and faculty, into the cause of the country. When the father of Mr. Adams repaired to France as joint. commissioner with Franklin and Lee, he was accom. panied by his son John Quincy, then in his eleventh year. In this country he passed a year and a half with his father, and enjoyed the enviable privilege of the daily intercourse and parental attentions of Benjamin Franklin; whose kind notice of the young was a peculiar trait in his character, and whose primitive simplicity of manners and methdoical habits left a lasting impression on the mind of his youthful countryman.

After a residence of about eighteen months in France, John Quincy Adams returned to America with his father who came home to take part in the formation of the Constitution of his native state. After a sojourn of a few months at hotne, the voice of the country called on Mr. Adam's father again to repair to Europe as a commissioner for negociating á treaty of peace and commerce with Great Britain, whenever she might be disposed to put an end to the war.

He took his son with him. They sailed in a French frigate bound to Brest; but the vesse! having sprung a dangerous leak, was obliged to put in the nearest port, which proved to be Ferrol, in Spain. From that place Mr. Adams travelled by land to Paris, where he arrived in January, 1780, and when his son, J. Q. Adams, was put to school. In the month of July, of the same year, Mr. Adams repaired to Holland to negotiate a loan in that country. His son accompanied him, and was placed first in the public school of the city of Amsterdam, and afterwards in the University of Leyden. In July, 1781 Mr. Francis Dana, (afterwards Chief Justice of the State of Massachusetts), who had gone out with Mr. Adams,

as Secretary of Legation, received, from the continental Congress, the commission of Minister to the Empress of Russia, and John Q. Adams was selected by Mr. Dana, as a private secretary of this mission. After spending fourteen months with Mr. Dana, he left him to return throwgh Sweden, Denmark, Hamburgh, and Bremen, to Holland, where his father had been publicly received as Minister from the United States, and had concluded a commercial treaty with the republic of the Netherlands. He performed this journey during the winter of 1782—3, being sixteen years of age, without a companion. He reached the Hague in April, 1783, his father being at that time engaged at Paris in the negociation of peace. From April to July his son remained at the Hague under the care of Mr. Dumas, a native of Switzerland, a zealous friend of America, who then filled the office of an agent of the United States. The negociations for peace being suspended in July, Mr. Adams's father repaired on business to Amsterdam, and on his return to Paris he took his son with him. The definitive treaty of peace was signed in September, 1783, from which time till May, 1785, he was chiefly with his father in England, Holland, and France.

It was at that period, that he formed an acquaintance with Mr. Jefferson, then residing in France as American Minister. The intercourse of Mr. Jefferson with his former colleague, the father of Mr. Adams, of an intimate and confidential kind, and led to a friendship for his son, which, formed in early life, scarcely suffered an interruption from subsequent political dissensions, and revived with original strength during the last years of the life of this venerable statesman.

Mr. Adams was, at the period last mentioned, about eighteen years of age. Born in the crisis of his country's fortunes, he had led a life of wandering and vicissitude, unusual at any age. His education, in every thing but the school of liberty, had been interrupted and irregular. He had seen much of the world-much of men-and had enjoyed but little leisure for books. Anxious to complete his education, and still more anxious to return to his native · America, when his father was, in 1785, appointed Minister to the Court of St. James, his son, at that period of life when the pleasures and splendor of a city like London are most calculated to fascinate and mislead, asked permission of his father to go back to his native shores. This he accordingly did. On his return to America, he became a member of the ancient seat of learning at Cambridge, where, as early as 1743, Samuel Adams, in taking his degrees, had the proposition, “That the people have a just right of resistance, when oppressed by their rulers.”

In July, 1787, Mr. Adams left college and entered the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterward Chief Justice of the State, as a student of law at Newburyport. On a visit of General Washington to that town, in 1789, Mr. Parsons, being chosen by his fellow citizens to be the medium of expressing their sentiments to the General, called upon his pupils each to prepare an address. This call was obeyed by Mr. Adams, and his address was delivered by Mr. Parsons.

After completing his law studies at Newburyport, Mr. Adams removed to the capital of Massachusetts, with a view of employing himself in the practice of the profession. The business of a young lawyer is generally of inconsiderable amount; and Mr. Adams

employed the leisure afforded him by this circumstance, and by his industrious habits, in speculations upon the great political questions of the day.

In April 1793, on the first information that war between Great Britain and France had been declared, Mr. Adams published a short series of papers, the object of which was, to prove that the duty and interest of the United States required them to remain neutral in the contest. These papers were published before General Washington's proclamation of neutrality, and without any knowledge that such a proclamation would issue. The opinions they expressed were in opposition to the ideas generally prevailing, that the treaty of alliance of 1778 obliged us to take part in the wars of France. But the proclamation of neutrality by General Washington, sanctioned by all his cabinet, with Mr. Jefferson at its head, was shortly made public, and confirmed the justice of the views which Mr. Adams had been (it is believed), the first to express before the public, on this new and difficult topic of national law.

In the winter of 1793 and 1794, the public mind of America was extensively agitated by the inflammatory appeals of the French minister, Genet. It is known to all with what power and skill this foreign emissary was resisted in the official correspondence of the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson.Among those who co-operated in the public prints, in the same patriotic cause, none was more conspicuous than Mr. Adams, whose essays, in support of the administration, were read and admired throughout the country.

His reputation was now established as an American statesman, patriot, and political writer of the first order. Before his retirement from the Depart

ment of State, Mr. Jefferson recommended him to General Washington as a proper person to be intros duced into the public service of the country. The acquaintance between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams, which had been formed in France, had lately been renewed, on occasion of a visit of Mr. Adams to Philadelphia in 1792; and the promptitude and ability with which he had just seconded the efforts of the Secretary of State, in enforcing the principles of public law on the turbulent French Envoy, no doubt led Mr. Jefferson thus to recommend him to General Washington.

General Washington's own notice had been drawn to the publications of Mr. Adams above alluded to. He had in private expressed the highest opinion of them, and had made particular inquiries with respect to their author. Thus honorably identified, at the early age of twenty-seven, with the first great and decisive step of the foreign policy of the United States, and thus early attracting the notice,and enjoying the confidence of Washington and Jefferson, Mr. Adams was, in 1794, appointed Minister Resident to the Netherlands, an office corresponding in rank and salary with that of a Charge d' Affaires at the present day. The father of Mr. Adams was, at this time, vice-president of the United States; but it is unnecessary to say, to those acquainted with the character of these great men, that the appointment of his son was made by General Washington unexpectedly to the vice-president, and without any previous intimation that it would take place.

Mr. Adams remained at his post in Holland till near the close of General Washington's administration. He was an attentive observer of the great events then occurring in Europe, and his official