Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/156

144 shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, " Go," they hasten; "Come," they say, "Here we are;" " Do this," they obey in a moment ; " Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the North. Does the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enrol their soldiers, and declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to preach against the war.

All this needs to be remembered in judging of Mr. Adams. True he was regularly bred to politics, and " to the manor born;" but he was a New England man, with northern notions, northern habits, and though more than fifty years in public life, yet he seems to have sought the object of New England far more than the object of the South. Measure his greatness by his service ; but that is not to be measured by immediate and apparent success.

In a notice so brief as this I can say but little of the details of Mr. Adams's life, and purposely pass over many things, dwelling mainly on such as are significant of his character. He was born at Quincy, the 11th of July, 1767; in 1777 he went to Europe with his father, then Minister to France. He remained in Europe most of the time, his powers developing with rapidity and promise of future greatness, till 1785, when he returned and entered the junior class in Harvard College. In 1787, he graduated with distinguished honours. He studied law at Newburyport, with Judge Parsons, till 1790, and was a lawyer in Boston, till 1794.

That may be called the period of his education. He enjoyed the advantages of a residence abroad, which enabled him to acquire a knowledge of foreign languages, modes of life, and habits of thought. His father's position