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friends are all against it, and Mr. Gerry, as you will see by the copy of his letter enclosed, has given his opinion upon well grounded reasons. If I should leave my affairs in the hands of my friends, there would be much to think of and much to do, to place them in that method and order I would wish to leave them in. Theory and practice are two very different things, and the object is magnified as I approach nearer to it. I think if you were abroad in a private character, and necessitated to continue there, I should not hesitate so much at coming to you; but a mere American as I am, unacquainted with the etiquette of courts, taught to say the thing I mean, wear my heart in my countenance, I am sure I should make an awkward figure; and then it would mortify my pride, if I should be thought to disgrace you. Yet, strip royalty of its pomp and power, and what are its votaries more than their fellow worms?

and to

I have so little of the ape about me, that I have refused every public invitation to figure in the gay world, and sequestered myself in this humble cottage, content with rural life and my domestic employment, in the midst of which I have sometimes smiled upon recollecting that I had the honor of being allied to an ambassador.

Adieu.

MY DEAR SON,

TO JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

Braintree, 26 December, 1783.

YOUR letters by Mr. Thaxter, I received, and was not a little pleased with them. If you do not write with the precision of a Robertson, nor the elegance of a Voltaire, it is evident you have profited by the perusal of them. The account of your northern journey, and your observation upon the Russian government, would do credit to an older pen.

The early age at which you went abroad gave you not an opportunity of becoming acquainted with your own country. Yet the revolution, in which we were engaged, held it up in so striking and important a light, that you could not avoid being in some measure irradiated with the view. The characters with which you were connected, and the conversation you continually heard, must have impressed your mind with a sense of the laws, the liberties, and the glorious privileges, which distinguish the free, sovereign, independent States of America.

Compare them with the vassalage of the Russian government you have described, and say, were this highly favored land barren as the mountains of Switzerland, and covered ten months in the year with snow, would she not have the advantage even of Italy, with her orange groves, her breathing statues, and her melting strains of music?

or of

Spain, with her treasures from Mexico and Peru? not one of which can boast that first of blessings, the glory of human nature, the inestimable privilege of sitting down under their vines and fig-trees, enjoying in peace and security whatever Heaven has lent them, having none to make them afraid.

Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power, the parent of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism, which places man upon a level with his fellow tenants of the woods

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"A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty

Is worth a whole eternity of bondage."

You have seen power in its various forms, a benign deity, when exercised in the suppression of fraud, injustice, and tyranny, but a demon, when united with unbounded ambition, a wide-wasting fury, who has destroyed her thousands. Not an age of the world but has produced characters, to which whole human hecatombs have been sacrificed.

What is the history of mighty kingdoms and nations, but a detail of the ravages and cruelties of the powerful over the weak? Yet it is instructive to trace the various causes, which produced the strength of one nation, and the decline and weakness of another; to learn by what arts one man has been able to subjugate millions of his fellow creatures, the motives which have put him upon action, and the causes of his success ; sometimes driven by

ambition and a lust of power; at other times, swallowed up by religious enthusiasm, blind bigotry, and ignorant zeal; sometimes enervated with luxury and debauched by pleasure, until the most powerful nations have become a prey and been subdued by these Sirens, when neither the number of their enemies, nor the prowess of their arms, could conquer them. History informs us that the Assyrian empire sunk under the arms of Cyrus, with his poor but hardy Persians. The extensive and opulent empire of Persia fell an easy prey to Alexander and a handful of Macedonians; and the Macedonian empire, when enervated by the luxury of Asia, was compelled to receive the yoke of the victorious Romans. Yet even this mistress of the world, as she is proudly styled, in her turn defaced her glory, tarnished her victories, and became a prey to luxury, ambition, faction, pride, revenge, and avarice, so that Jugurtha, after having purchased an acquittance for the blackest of crimes, breaks out into an exclamation, "O city, ready for sale, if a buyer rich enough can be found!"

The history of your own country and the late revolution are striking and recent instances of the mighty things achieved by a brave, enlightened, and hardy people, determined to be free; the very yeomanry of which, in many instances, have shown themselves superior to corruption, as Britain well knows, on more occasions than the loss of her André. Glory, my son, in a country which has given birth to characters, both in the civil and mili

tary departments, which may vie with the wisdom and valor of antiquity. As an immediate descendant of one of those characters, may you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth, titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want of integrity and virtue.

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps, is the sincere and most affectionate wish of

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Your mother,

A. ADAMS.

END OF VOL. I.

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