All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering
o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath
to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice,
freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust
starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to
mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and
their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad
sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for
charity.
But what shall we say as the dust returns?
"Where slavery's minions cower
Before the servile power,
He bore their ban;
And like the aged oak,
That braved the lightning's stroke,
When thunders round it broke,
Stood up a man.
"Nay, when they stormed aloud,
And round him like a cloud,
Came thick and black,--
He single-handed strove,
And like Olympian Jove,
With his own thunder drove
The phalanx back.
"Not from the bloody field,
Borne on his battered shield,
By foes o'ercome;--
But from a sterner fight,
In the defence of Right,
Clothed with a conqueror's might,
We hail him home.
"His life in labors spent,
That 'Old man eloquent'
Now rests for aye;--
His dust the tomb may claim;--
His spirit's quenchless flame,
His 'venerable name,'[40]
Pass not away."[41]
FOOTNOTES:
[12] See _Social Compact_, etc. Providence, 1848, p. 31, _et al._
[13] See _Address at Washington_, 4th of July, 1821. Second Edition,
Cambridge, _passim_.
[14] Reference is made to his _speech in the House of Representatives_,
May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little remarkable, that
the false principle of the common law, on which Mr. Adams was
commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a writer, M.
Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. See pp. 6-8, and
20, 21.
[15] _Answer to Paine's Rights of Man_ (London, 1793), originally
published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears the name
of _John Adams_ on the title-page.
[16] Mr. Atherton.
[17] See _Oration at Quincy_, 1831, p. 12, _et seq._ (Boston, 1831.)
[18] The _Social Compact_, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p. 24.
[19] See Pickering's _Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the Embargo_.
Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's _Letter to the Hon. H. G. Otis_, etc.
Boston, 1808. Pickering's _Interesting Correspondence_, 1808. _Review of
the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
Cunningham_, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's "Appendix" to the
above letter, published _sixteen_ years after the vote on the embargo.
Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's _Brief Remarks on the Appendix_.
August, 1824.
[20] Reference is here made to British "_Orders in Council_" of Nov.
22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American Congress
till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the National
Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the Senate,
Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that document, nor in the
debate.
[21] I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr. Adams wrote
a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering, but said
nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in an
appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment"
which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he _does not deny the words
themselves_. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague
in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed
to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The
"sentiment" speaks for itself.
[22] Adams's _Remarks in the House of Representatives_, Jan. 5, 1846.
[23] _Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William
Cunningham, Esq._ Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.
[24] March 15th, 1826.
[25] See Mr. Adams's _Message_, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was
$1,197,422.18.
[26] See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th, 1825; to
Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of Russia, May
10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and June 19th,
1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. _Executive Documents_, Second Session of the
20th Congress, Vol. I.
[27] Report of Mr. Adams's _Lecture on the Chinese War_, in the Boston
Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.
[28] Genesis i. 26-28.
[29] Psalms ii. 6-8.
[30] See Mr. Adams's _Speech on Oregon_, Feb. 9th, 1846. Arguments
somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration delivered at
Newburyport, before cited.
[31] _Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal._
[32] _Jubilee of the Constitution_, p. 99.
[33] _Lecture on China._
[34] See his defence of this in his _Address to his Constituents at
Braintree_, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, _et seq._
[35] In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of
Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), _Par negotiis neque supra_,--applying them to a
distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they
came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately
translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that
they might be well translated in five--_Equal to, not above, duty_, but
better in three--JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
[36] _Remarks_ of Mr. Cambreleng.
[37] Mr. Van Buren.
[38] See the _Debates of the House_, January 23d and following, 1837; or
Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his _Letters to his
Constituents_, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his _Series of Speeches on
the Right of Petition and the Annexation of Texas_, January 14th and
following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)
[39] "Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, Ferre manum, et
nunquam temerando parcere ferro; Successus urgere suos; instare favori
Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti Obstaret, gaudensque viam
fecisse ruina."
[40] _Clarum et venerabile nomen._
[41] The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John Pierpont.
VII.
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, TO CELEBRATE
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.
MR. CHAIRMAN,--The Gentleman before me[42] has made an allusion to Rome.
Let me also turn to that same city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors,
there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men.
Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the Caesars, with her markets and
her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of
marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city,
she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But
underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men,
in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was
another population, another Rome, with other thoughts; yes, a devout
body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were
forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very
lives illegal. Time passed on; and gradually Rome of the Pagans
disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the
Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.
