tional antipathies. Expose them where they operate, but set not one prejudice in array against another.

When I said that Mr. W. had indicated in his editorial capacity no decided preference of me as a probable candidate for the Presidency, I spoke with reference to the time when the last letters between him and me were written. Since then he has spoken more distinctly; and if I am to consider him as wishing to support me for a candidate with his editorial influence, I would beg leave to offer him the following advice:

First, to wait till it shall be ascertained whether I am to be a candidate at all. Great exertions have for years been systematically making to exclude me from that position altogether. I have done and shall do nothing to place myself in it. Persecuted by calumny in its lowest and most insidious forms, I have more than once defended myself in the face of the nation; whether successfully or not, the nation and posterity are to judge. But surely to parry the daggers of assassins is not to canvass votes for the Presidency. In no part of the Union, not even in my native New England, has there been an unequivocal manifestation of a public sentiment disposed to hold me up as a candidate. If that feeling does not exist, and in a force which no effort of intrigue can suppress or restrain, it would be a useless, and perhaps worse than useless, thing for a few personal friends of mine to attempt to produce it. The opinion has gone abroad throughout the Union that I shall have no support. I have no decisive evidence that the voice of the people in any quarter of it is in my favor. The Richmond Enquirer, the leading paper of the Presidential canvass, pronounced me eight months ago hors de combat. And although it has since admitted that it might possibly be otherwise, it allows me no partisans but those who think I had been wronged in the diplomatic feud. In Massachusetts I am no favorite of the federal majority. In the rest of New England the Republicans are lukewarm and distrustful of success. My career has attached no party to me precisely because it has been independent of all party. "All rising to great place," says Lord Bacon, "is by a winding

stair; and if there be factions it is good to side one's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed." I have neither ascended by the winding stair nor sided myself in the rising; and the consequence has been that all parties disown me the Federalists as a deserter, the Democrats as an apostate. I have followed the convictions of my own mind with a single eye to the interests of the whole nation; and if I have no claims to the suffrages of the whole nation, I have certainly none to those of either party. This independence of party will always in warm, factious times be mistaken and misrepresented by common politicians for unsteadiness of principle; and the man who acts upon it must make his account to stand or fall on broader grounds than lie within the bounds of a geographical subdivision, and with other props than political sectarianism or individual intrigue. If your watch has no main-spring, you will not keep time by turning round the minute-hand. If I cannot move the mass, I do not wish to trifle with the indicator. Against me I have in every section the passions and prejudices peculiar to its own situation and circumstances, and everywhere party spirit, wielded by personal rivals and adversaries, and working by misrepresentation and slander. With all these weights bearing me down, where is the buoyant principle that is to bring me up? Is it for me to say, my talents and my services? and what else can be said by any of my friends? My wishes are out of the question. If I am to be a candidate, it must be by the wishes, ardent and active, of others and not by mine. Let Mr. W. then first wait for proof that there is a strong. public interest in my favor. Secondly, if this point should be ascertained beyond all question, and Mr. W. should think proper to take an active part in promoting the election, whatever information he may desire he can obtain either by direct communication with me or from my friends, with whom he is also in relations of friendship.

Thirdly, if his disposition is to befriend me, and the influence of newspapers be as powerful as you suggest, would it not be advisable to observe the course of other newspapers, and endeavor to

harmonize, or at least not to conflict, with those which appear disposed to support the same cause?

With this explanation, I hope Mr. W. will be satisfied that any coolness with which I may have received his proffers and dispositions of kindness has been the result of a real kindness to himself, as well as of rigid principle. If my countrymen prefer others to me, I must not repine at their choice. Indifference at the heart is not to be won by wooing. The services that have no tongue to speak for themselves would be ill aided by the loudest trumpet. Merit and just right in this country will be heard. And in my case if they are not heard without my stir I shall acquiesce in the conclusion that it is because they do not exist.1

23rd January, 1823.

1 "Mr. Adams, having the preference of New England, is, as I conceive, without friends who are knitted to him by personal attachments. The opinion of his integrity and of his superiority as a learned statesman, is not disputed by anyone; but with these qualifications, which are of great worth, a disinclination towards him, grounded on the imputed infirmities which belonged to his father, and added to the want of those properties which produce and maintain personal attachments, prevails to an extent that it will be found difficult to overcome. If what Mr. Walsh calls the Universal Yankee Nation should unite in his favor, it would produce effect, particularly in New York; but the managers will resort to devices to prevent this union." Rufus King to Christopher Gore, February 9, 1823. Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, VI. 500. “Adams' discussions in the newspapers have increased his reputation, but whether they have materially advanced the probability of his election I am not able to say. He is above all controversy the best informed, and some persons believe the best qualified, of the candidates: but if this be so, does it prove that he is therefore the most likely to be chosen President, or will the election turn on other considerations than those which cannot be denied to Mr. A.?" Rufus King to John A. King, March 2, 1823. Ib., 505.

DEAR SIR:

TO STEPHEN ROW BRADLEY

WASHINGTON, 12 March, 1823.

I some days since received your obliging favor of the 4th ultimo with its inclosed copy of your answer to certain inquiries by General Samuel Smith relating to opinions which he supposed me to have expressed in the Senate of the United States justifying the British practice of impressing seamen on board of American vessels on the high seas.

General Smith's recollections on this subject were erroneous, and yours as far as my own serve me are correct. I never justified or approved the British practice of pressing men from our vessels at sea. In the month of January, 1804, General Smith, as Chairman of a Committee of the Senate, brought in a bill "further to protect the seamen of the United States." This bill I opposed, because without making any discrimination between our own seamen and British seamen in our vessels, or between the places where they might be taken whether at sea or even in British ports, its provisions appeared to me adapted to bring the question between us and Great Britain on that subject to an immediate issue of war, upon grounds which we could not justly maintain. In the course of the debates upon this bill and while opposing it, I stated to the Senate the British side of the argument, not as approving it myself, much less as justifying their practices under it, but to show that it was a question of extreme difficulty between the two nations, and that it would be neither just nor politic to bring it to an immediate conflict of war by precipitate and inconsiderate measures on our part. I stated that the right of a sovereign to command the services of his subjects, especially in emer

gencies of war, was not only a British doctrine, but asserted by all the writers on public law of whom I had any knowledge. I very probably said that I held the doctrine to be sound, for I did and do still so hold it. I further added that the exercise of this right by the king of Great Britain within the realm by the impressment of seamen in time of war actual or impending had been maintained to be lawful by some of the wisest and most virtuous judges, and some of the most ardent friends of liberty that the nation had ever produced. I referred especially to the arguments of Judge Foster in his reports, and of Junius, and spoke of them both with strong commendation. I said that whether conclusive or not they were considered in England to be so; that we could not maintain the right of rescuing British seamen from the authority of their own government within the British dominions; that when our vessels frequented British ports while Great Britain was at war and we were neutral, there was the strongest possible temptation both to the British seamen to ship in our vessels, and to the masters of our vessels to ship them. To the former the neutral merchant service offered higher wages and more liberty without the dangers of war; while the latter could ship them at lower wages than they were obliged to give for seamen in our own ports. I observed that in consequence of this we were charged with seducing British seamen from the service of their own country, and that if we should pass an act making it penal to take a seaman out of an American vessel, without discriminating either as to the national character of the man or as to the place where the act should be done, it would be equivalent to declaring war, if a British press gang should board an American vessel in the port of Liverpool and take from her a British seaman clandestinely shipped to escape from the service of his own sovereign.