 | Letters of Mrs. Adams, |  |
TO JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
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
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;
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
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 military
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
| Letters of Mrs. Adams, | |