So underneath the laws and the institutions of each modern nation,
underneath the monarchy and the republic, there is another and unseen
State, with sentiments not yet become popular, and with ideas not yet
confirmed in actions, not organized into institutions, ideas scarcely
legal, certainly not respectable. Slowly from its depths comes up this
ideal State, the State of the Future; and slowly to the eternal deep
sinks down the actual State, the State of the Present. But sometimes an
earthquake of the nations degrades of a sudden the actual; and speedily
starts up the ideal Kingdom of the Future. Such a thing has just come to
pass. In France, within five-and-forty days, a new State has arisen from
underneath the old. Men, whose words were suppressed, and their ideas
reckoned illegal but two months ago, now hold the sceptre of
five-and-thirty millions of grateful citizens, hold it in clean and
powerful hands. A great revolution has taken place; one which will
produce effects that we cannot foresee. It is itself the greatest act of
this century. God only knows what it will lead to. We are here to
express the sympathy of republicans for a new republic. We are here to
rejoice over the rising hopes of a new State, not to exult over the
fallen fortunes of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe has done much which we
may thank him for. He has kept mainly at peace the fiercest nation of
the world; has kept the peace of Europe for seventeen years. Let us
thank him for that. He has consolidated the French nation, helped to
give them a new unity of thought and unity of action, which they had not
before. Perhaps he did not intend all this. Since he has brought it
about, let us thank him for it, even if his conduct transcended his
intention. But, most of all, I would thank this "Citizen King" for
another thing. His greatest lesson is his last. He has shown that
five-and-thirty millions of Frenchmen, in this nineteenth century, are
only to be ruled by Justice and the Eternal Law of Right. We have seen
this crafty king, often wise and always cunning, driven from his throne.
He was the richest man in Europe, and the embodiment of the idea of
modern wealth. He had an army the best disciplined, probably, in the
world, and, as he thought, completely in his power. He had a Chamber of
Peers of his own appointment; a Chamber of Deputies almost of his own
election. He ruled a nation that contained three hundred thousand
office-holders, appointed by himself, and only two hundred and forty
thousand voters! Who sat so safe as the citizen king on his throne,
surrounded by republican institutions! So confident was he, as the
journals tell, that he bade a friend stop a day or two, "and see how I
will put down the people!" For once, this shrewd calculator reckoned
without his host.
Well, we have seen this man, this citizen monarch, who married his
children only to kings, rush from his place; his peers and his deputies
were unavailing; his office-holders could not sustain him; his army
"fraternized with the people;" and he, forgetful of his own children,
ignominiously is hustled out of the kingdom, in a street cab, with
nothing but a five-franc piece in his pocket. For the lesson thus
taught, let us thank him most of all.
Men tell us it is too soon to rejoice: "Perhaps the Revolution will not
hold;" "it will not last;" "the kings of Europe will put it down." When
a sound, healthy child is born, the friends of the family congratulate
the parents then; they do not wait till the child has grown up, and got
a beard. Now this is a live child; it is well born in both senses, come
of good parentage, and gives signs of a good constitution. Let us
rejoice at its birth, and not wait to see if it will grow up. Let us now
baptize it in the crystal fountain of our own Hope.
In a great revolution, there are always two things to be looked at,
namely, the actions, and the ideas which produce the actions. The
actions I will say little of; you have all read of them in the
newspapers. Some of the actions were bad. It is not true that all at
once the French have become angels. There are low and base men, who
swarm in the lanes and alleys of Paris; for that great city also is like
all capitals, girt about with a belt of misery, of vice and of crime,
eating into her painful loins. It was a bad thing to sack the Tuileries;
to burn bridges, and chateaux, and railroad stations. Property is under
the insurance of mankind, and the human race must pay in public for
private depredations. It was a bad thing to kill men; the human race
cannot make up that loss; only suffer and be penitent. I am sorry for
these bad actions; but I am not surprised at them. You cannot burn down
the poor dwelling of a widow in Boston, but some miserable man will
steal pot or pan, in the confusion of the fire. How much more should we
expect pillage and violence in the earthquake which throws down a king!
I have said enough of the actions; but there was one deed too symbolical
to be passed by. In the garden of the Tuileries, before the great gate
of the palace, there stands a statue of Spartacus, a colossal bronze,
his broken chain in the left hand, his Roman sword in the right.
