LIKE many other notable men, JOHN ADAMS, after his Harvard graduation at twenty, began life as a school-teacher and then studied law. He came into public notice in 1765, first in connection with the closing of the courts on account of the Stamp Act, and then through some published essays on canon and feudal law. He was a hard-working, prominent lawyer in Boston when in 1774 he was elected to the Continental Congress, and did eminent work there. He went to Europe in 1778 as Commissioner, with FRANKLIN and LEE, to negotiate treaties with foreign powers, and, with an interval at home in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, he returned as Minister Plenipotentiary for negotiating a treaty of peace with Great Britain. FRANKLIN, JAY, LAWRENCE, and JEFFERSON were added later, and the treaty of 1783 was the result.

He was

Then Mr. ADAMS was Vice-President under Washington for eight years (1788-1796) and President the next term. offered the governorship of Massachusetts on retiring from the presidency, but declined it, and after presiding over the convention for revising the State constitution he remained quietly at home until his death in 1826, at the great age of ninety-one years.

All these public stations were the continuing recognition of his great abilities and unremitting devotion to public duty. He was a genuine patriot, of indomitable courage and tremendous energy. As a writer, he was learned, but compact, terse, and logical; as an orator, daring and ardent, but a close, persuasive reasoner. His greatest fault was his intense conviction of his own correctness in any matter to be decided. Yet, though disagreeable to others, this was doubtless one element of many achievements. A lovable side of his nature appeared in the series of letters to his wife before and during the Revolution, published after his death, which, with his Diary and his political pamphlets, form an invaluable and intimate record of those trying times, so large a part of which he was. Here is given his Presidential Inaugural Address, March 4, 1797.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

WHEN it was first perceived, in early times, that no middle course for America remained, between unlimited submission to a foreign legislature and a total independence of its claims, men of reflection were less apprehensive of danger from the formidable power of fleets and armies they must determine to resist, than from those contests and dissensions which would certainly arise concerning the forms of government to be instituted over the whole, and over the parts, of this extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their intentions, the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the people, under an overruling Providence, which had so signally protected this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of little more than half its present numbers, not only broke to pieces the chains which were forging, and the rod of iron that was lifted up, but frankly cut asunder the ties which had bound them, and launched into an ocean of uncertainty.

The zeal and ardor of the people during the Revolutionary War, supplying the place of government, commanded a degree of order, sufficient, at least, for

the temporary preservation of society. The Confederation, which was early felt to be necessary, was prepared from the models of the Batavian and Helvetic confederacies, the only examples which remain, with any detail and precision, in history, and certainly the only ones which the people at large had ever considered. But, reflecting on the striking difference, in so many particulars, between this country and those, where a courier may go from the seat of government to the frontier in a single day, it was then certainly foreseen by some, who assisted in Congress at the formation of it, that it could not be durable.

Negligence of its regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals, but in States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences: universal languor, jealousies, rivalries of States, decline of navigation and commerce, discouragement of necessary manufactures, universal fall in the value of lands and their produce, contempt of public and private faith, loss of consideration and credit with foreign nations; and, at length, discontents, animosities, combinations, partial conventions, and insurrection, threatening some great national calamity.

In this dangerous crisis, the people of America were not abandoned by their usual good sense, presence of mind, resolution, or integrity. Measures were pursued to concert a plan to form a more perfect

ion, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,

provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. The public disquisitions, discussions, and deliberations issued in the present happy constitution of govern

ment.

Employed in the service of my country abroad during the whole course of these transactions, I first saw the Constitution of the United States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads, prompted by good hearts; as an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested. In its general principles and great outlines, it was conformable to such a system of government as I had ever most esteemed; and in some States, my own native State in particular, had contributed to establish. Claiming a right of suffrage in common with my fellow-citizens in the adoption or rejection of a constitution, which was to rule me and my posterity, as well as them and theirs, I did not hesitate to express my approbation of it on all occasions, in public and in private. It was not then nor has been since any objection to it, in my mind, that the Executive and Senate were not more permanent. Nor have I entertained a thought of promoting any alteration in it, 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?

There may be little solidity in an ancient idea that congregations of men into cities and nations are the most pleasing objects in the sight of superior intelligences; but this is very certain, that to a benevolent human mind there can be no spectacle presented by any nation more pleasing, more noble, majestic, or august, than an assembly like that which has so often been seen in this and the other chamber of Congress - of a government in which the executive authority, as well as that of all the branches of the legislature, are exercised by citizens, selected at regular periods