Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

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"What is the object of this resolution? It is to make an issue with
Great Britain--an issue of right or wrong--upon the affair of
burning the Caroline. No, sir; never shall my voice be for going to
war upon that issue. I will not go to war upon an issue upon which,
when we go to a third power to arbitrate upon it, they will say we
are wrong. The issue will be decided against us. We shall be told it
is not the thing for us to quarrel about.

"I have not the time, were I possessed of the information, to give a
history of the affair of the Caroline; and it is known as much to
every member of the house as it is to me. We have heard a great deal
of talk about territorial rights, and independence, and of state
rights. But, in a question of that kind, other nations do not look
much to your state rights nor to your independence questions. They
will not talk of your independence; but they will say who is right,
and who is wrong. Who struck the first blow? I take it, will be the
main question with them. I take it that in the late affair the
Caroline was in hostile array against the British government, and
that the parties concerned in it were employed in acts of war
against it; and I do not subscribe to the very learned opinion of
the Chief Justice of the State of New York (not, I hear, the Chief
Justice, but a Judge of the Supreme Court of that state), that there
was no act of war committed. Nor do I subscribe to it that every
nation goes to war only on issuing a declaration or proclamation of
war. This is not the fact. Nations often wage war for years without
issuing any declaration of war. The question is here not upon a
declaration of war, but acts of war. And I say that, in the
judgment of all impartial men of other nations, _we_ shall be held
as a nation responsible; that the Caroline there was in a state of
war against Great Britain; for purposes of war, and the worst kind
of war,--to sustain an insurrection--I will not say rebellion,
because rebellion is a crime, and because I heard them talked of as
'patriots.' Yes; and I have heard, in the course of the discussion
here, these patriots represented as carrying on a righteous cause,
and that we ought to have assisted them; that we ought to have
given them that assistance that a nation fighting for its liberty
is entitled to from the generosity of other nations. Well, admit
that merely for a moment. If we were bound to do it, we were bound
to do it avowedly and above-board. But we disclaimed all intention
of taking any part in it; and yet there was very little disguise
about this expedition, and that this vessel was there for the
purposes of hostility against the Canadian government. I say,
therefore, that we struck the first blow; and if, instead of
pressing this matter to a war, we were to refer it to a third
power, even if it should be to a European republic,--if any such
thing is remaining,--and should say there had been an invasion of
our territory, they would ask us a question something like that
which was put to a character in a play of Moliere: _Que diable
allait il faire dans cette galere?_--What the devil had we to do in
that galley?

"Now, I think the arbitrator would say, "What the devil had you to
do with that steamboat?" He would say that we struck the first blow.
Now, admit that,--and none of your state rights men can deny
it,--admit that, and all the rest follows of course. They will say
it was wrong--abstractly, if you please. Talking of abstractions, it
was wrong for an expedition to come over and burn the steamboat, and
send her over the falls. But what was your steamboat about? What had
she been doing? What was she to do the next morning? And what ought
you to do? You have reparation to make for all the men, and for all
the arms and implements of war, which we were transporting, and
going to transport, to the other side, to foment and instigate
rebellion in Canada. That is what the third party would say to us.
And it would come, in the end, after all the blood and treasure had
been wasted by a war between the two countries, to this, that we
must shake hands and drink champagne together, after having made a
mutual apology for mutual transgression. That is the way things are
settled between individuals,--'If you said so, why, I said so,'--and
thus the dispute is amicably settled. So we should have to do with
this national matter; for there is not any great difference in the
essentials of quarrelling and making up between nations and
individuals."

Mr. Adams then proceeded to another point of view in which he objected
to this resolution. He said:

"A prodigious affair has been made of this matter, as if the
government of the United States had outraged the State of New York,
because the great empire State of New York had undertaken to say
that she would _hang_ McLeod, whatever Great Britain or the general
government might do. Yes; whatever they might do, the great empire
State of New York would _hang_ McLeod! That was the language.