Spartacus was a Roman gladiator. He broke his chains; gathered about him
other gladiators, fugitive slaves, and assembled an army. He and his
comrades fought for freedom; they cut off four consular armies sent
against them; at last the hero fell amid a heap of men, slain by his own
well-practised hand. When the people took the old and emblematic French
throne, and burned it solemnly with emblematic fire, they stripped off
some of the crimson trappings of the royal seat, made a tiara thereof,
and bound it on the gladiator's brazen head! But red is the color of
revolution, the color of blood; the unconscious gladiator was an image
too savage for new France. So they hid the Roman sword in his hand, and
wreathed it all over with a chaplet of flowers!
Let us say a word of the ideas. Three ideas filled the mind of the
nation: the idea of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Three noble words.
Liberty meant liberty of all. So, at one word, they set free the slaves,
and, if my friend's ciphers are correct, at once three hundred thousand
souls rise up from the ground disenthralled, free men. That is a great
act. A population as large as the whole family of our sober sister
Connecticut, all at once find their chains drop off, and they are free:
not beasts, but men. This may not hold. Our Declaration of Independence
was not the Confederation of '78--still less was it the Constitution of
'87. The French may be as false as the Americans to their idea of
liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.
Equality means that all are equal before the law; equal in rights,
however unequal in mights. So all titles of nobility come at once to the
ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The
Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men
over twenty-one are voters. Men here in America say, "The French are not
ready for that." No doubt the king thought so. At any rate, he was not
ready for it. But it is not a thing altogether unknown in France. It has
been tried several times before. The French Constitution was accepted by
the whole people in 1800; Napoleon was made Consul by the whole people;
made Emperor by the whole people. Even in 1815, the "acte additionelle"
to the "Charte" was accepted by the whole people. To decree universal
suffrage was the most natural thing in the world. Those two ideas,
liberty and equality, have long been American ideas; they were never
American facts. America sought liberty only for the whites. Our fathers
thought not of universal suffrage.
But France has not only attempted to make our ideas into facts; she has
advanced an idea not hinted at in the American Declaration; the idea of
Fraternity. By this she means human brotherhood. This points not merely
to a political, but to a social revolution. It is not easy for us to
understand how a government can effect this. Here, all comes from the
people, and the people have to take care of the government, meaning
thereby the men in official power; have to furnish them with ideas, and
tell them what application to make thereof. There all comes from the
government. So the new provisional government of France must be one that
can lead the nation; have ideas in advance of the nation. Accordingly,
it proposes many plans which with us could never have come from any
party in power. Here, the government is only the servant of the people.
There, it aims to be the father and teacher thereof; a patriarchal
government with Christian thoughts and feelings. But as an eloquent man
is to come after me, whose special aim is to develop the idea of human
brotherhood into social institutions, I will not dwell on this, save to
mention an act of the provisional authorities. They have abolished the
punishment of death for all political offences. You remember the
guillotine, the massacres of September, the drowning in the Loire and
the Seine, the dreadful butchery in the name of the law.
Put this new decree side by side with the old, and you see why
Spartacus, though crowned by a revolution, bears peaceful blossoms in
his hand.
But let us hasten on; time would fail me to speak of the cause or point
out the effect of this movement of the people. Only a word concerning
the objections made to it. Some say, "It is only an extempore affair.
Men drunk with new power are telling their fancies, and trying in their
heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at
have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France.
Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for
Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his
political faith."[43]
Others say, "The whole thing seems rash." Well, so it does; so does any
good thing seem rash to all except the man who does it, and such as
would do it if he did not. What is rash to one is not to another. It is
dangerous for an old man to run, fatal for him to leap, while his
grandson jumps over wall and ditch without hurt. The American Revolution
was a rash act; the English Revolution a rash act; the Protestant
Reformation was a rash act. Was it safe to withstand the Revolution? Did
the king of the French find it so? Yet others say, "The leaders are
unknown," "Lamartine, you might as well put any man in the street at the
head of the nation." But when the American Revolution begun, who, in
England, had ever heard of John Hancock, President of the Congress? To
the men who knew him, John Hancock was a country trader, the richest man
in a town of ten thousand inhabitants: That did not sound very great at
London. Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and all the
other men, what did the world know of them? Only that they had been
christened with Hebrew names. Why, George Washington was only, as Gen.
