Mr. Adams was still abroad when this great consummation of his early hopes took place: and, although the war was over, a difficult task still remained to be performed. The terms of peace were yet to be arranged, and to be arranged under circumstances of the most complicated embarrassment. That the acknow

ledgment of our independence was to be its first and indispensable condition, was well understood; and Mr. Adams, then at the Hague, with that decision which always marked his character, refused to leave his post and take part in the negotiation at Paris, until the powers of the British commissioner should be so enlarged as to authorize him to make that acknowledgment unequivocally. I will not detain you by a rehearsal of what you so well know, the difficulties and intricacies by which this negotiation was protracted. Suffice it

to say, that the firmness and skill of the American Commissioners triumphed on every point. The treaty of peace was executed; and the last seal was thus put to the independence of these States.

Thus closed the great drama of the American Revolution. And here for a moment let us pause. If the services of our departed fathers had closed at this point, as it did with many of their compatriots-with too many, if the wishes and prayers of their country could have averted it-what obligations, what honors, should we not owe to their memories! What would not the world owe to them! But, as if they had not already done enough, as if, indeed, they had done nothing, while any thing yet remained to be done, they were

ready, with renovated youth and elastic step, to take a new start in the career of their emancipated country. The Federal Constitution was adopted, and a new leaf was turned in the history of man. With what characters the the page should be inscribed-whether it should open a great æra of permanent good to the human family, or pass away like a portent of direful evil, was now to depend on the wisdom and virtue of America. At this time our two great patriots were both abroad in the public service: Mr. Adams in England, where, in 1787, he refuted, by his great work "The Defence of the American Constitutions," the wild theories of Turgot, De Mably, and Price; and Mr. Jefferson in France, where he was presenting in his own person a living and splendid refutation of the notion of degeneracy in the American man. On the adoption of the Federal Constitution, they were both called home, to lend the weight of their character and talents to this new and momentous experiment on the capacity of man for self-government. Mr. Adams was called to fill the second office under the new Government, the first having been justly conferred by the rule “detur fortiori:" and Mr. Jefferson, to take the direction. of the highest Executive Department. The office of Vice President afforded, as you are aware, no scope for the public display of talent. But the leisure which it allowed, enabled Mr. Adams to pour out, from his fullfraught mind, another great political work, his Discourses on Davila; and, while he presided over the Senate with unexceptionable dignity and propriety, Presi

dent Washington always found in him an able and honest adviser, in whom his confidence was implicit and unbounded.

Mr. Jefferson had a theatre that called for action. The Department of State was now, for the first time, to be organized. Its operations were all to be moulded into system, and an intellectual character was to be given to it, as well as the Government to which it belonged, before this nation and before the world. The frequent calls made by Congress for reports on the most abstruse questions of science connected with Government, and on those vast and novel and multifarious subjects of political economy, peculiar to this wide extended and diversified continent: discussions with the ministers of foreign Governments, more especially with those of France and England and Spain, on these great and agitating questions of international law, which were then continually arising; and instructions to our own Ministers abroad, resident at the Courts of the great belligerent Powers, and who had consequently the most delicate and discordant interests to manage; presented a series of labors for the mind, which few, very few men in this or any other country could have sustained with reputation. How Mr. Jefferson acquitted himself, you all know. It is one of the peculiarities of his character to have discharged the duties of every office to which he was called, with such exact, appropriate, and felicitous ability, that he seemed, for the time, to have been born for that alone. As an evidence of the unanimous admiration of the matchless skill and talent with which

he discharged the duties of this office, I hope it may be mentioned, without awaking any asperity of feeling, that when, at a subsequent period, he was put in nomination by his friends for the office of President, his adversaries publicly objected—that Nature had made him only for a Secretary of State."

President Washington having set the great example, which has engrafted on the Constitution as firmly as if it had formed one of its express provisions, the principle of retiring from the office of President at the end of eight years, Mr. Adams succeeded him, and Mr. Jefferson followed Mr. Adams in the office of Vice President.

Mr. Adams came into the office of President at a time of great commotion, produced chiefly by the progress of the revolution in France, and those strong sympathies which it naturally generated here. The spirit of party was high, and in the feverish excitement of the day much was said and done, on both sides, which the voice of impartial history, if it shall descend to such details, will unquestionably condemn, and which the candid and the good on both sides lived, themselves, to regret. One incident I will mention, because it is equally honorable to both the great men whom we are uniting in these obsequies. In Virginia, where the opposition ran high, the younger politicians of the day, taking their tone from the public Journals, have, on more occasions than one, in the presence of Mr. Jefferson, imputed to Mr. Adams a concealed design to sap the foundations of the Republic, and to supply its place with a Monarchy, on the British model. The uniform

answer of Mr. Jefferson to this charge will never be forgotten by those who have heard it, and of whom (as I have recently had occasion to prove) there are many still living, besides the humble individual who is now addressing you. It was this: "Gentlemen, you do "not know that man: there is not upon this earth a "more perfectly honest man than John Adams. Con"cealment is no part of his character; of that he is "utterly incapable it is not in his nature to meditate

any thing that he would not publish to the world. The measures of the General Government are a fair "subject for difference of opinion. But do not found "your opinions on the notion, that there is the smallest "spice of dishonesty, moral or political, in the charac

ter of John Adams: for, I know him well, and I "repeat it, that a man more perfectly honest never "issued from the hands of his Creator." And such is now, and has long been, the unanimous opinion of his countrymen.

Of the measures adopted during his administration you do not expect me to speak. I should offend against your own sense of propriety, were I to attempt it. We are here, to mingle together over the grave of the departed patriot, our feelings of reverence and gratitude for services whose merit we all acknowledge and cold must be the heart which does not see and feel, in his life, enough to admire and to love, without striking one string that could produce one unhallowed note. History and biography will do ample justice to every part of his character, public and private; and impartial pos