"What, sir, I ask, is the object of this resolution? To inquire of
the President of the United States whether any officer of the army,
or the Attorney-General of the United States, since the 4th of March
last, has visited the State of New York for any purpose connected
with the trial of Alexander McLeod. What then? Has not the President
a right to send the Attorney-General to New York on that or any
other subject? Where is the constitutional provision prohibiting him
from sending the Attorney-General to New York on that or any other
of the subjects which are before the judicial courts of that state?
Yes, the Attorney-General has been sent there, and we have his
instructions. And I have heard here, on the part of some of my forty
friends from New York, a great deal about the conscious dignity and
honor of this _Empire State_ of New York. I am not very fond of
that term 'empire state,' in the language of this Union; and I say
that if there is an 'empire state' in the Union, it is Delaware. To
be magniloquent, and talk about the empire state, may well become
the forty gentlemen who represent the state on this floor, having
reference to their own numbers, and the numbers of their
constituents, or to the extent, fertility, and beauty, of her soil;
yet this is a distinction not recognized in the constitution of the
United States. They are all, as members of this Union, equal, and
the State of Delaware has as good a right to be called the 'empire
state' as New York. Now, if my forty friends from New York choose to
call it the 'empire state,' I will not quarrel with them. It is only
as to consequences that I enter my caveat against the too frequent
use of those terms on this floor; for there is meaning in those
words, 'empire state,' when used among co-estates, more than meets
the ear.

"Suppose that it was in Delaware that such an event had occurred; do
you suppose my friend here (Mr. Rodney) from Delaware would have
offered such a resolution as this? And, by the terms of the
resolution, I should presume my friends from New York think there is
a little more dignity and power in forty representatives than only
one."

In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented Commonplace Book, as an
improvement upon Locke's, was brought to Mr. Adams for his
recommendatory notice; which he declined, from a general rule he had
adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might be very useful, if
a practical system of such a manual could be simplified to the intellect
and industry of common minds, which he doubted. "I had occupied and
amused a long life," said he, "in the search of such a compendious
wisdom-box, but without being able to find or make it. I had made myself
more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but never used any one of
them. I had learnt and practised Byrom's Shorthand Writing, but no one
could read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double
entry,--day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash-book, bank-book,
house-book, and letter-book. I had made extracts, copies, translations,
and quotations, more perhaps than other man living, without ever being
able to pack up my knowledge or my labors in any methodical order; and
now doubt whether I might not have employed my time more profitably in
some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pursuit, adapting every
hour of labor to the attainment of some great end."

In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before the Massachusetts
Historical Society a lecture on the war then existing between Great
Britain and China. The principles stated and maintained in that lecture
were so much in advance of the opinions entertained at the time, that
it is believed to have been published in but a single newspaper in this
country or in Europe, and never in a pamphlet form, except by the
proprietors of the _Chinese Repository_, published in Macao, China, in
May, 1842. Though his views were ridiculed or repudiated by many when
delivered, they are at this day acknowledged; and are made some of the
chief grounds of the justification of that invasion of the Chinese
empire now apparently in successful progress. The subject is of
preeminent importance, and is canvassed with that laborious research
and independence eminently characteristic of the author.

In this lecture, after controverting the doctrine of an eminent French
writer, who contended that there was no such thing as international law,
and that the word law is not applicable to the obligations incumbent
upon nations, on the ground that law is a rule of conduct prescribed by
a superior; and that nations, being independent, acknowledge no
superior, and have no common sovereign from whom they can receive
law,--Mr. Adams proceeds to maintain that "by the law of nations is to
be understood, not one code of laws, binding alike on all the nations of
the earth, but a system of rules varying according to the character and
condition of the parties concerned." There is a law of nations, among
Christian communities, which is the law recognized by the constitution
of the United States as obligatory upon them in their intercourse with
European states and colonies. But we have a different law of nations
regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on this continent;
another, between us and the woolly-headed natives of Africa; another,
with the Barbary powers; another, with the flowery land, or Celestial
empire. This last is the nation with which Great Britain is now at war.
Then, reasoning on the rights of property, established by labor, by
occupancy, and by compact, he maintains that the right of exchange,
barter,--in other words, of commerce,--necessarily follows; that a state
of nature among men is a state of peace; the pursuit of happiness man's
natural right; that it is the duty of men to contribute as much as is in
their power to one another's happiness, and that there is no other way
by which they can so well contribute to the comfort and well-being of
one another as by commerce, or the mutual exchange of equivalents. These
views and principles he thus illustrates:

"The duty of commercial intercourse between nations is laid down in
terms sufficiently positive by Vattel, but he afterwards qualifies
it by a restriction, which, unless itself restricted, annuls it
altogether. He says that, although the general duty of commercial
intercourse is incumbent upon nations, yet every nation may exclude
any particular branch or article of trade which it may deem
injurious to its own interest. This cannot be denied. But, then, a
nation may multiply these particular exclusions, until they become
general, and equivalent to a total interdict of commerce; and this,
time out of mind, has been the inflexible policy of the Chinese
empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure upon
it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position which he had
previously laid down, that commercial intercourse between nations is
a moral obligation incumbent upon them all.

