMS.

STONEY FIELD, April 6, 1801.

Dear Sir,

sure.

I have received your favour of the 28th of March, and read it with much pleaThe information you have received from your friends concerning the circumstances of your nomination to be a Judge of the Second Circuit of the United States is very correct. I have never allowed myself to speak much of the gratitude due from the public to individuals for past services. But I have always wished that more should be said of justice. Justice is due from the public to itself, and justice is also due to individuals. When the public discards or neglects talents and integrity, united with meritorious past services, it commits iniquity against itself by depriving itself of the benefit of future services, and it does wrong to the individual by depriving him of the reward which long and faithful services have merited. Twenty years of able and faithful service on the part of Mr. Wolcott, remunerated only by a simple subsistence, it appeared to me, constituted a claim upon the public which ought to be attended to.

As it was of importance that no appointment should be made that would be

refused, I took measures to ascertain from your friends the probability of your acceptance and then made the nomination, happy to have so fair an opportunity to place you beyond the reach of will and pleasure.

I wish you much pleasure and more honour, in your law studies and pursuits, and doubt not you will contribute your full share to make justice run down our

streets as a stream.

My family joins me in friendly regards to you and yours. With much esteem, I have the honour to be, sir, your most obt. and humble servt.

JOHN ADAMS.

With the third of March 1801, terminated Mr. Adams' Presidency. Without waiting to see the inauguration of his successor, he precipitately left Washington at an early hour the next morning. Could he have feared another such trial of his sensibilities as attended the retirement of his predecessor?

It seems to have been Mr. Adams' fate to suggest moral reflections at his own expense. In a letter to his daughter, of January 1796, he makes the following remarks.

"Governor Adams' speech, too, I have read. From the effect of old age upon such minds as Adams' and Styles', I am led to deprecate a much longer continuance in public life. It is an awful reflection that every weakness, every folly, every resentful, vindictive, malignant passion of the heart, which in the vigour of understanding may be corrected or suppressed, must break out and show itself to the world and posterity from the trembling lips and shaking hands of seventy or eighty years. May my farm and family only be witnesses of my dotages when they must arrive; may they forgive and veil them from public view. The worst of it is, a man is not conscious when they make their first approaches, nor perhaps in any stage of their progress." a

At the conclusion of one of the Patriot letters, occurs the following simile:

"In some of my jocular moments I have compared myself to an animal I have seen take hold of the end of a cord with his teeth and be drawn slowly up by pullies through a storm of squibs, crackers and rockets, flaming and blazing round him every moment; and though the scorching flames made him groan and moan and roar, he would not let go his hold till he had reached the ceiling of a lofty theatre, where he hung some time, still suffering a flight of rockets,

"Correspondence of Miss Adams, New York, 1842. Vol. II. p. 145. daughter of John Adams," &c., 12 mo.

and at last descended through another storm of burning powder, and never let go till his four feet safely landed on the floor." a

Mr. Adams overlooked the moral of the compari

son.

Thus fell the power of the federalists in the councils of the nation. It may not be useless to review the causes of their fall.

Between the various colonies and provinces which constituted the United States, there were, as in a less degree than are now, great differences in the character of their people, and in the nature of their local institutions. New England, New York, Virginia, and South Carolina, were even more unlike than many of the nations of the Germanic Union. Though springing chiefly from a common race, the inhabitants had been drawn from classes of society, widely separated by religious and political principles; they had emigrated from the mother country under different auspices, with different aims and objects, and at periods distinguished by different characteristics. Time had not rendered them more homogeneous; without political connexion, without uniform laws, or even similarity in the forms of government, with many sources of rivalry or jealousy, the colonies, until one great common object had swallowed up all individual interests, were at the best very distant friends. Fellowship in war, increased intercourse during the government of the confederacy, had partially extinguished the prejudices of individuals, but had not assimilated the masses, for the interval which elapsed between the conclusion of peace and the adoption of the new constitution was little more than a period of national anarchy.

New England, of all the great sections, was the most

a Letter XVIII.

democratic in the character of its people and of its government. Industry, simplicity of life and manners, were almost universal. Intelligence was more equally diffused, property more equally divided, than ever elsewhere occurred in the same population. The laws too, were more equal in their operation, and a greater proportion of the people were concerned in their enactment. The asperities of the Puritans had worn away, many of their virtues remained; love of order and morality, a firm, steady, rational attachment to liberty marked their descendants.

A

New York possessed much less of these features. succession of British governors, the refuse of the aristocracy, had introduced habits of luxury; wealthy families of Dutch and English descent still held vast landed estates, maintained an almost feudal magnificence, controlled extensive interests, and cherished their pride of birth; the English Church, always aristocratic in its tendency, had contributed to foster this spirit, and the character of the people at large had suffered by its influence.

Virginia, the citadel of democracy in theory, was, South Carolina perhaps excepted, the least democratic of all in fact. What in New England sprang from the manners and habits of the people at large, was there only the result of a fashionable philosophy. In spite of the brilliant paradox of Burke, the experience of history has ever proved that whether population be divided into lord and serf, or master and slave, the result is the same. Democracy is but a name where social distinctions exist.

South Carolina, though in many respects to be classed among the States of which Virginia was a representative, in some should be considered as belonging to a fourth division. Like her aristocratic in social organization, she possessed a perhaps less questionable foundation for its spirit in a higher refinement and more diffused intelligence.