Braddock called him, "A young Buckskin." But the world heard of these
men afterwards. Let us leave the French statesmen to make to the future
what report of themselves they can! Let me tell a story of Dupont de
l'Eure, the head of the government at this moment. He was one of the
movers of the Revolution of 1830. He dined with the citizen king, once,
in some council. At the table, he and the king differed; the king
affirmed, and Dupont denied. Said the king, "Do you tell me I lie?" Said
Dupont, "When the king says yes, and Dupont de l'Eure replies no, France
will know which to believe!" The king said, "Yes, we will put the people
down;" Dupont said, "No, you shall not put the people down;" and now
France knows which to believe.
Again, say others yet, "War may come; royalty may come back, despotism
may come back. Other kings will interpose, and put down a republic."
Other kings interpose to put down the French! Perhaps they will. They
tried it in 1793, but did not like the experiment very well. They will
be well off if they do not find it necessary to put down a republic a
little nearer at hand; their anti-revolutionary work may begin at home.
War followed the American Revolution. It cost money, it cost men. But
if we calculate the value of American ideas, they are worth what they
cost. Even the French Revolution, with all its carnage, robbery and
butchery, is worth what it cost. But it is possible that war will not
come. From a foreign war, France has little to fear. There seems little
danger that it will come at all. What monarchy will dare fight
republican France? Internal trouble may indeed come. It is to be
expected that the new republic will make many a misstep. But is it
likely that all the old tragedies will be enacted again? Surely not; the
burnt child dreads the fire. Besides, the France of '48 is not the
France of '89. There is no triple despotism weighing on the nation's
neck, a trinity of despotic powers--the throne, the nobility, the
church. The king has fled; the nobles have ceased to be; the church
seems republican. There is no hatred between class and class, as before.
The men of '89 sought freedom for the middle class, not for all classes,
neither for the high, nor for the low. Religion pervades the church and
the people, as never before. Better ideas prevail. It is not the gospel
of Jean Jaques, and the scoffing negations of Voltaire, that are now
proclaimed to the people; but the broad maxims of Christian men; the
words of human brotherhood. The men of terror knew no weapon but the
sword; the provisional government casts the sword from its hands, and
will not shed blood for political crimes.
Still, troubles may come; war may come from without, and, worse still,
from within; the republic may end. But if it lasts only a day, let us
rejoice in that day. Suppose it is only the dream of the nation; it is
worth while to dream of liberty, of equality, of fraternity; and to
dream that we are awake, and trying to make them all into institutions
and common life. What is only a dream now, will be a fact at last.
Next Sunday is the election day of France; six millions of voters are to
choose nine hundred representatives! Shall not the prayers of all
Christian hearts go up with them on that day, a great deep prayer for
their success? The other day, the birthday of Washington, the calm,
noiseless spirit of death came to release the soul of the patriarch of
American statesmen. While his sun was slowly sinking in the western sky,
the life-star of a new nation was visibly rising there, far off in the
east. A pagan might be pardoned for the thought, that the intrepid soul
of that old man foresaw the peril, and, slowly quitting its hold of the
worn-out body, went thither to kindle anew the flames of liberty he
fanned so often here. That is but a pagan thought. This is a Christian
thought: The same God who formed the world for man's abode, presides
also in the movements of mankind, and directs their voluntary march.
See how this earth has been brought to her present firm and settled
state. By storm and earthquake, continent has been rent from continent;
oceans have swept over the mountains, and the scars of ancient war still
mark our parent's venerable face. So is it in the growth of human
Society: it is the child of pain; revolutions have rocked its cradle,
war and violence rudely nursed it into hardy life. Good institutions,
how painfully, how slowly have they come!
"Slowly as spreads the green of earth
O'er the receding ocean's bed,
Dim as the distant stars come forth,
Uncertain as a vision slow,
Has been the old world's toiling pace,
Ere she can give fair freedom place."
Let us welcome the green spot, when it begins to spread; let us shout as
the sterile sea of barbarism goes back; let us rejoice in the vision of
good things to come; let us welcome the distant and rising orb, for it
is the Bethlehem star of a great nation, and they who behold it may well
say--"Peace on earth, and good-will to men."
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Mr. Wendell Phillips.
[43] See the _Courier des Etats Unis_, for Nov. 24, 1847, which contains
passages from M. Lamartine's programme, which set forth all the schemes
that the provisional government had afterwards tried to carry out.
VIII.
SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL, BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION,
MAY 31, 1848.
The design of the Abolitionists is this,--to remove and destroy the
institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed,
ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions.
What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this, That all men are
created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those
rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of
human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another's
rights; of course, no man may use me for his good, and not my own good
also; of course, there can be no ownership of man by man; of course, no
slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious
doctrines that follow from it.
Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the
people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.