"The empire of China is said to extend over three hundred millions
of human beings. It is said to cover a space of seven millions of
square miles--about four times larger than the surface of these
United States. The people are not Christians, nor can a Christian
nation appeal to the principles of a common faith to settle the
question of right and wrong between them. The moral obligation of
commercial intercourse between nations is founded entirely and
exclusively upon the Christian precept to love your neighbor as
yourself. With this principle, you cannot refuse commercial
intercourse with your neighbor, because, commerce consisting of a
voluntary exchange of property mutually beneficial to both parties,
excites in both the selfish and the social propensities, and enables
each of the parties to promote the happiness of his neighbors by the
same act whereby he provides for his own. But, China not being a
Christian nation, its inhabitants do not consider themselves bound
by the Christian precept to love their neighbors as themselves. The
right of commercial intercourse with them reverts not to the
execrable principle of Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state
of war, where every one has a right to buy, but no one is obliged to
sell. Commerce becomes altogether a matter of convention. The right
of each party is only to propose; that of the other is to accept or
refuse, and to his result he may be guided exclusively by the
consideration of his own interest, without regard to the interests,
the wishes, or other wants, of his neighbor.

"This is a churlish and unsocial system; and I take occasion here to
say that whoever examines the Christian system of morals with a
philosophical spirit, setting aside all the external and historical
evidences of its truth, will find all its precepts tending to exalt
the nature of the animal man; all its purpose to be peace on earth
and good will towards men. Ask the atheist, the deist, the Chinese,
and they will tell you that the foundation of their system of morals
is selfish enjoyment. Ask the philosophers of the Grecian
schools,--Epicurus, Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero,
Seneca,--and you will find them discoursing upon the Supreme Good.
They will tell you it is pleasure, ease, temperance, prudence,
fortitude, justice: not one of them will whisper the name of love,
unless in its gross and physical sense, as an instrument of
pleasure; not one of them will tell you that the source of all moral
relation between you and the rest of mankind is to love your
neighbor as yourself--to do unto him as you would that he should do
unto you.

"The Chinese recognize no such law. Their internal government is a
hereditary patriarchical despotism, and their own exclusive interest
is the measure of all their relations with the rest of mankind.
Their own government is founded upon the principle that as a nation
they are superior to the rest of mankind. They believe themselves
and their country especially privileged over all others; that their
dominion is the celestial empire, and their territory the flowery
land.

"The fundamental principle of the Chinese empire is anti-commercial.
It is founded entirely upon the second and third of Vattel's general
principles, to the total exclusion of the first. It admits no
obligation to hold commercial intercourse with others. It utterly
denies the equality of other nations with itself, and even their
independence. It holds itself to be the centre of the terraqueous
globe,--equal to the heavenly host,--and all other nations with whom
it has any relations, political or commercial, as outside tributary
barbarians, reverently submissive to the will of its despotic chief.
It is upon this principle, openly avowed and inflexibly maintained,
that the principal maritime nations of Europe for several centuries,
and the United States of America from the time of their acknowledged
independence, have been content to hold commercial intercourse with
the empire of China.

"It is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of human
nature, and upon the first principle of the rights of nations,
should cease. These principles of the Chinese empire, too long
connived at and truckled to by the mightiest Christian nations of
the civilized world, have at length been brought into conflict with
the principles and the power of the British empire; and I cannot
forbear to express the hope that Britain, after taking the lead in
the abolition of the African slave-trade and of slavery, and of the
still more degrading tribute to the Barbary African Mahometans, will
extend her liberating arm to the furthest bound of Asia, and at the
close of the present contest insist upon concluding the peace upon
terms of perfect equality with the Chinese empire, and that the
future commerce shall be carried on upon terms of equality and
reciprocity between the two communities parties to the trade, for
the benefit of both; each retaining the right of prohibition and of
regulation, to interdict any article or branch of trade injurious to
itself, as for example the article of opium, and to secure itself
against the practices of fraudulent traders and smugglers. This is
the truth, and I apprehend the only question at issue between the
governments and nations of Great Britain and China. It is a general,
but I believe altogether a mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is
merely for certain chests of opium, imported by British merchants
into China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been
imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute,
but no more the cause of war than the throwing overboard of the tea
in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American Revolution.

