CHAPTER portion, my farm and my pen shall employ the rest of my days."

X.

1796.

Though Adams professed a readiness to retire with a good grace to private life, he did not affect to represent March 1. that retirement as a matter of choice: "I hate to live in Philadelphia in summer, and I hate still more to relinquish my farm. I hate speeches, messages, addresses and answers, proclamations, and such affected, studied, constrained things. I hate levées and drawing-rooms. I hate to speak to a thousand people to whom I have nothing to say. Yet all this I can do. But I am too old to continue more than one, or, at most, more than two heats, and that is scarcely time enough to form, conduct, and complete any very useful system." The debate on Jay's treaty being then fully under way, we find him exhibiting, a few days after, the spirit of an old warhorse, pawing the ground and panting for the battle: March 13. There are bold and daring strides making to demolish

the president, Senate, and all but the House, which, as
it seems to me, must be the effect of the measures which
many are urging." "I sometimes think that if I were.
in the House of Representatives, and could make speeches
there, I could throw some light upon these things. If
Mr. Jefferson should be president, I believe I must put up
as a candidate for the House. But this is my vanity. I
feel sometimes as if I could speechify among them; but,
alas! alas! I am too old. It would soon destroy my
health. I declare, however, if I were in that House, I
would drive out of it some demons that haunt it.
are false doctrines and false jealousies predominant there
at times that it would be easy to exorcise." As to the
office of vice-president, which Jefferson professed to find
so well suited to his wishes and his temper, Adams never
lost an opportunity of expressing his disgust at its tedi
ous and insipid insignificance.

There

X.

With respect to foreign relations, the opinions and feel- CHAPTER ings of Adams were precisely such as to free him from all possibility of foreign influence, and to fit him for carrying 1797. out with energy and impartiality the system of exact neutrality which Washington had adopted. Whatever might be his admiration for the British Constitution, his feelings were altogether too warm and unyielding to have entirely subsided from that high pitch of indignation against the British government to which the Revolutionary struggle had raised them, and which his experience as minister to England, slighted and baffled as he had been, had not tended to allay. These feelings, indeed, had lately received a fresh impulse in a slight, or imagined slight, to John Q. Adams, then minister to Holland, during a temporary visit to England, in relation to which the elder Adams thus wrote: "I am glad of it, for I would April 9. not have my son go so far as Mr. Jay, and affirm the friendly disposition of that country to this. I know better. I know their jealousy, envy, hatred, and revenge, covered under pretended contempt."

On the other hand, he was entirely free from that political fanaticism which had so run away with Giles, Monroe, and others, and by which the judgment of Jefferson was so distorted as to make him, keenly as he felt any wrong or imagined wrong from Great Britain, perfectly supple under the chidings and the lash of the French Directory, and to lead him, as in his letter above quoted, to denounce Washington's neutral policy as a servile truckling to England. Adams did not believe in French politics. He had predicted from the beginning the failure of the French in their attempts to establish a free government; and however his residence abroad might have inspired him with esteem for that people as individuals, he had brought home with him very little confidence in

X.

CHAPTER French political sincerity. In a letter to his wife, written on his way to Philadelphia, and before the result of the 1797. election had been finally determined, he had expressed, with a calm intrepidity, in striking contrast to Jefferson's timid apprehensions, his views of the posture of affairs: Nov. 27. "At Hartford I saw Mr. Adet's note to our Secretary of State" the same already quoted in the preceding chapter, and in which was announced the termination of Adet's mission-" and I find it an instrument well calculated to reconcile me to private life. It will purify me from all envy of Mr. Jefferson, or Mr. Pinckney, or Mr. Burr, or Mr. any body else who may be chosen president or vice-president. Although, however, I think the moment a dangerous one, I am not scared. Fear takes no hold of me, and makes no approaches to me that I perceive; and if my country makes just claims upon me, I will be, as I ever have been, prompt to share fates and fortunes with her. I dread not a war with France or England, if either forces it upon us, but will make no aggression upon either with my free will, without just and necessary cause and provocation." "Nothing mor

tifies me more than to think how the English will be gratified at this French flight. John Bull will exult and shrug his shoulders like a Frenchman, and, I fear, show us some cunning, insidious sort of kindness on the occasion. I should dread his kindness as much as French severity, but will be the dupe of neither. If I have looked with any accuracy into the hearts of my fellowcitizens, the French will find, as the English have found, that feelings may be stirred which they never expected to find there, and which, perhaps, the American people themselves are not sensible are within them.” Such were the sentiments in relation to foreign affairs with which Adams assumed the administration of the government.

But

X.

March 4.

In conformity with a notification issued by Washing- CHAPTER ton just before the expiration of his period of office, the Senate of the United States assembled in special session 1797. on the first day of the new presidential term. No new senators appeared at this session. Schuyler, chosen in New York to succeed Burr, was too sick to take his seat. Most of the other senators whose term had expired had been rechosen. The vice-president elect, having written to his friends in Congress not to allow, in his case, the ceremony of a special messenger, upon a mere notice through the mail had hastened to Philadelphia. he could not escape a ceremonious reception by a company of artillery, composed of his political friends, who greeted the auspicious occasion with a salvo of cannon, displaying a flag having for motto, "Jefferson, the friend of the People." On taking his seat as president of the Senate, Jefferson delivered a short and modest address, containing a declaration of zealous attachment to the Constitution and the Union, and concluding with a high compliment to the "eminent character" who had preceded him in his present station, whose talents and integrity he had known and revered through a long course of years, the foundation of a cordial and uninterrupted friendship, and whom he declared to have been justly preferred to himself for the higher office.

This ceremony concluded, the Senate adjourned to the chamber of the Representatives, where a brilliant assembly, including many ladies, had already collected to witness the inauguration of the new president. In front of the speaker's chair sat the chief justice, with three other judges of the Supreme Court. The new vice-president and the secretary of the Senate took seats on their right; on their left sat the speaker and clerk of the late House. The doors being opened, a crowd filled the

CHAPTER galleries with a rush. When Washington entered the X. hall, shouts of applause broke forth from all sides.

Be1797. ing now a private citizen, he took a seat in front of the judges. The president elect came in soon after, attended by the heads of departments and the marshal of the district. As he ascended to the chair, he also was received with shouts. After having been seated for a few moments, he rose, and delivered an inaugural address, very elaborately prepared, and quite unrivaled in that line of composition. Sketching with a few bold strokes the origin of the Federal Constitution, and declaring his original and continued approval of it, he emphatically denied no doubt with a view to the political heresies which had been charged upon him-that it had ever been any objection in his mind that the executive and Senate were not more permanent, or that he had ever entertained a thought of promoting any alterations "but such as the people themselves, in the course of their experience, should see and feel to be necessary or expedient, and by their representatives in Congress and the State Legislatures, according to the Constitution itself, adopt and ordain."

"Returning to the bosom of my country after a painful separation from it for ten years, I had the honor to be elected to a station under the new order of things, and I have repeatedly laid myself under the most serious obligations to support the Constitution. The operation of

it has equaled the most sanguine expectations of its friends; and from an habitual attention to it, satisfaction in its administration, and delight in its effects upon the peace, order, prosperity, and happiness of the nation, I have acquired an habitual attachment to it, and veneration for it.

"What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?