that Mr. Shaler will have returned to Algiers and resumed his consular functions there. In that case Mr. Wyer will transmit the despatch for Mr. Shaler with which he is charged, by any safe and ordinary mode of conveyance, and will return here, with any despatches which you may intrust to him; waiting as long as you may think advisable for the answer to the demand of permission to pursue the pirates of Cuba on the shores of the Island.

Besides the correspondence with Mr. Anduaga, copies of which are herewith transmitted, I have received several long and very earnest communications from that minister, the replies to which have been and are yet delayed, in the hope that they may be received by him in a disposition. more calm and temperate than that which is manifested by his notes. He appears to think it material to the interest of his government to maintain the attitude of loud complaint in regard to transactions with respect to which the primary cause of complaint is on our side. The only exception to this remark relates to a miserable attempt at an expedition against the island of Porto Rico by a foreign officer named Ducoudray de Holstein, but on board of which were some misguided citizens of the United States. One of the vessels appears to have been fitted out at Philadelphia, and one at New York; but the first intimation of these facts received by this government was long after they had sailed, and from the island of St. Bartholomew.

We have since learned that the masters of the vessels were deceived with regard to their destination, and that when it was discovered by them, they positively refused to proceed upon it, and insisted upon going into the island of Curaçao, where the chief and others of the expedition were arrested. You will make this known to the Spanish government, and assure them that this government knew nothing

of this expedition before the departure of the vessels from the United States. This will not be surprising when it is known that it escaped equally the vigilance of Mr. Anduaga himself, who divides his residence between New York and Philadelphia, and of all the other Spanish official agents and consuls at those places.

Mr. Anduaga has taken this occasion to renew with much sensibility all his own complaints and those of his predecessors, against armaments in our ports in behalf of the South American patriots, and even against that commerce which our citizens, in common with the subjects of all the maritime nations of Europe, have for many years maintained with the people of the emancipated colonies. These complaints have been so fully and repeatedly answered that there is some difficulty in accounting for Mr. Anduaga's recurrence to them with the feelings which mark his notes. concerning them. Should the occasion present itself, you will give it distinctly to be understood, that if some of these notes remain long, and may even finally remain unanswered, it is from a principle of forbearance to him, and of unequivocal good will towards his government and country. I am, etc.

THE MACBETH POLICY 1

An ingenious commentator upon Shakespeare, in a conversation by moonlight on the piazza, observes that the Macbeth policy, "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me" will not

answer.

A friend who happened, at the moment when this observation was made, to join in the conversation, and who sometimes studies

1 The occasion for this paper was a letter from Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadel phia, to Mrs. Adams, which is printed in Adams, Memoirs, VI. 130.

the tragedy of Macbeth, with a view to the first and highest purposes of the drama, to purify his own heart by the passions of pity and terror, enquires whether this quotation,

"If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me

"Without my stir."

can with propriety be denominated the Macbeth policy, and whether it is not rather a remnant of virtue yet struggling in the breast of that victim of unhallowed ambition against the horrible imaginings of that policy by which he finally wins the crown and loses his life and his soul?

As a test to this inquiry let us suppose that Macbeth had adhered to what you call his policy, and waited for chance to crown him. You say he never would have been king? True. And of course no tragedy. The Macbeth policy is quite a different thing, and your quotation is an answer to your argument.

But in the application of the sentiment to present times and future events, ought we not to remark that kings and crowns and chance are all out of the question? Detur digniori is the inscription upon the prize, and the choice of ten millions of people by their delegated agents must award it.

“No,” say you, "little is left to chance or merit. The prize is awarded by politicians and newspapers, and the man who sits down waiting for it by chance or just right will go bare-handed all his life."

Here we come to the point. The principle of the Constitution in its purity is, that the duty shall be assigned to the most able and the most worthy. Politicians and newspapers may bestir themselves to point out who that is; and the only question between us is, whether it be consistent with the duties of a citizen who is supposed to desire that the choice should fall upon himself to assist, countenance, and encourage those who are disposed to befriend him in the pursuit.

The law of friendship is a reciprocation of good offices. He who asks or accepts the offer of friendly service contracts the obligation of meeting it with a suitable return. He who asks or accepts the

offer of aid to promote his own views necessarily binds himself to promote the views of him from whom he receives it. Whatever may be the wishes of an individual, nothing but the unbiassed voice of many others can make him even a candidate for the chief magistracy. If he asks or accepts the aid of one, he must ask or accept the aid of multitudes. Between the principle, of which much has been said in the newspapers, that a President of the United States must remember those to whom he owes his elevation, and the principle of accepting no aid on the score of friendship or personal kindness to him, there is no alternative. The former, as it has been announced and urged, I deem to be essentially and vitally corrupt. The latter is the only principle to which no exception can be taken.

If therefore I have checked and discouraged the exertions of Mr. Walsh] in this cause, it has not been from insensibility either to his kindness, or to his talents, or to his influence. I have been unwilling that from motives of personal kindness to me he should take trouble, incur hazards, and expose himself, and perhaps his interests, to dangers which it will probably never be in my power to reward. The rule which I have been compelled to apply to Mr. W. I have been equally obliged to apply to others. He has never intimated to me the wish or expectation of return. Others are less delicate. But I am to look not merely to what he would expect, but to what I am bound to think due to an accepted offer.

I do not deceive myself as to the consequences of this principle upon the issue of the approaching election. I know that all are not equally scrupulous, and I remember the connection between the "Vox pro Republica honesta, ipsi anceps, legi a se militem non emi," and the fate of Galba. But in the situation where it has pleased Providence to place me, my first and most anxious desire is to discharge all my duties. The only way that I can fulfil those to my country is by services. Those of friendship can be performed only by forbearing to ask or accept services importing personal sacrifices and hazards which it may never be in my power to requite.

Mr. W. is at liberty to pursue in his editorial capacity, with regard to the Presidential election, that line which his opinions of the public interest and the sense of his own duty to the country will dictate. If he thinks it immaterial upon which of the candidates the choice should settle, perhaps his wisest course would be a guarded neutrality, rendering justice to all, and dispensing censure and approbation according to the convictions of his own judgment. If upon public considerations he has made up his mind to support one candidate, it is yet more congenial to his own spirit of independence and to that of the candidate whom he may favor that this support should be given free and unshackled on both sides, than as an offer made to the candidate for his benefit, and as such accepted by him.

In all my correspondence with Mr. W. hitherto I have considered this as a point upon which he had not come to a definitive determination. He had so intimated or declared in an editorial article of his paper; and the character of his remarks upon every occasion on which he had noticed me as before the public, though not unfriendly in the main, and always doing justice to my intentions, had never struck me as manifesting partiality of any kind in my favor, nor assuredly as indicating a preference of me as a possible candidate for the presidency hereafter. My last letter to him was of the 27th of November last; and whatever was said in that to check or discourage exertions on his part in my favor, was said either with reference to his personal interest, and as a return of friendship and confidence to him, or in answer to observations which he had made in a private letter to me on certain grounds of support to me which he had recently appeared to take in his paper, and of the nature and effect of which he had seemed to wish for my opinion. I considered the fact as very uncertain whether even New England would unitedly offer me as a candidate, and I doubted the correctness of the principle upon which it was supposed I should be supported by that section of the Union and opposed by another. Let us have sectional sympathies, if you please; but let us distrust even them; and let us indulge no sec