"The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese
that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or
commercial, their superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and
manifested in humiliating forms. It is not creditable to the great,
powerful, and enlightened nations of Europe, that for several
centuries they have, for the sake of a profitable trade, submitted
to these insolent and insulting pretensions, equally contrary to the
first principles of the law of nature and of revealed religion--the
natural equality of mankind--

"'_Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?_'

"This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for being
practised by Christian nations, which, in their intercourse with one
another, push the principle of equality and reciprocity to the
minutest punctilios of form."

This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treatment of Lord Macartney
by the Chinese emperor, in 1792, when sent to that court as ambassador
from Great Britain, illustrating and supporting its general argument.
The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the distinction with a very small
difference between "the bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a
token of homage,--admitted as to the first, denied as to the last, by
the British ambassador,--are characteristic.

"The narrative of Sir George Staunton distinctly and positively
affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the presence of the
Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without
performing the prostration of the Kotow--the Chinese act of homage
from the vassal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors
and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly
twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816,
another splendid embassy was despatched by the British government,
in the person of Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed,
without even being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or
passing a single hour at Pekin. A Dutch embassy instituted shortly
after the failure of that of Lord Macartney, fared no better,
although the ambassador submitted with a good grace to the
prostration of the Kotow. A philosophical republican may smile at
the distinction by which a British nobleman saw no objection to
delivering his credentials on the bended knee, but could not bring
his stomach to the attitude of entire prostration. In the discussion
which arose between Lord Amherst and the celestials on this
question, the Chinese, to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord
Macartney had performed the Kotow; and Kiaking, the successor of
Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney,
personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in that
attitude. Against the testimony to the fact of the imperial witness
in person, it may well be conjectured how impossible it was for the
British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of
small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to
the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior,
and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because
he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the
other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the
relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any
sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee in presenting his
credentials to another. But the personal prostration of the
ambassador before the emperor was, in the Chinese principle of
exaction, symbolical not only of the acknowledgment of subjection,
but of the fundamental law of the empire prohibiting all official
intercourse upon a footing of equality between the government of
China and the government of any other nation. All are included under
the general denomination of outside barbarians: and the commercial
intercourse with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained
through the exclusive monopoly of the Hong merchants."

At the opening of the session of Congress, on the 3d of December, 1841,
Mr. Adams thus wrote concerning his own course and the country's
prospects:

"Between the obligation to discharge my duty to the country and the
obvious impossibility of accomplishing anything for the improvement
of its condition by legislation, my deliberate judgment warns me to
a systematic adherence to inaction upon all the controverted topics
which cannot fail to be brought into debate. Upon the rule-question
(that is, refusing to receive or refer petitions on the subject of
slavery) I cannot be silent, but shall be left alone, as heretofore.
I await the opening of the session with great anxiety; more from an
apprehension of my own imprudence than from a belief that the
fortunes of the country will be much affected, for good or evil, by
anything that will be done. There is neither spotless integrity nor
consummate ability at the helm of the ship, and she will be more
than ever the sport of winds and waves, drifting between breakers
and quicksands. May the wise and good Disposer send her home in
safety!"

On the 24th of January, 1842, Mr. Adams presented the petition of
forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying that Congress
would immediately take measures peaceably to dissolve the Union of these
States. 1st. Because no Union can be agreeable which does not present
prospects of reciprocal benefits. 2d. Because a vast proportion of the
resources of one section of the Union is annually drained to sustain the
views and course of another section, without any adequate return. 3d.
Because, judging from the history of past nations, that Union, if
persisted in, in the present course of things, will certainly overwhelm
the whole nation in utter destruction. Mr. Adams moved that the petition
be referred to a select committee, with instructions to report an answer
showing the reasons why the prayer of it ought not to be granted.

The excitement the presentation of this petition produced was immediate
and intense. Mr. Hopkins, of Virginia, moved to burn it in presence of
the house. Mr. Wise, of the same state, asked the speaker if it was in
order to move to censure any member for presenting such a petition. Mr.
Gilmer, also of Virginia, moved a resolution, that Mr. Adams, for
presenting such a petition, had justly incurred the censure of the
house. Mr. Adams said that he hoped the resolution would be received and
discussed. A desultory debate ensued, and was continued until the house
adjourned. A caucus was immediately held by the opponents of Mr. Adams
among the representatives from the South and West, to take measures to
effect his expulsion. It was feared that the two thirds vote requisite
to expel a member could not be obtained. Three resolutions were
therefore prepared, the adoption of which it was deemed would in popular
effect be equivalent to an expulsion. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky,
consented to present them the next day. The consideration of these
resolutions, which continued until the 5th of February, produced a
series of as violent and personal debates as perhaps the halls of
Congress ever witnessed. They were in these words:

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