to Canada in 1776, of the Reverend John Carroll, afterwards the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore. Whether the appointment of Bishop Carroll was, as Mrs. Adams, in one of her letters, seems to suspect, (vol. i., 91,) "a stroke of policy," or not, is not material. Policy it no doubt was, but poor and purblind would be the policy which should select an agent for such a trust with reference to no other qualifications but those which his professional functions gave him. There was in truth a personal trust which defied all sectarian prejudice, and the instructions given to the commissioners show with what a pure spirit of religious tolerance the founders of our political institutions were imbued. We are tempted to quote a single passage:

"You are farther to declare that we hold sacred the rights of conscience, and may promise to the whole people, solemnly in our names, the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion; and to the clergy, the full, perfect, and peaceable possession and enjoyment of all their estates; that the government of every thing relating to their religion and clergy shall be left entirely in the hands of the good people of that province, and such legislature as they shall constitute; provided, however, that all other denominations of Christians be equally entitled to hold offices, and enjoy civil privileges, and the free exercise of their religion, and be totally exempt from the payment of any tithes or taxes for the support of any religion."

It is due to truth to say, and it is more freely said at a time when extravagant claims are made by the adherents of the Church of Rome in this country to ultra liberalism, that the mission from Congress to Canada failed entirely. The Roman Catholics of that province, strong in the immunities which the Quebec bill gave them, turned a deaf ear to the republicans on this side of the St. Lawrence, and were content to nestle in the bosom of the British government with all its obnoxious Protestantism and odious establishment. There is extant an address of the Roman Catholic clergy to Sir Guy Carleton, on his arrival in Canada in 1775, signed by the Bishop of Quebec and the superiors of the Jesuits and Recollets, which, in point of ecstatic loyalty, transcends most loyal professions, and the spirit of which entirely accounts for the failure of our revolutionary Congress to win the inhabitants of Canada to sympathy with them.

We have said more than we intended on this incidental

1842.]

History to be studied with a right Spirit.

13

topic, but we are confident that the earnest and respectful admonition which we mean to give, will neither be unwelcome nor inappropriate, and hope that no word we have thought it our duty to utter will give pain to any one. If our modern politicians and sectaries would open the volume of the Revolution oftener than they do, they would, we repeat, find lessons and examples there which may be profitably learned and honorably followed; and among those lessons, none more impressive than this, that under no circumstances should mere sectarianism, distinctions among men who honestly profess different creeds, be allowed to influence or control political action or political organization. No sympathy with foreign politics, no meddling with creeds any where. We honestly believe that Archbishop Carroll, or his illustrious namesake, could he return to life with all his religious sensibilities about him, would be most sincerely scandalized at a meeting of repealers, or even at the heated councils of Carroll Hall.

And, in what spirit or by what rule are we to study the history, and especially the personal history of the Revolution? The question is answered when we say that it is to be a study- an enthusiastic but a philosophic and discriminating study-such a study as the artist bestows on a collection of ancient statuary by which he is enabled, with all his admiration of the models before him, to form a relative judgment upon them, and, at a glance, to see how far the perfection of the Apollo transcends that of the rude torso of some inferior sculptor. No nation can boast such a domestic history as ours - not lost in remote antiquity, not obscured by learned speculation-it is fresh and new, for this generation at least, and yet, with all its freshness, it is classic for us. Just time enough has elapsed to settle the public judgment and dissipate prejudice, and yet not enough to encourage those gratuitous speculations and doubts as to past times to which a remote antiquity is exposed. We abhor from the bottom of our hearts the "new light" system that now and then is promulgated, by which what are called "historical errors" are pointed out, the judgment of ages reversed, and the world set to rights by new researches. The world, learned and unlearned, yet believes and will for ever believe, in spite of Lord Orford's "doubts," that Richard the Third was a bloody tyrant. It cannot be persuaded, according to the freak of the hour, that Jack Cade was a gentleman; nor will,

nor should the American public be willing ever to believe (and this is the last "historic doubt" which has come to our knowledge) that "Old Put.," the hero of the wolf story of our childhood, the veteran of the old French war, the soldier of nearly all the early battles of the Revolution, was, after all, but a poltroon, who was afraid to look an armed enemy in the face or stand within range of a loaded musket. We have no patience with such impertinence.*

Not such should be the feeling with which the volume of the Revolution is to be opened and perused. Presumptuous cavillings are here out of place. The willingness to believe that the actors in those scenes were men of virtue and patriotism will not affect the right or the faculty of independent judgment, and it must exist or the exercise of a fair judgment is hopeless. The spirit of the Revolution, too, sympathy with republican institutions, must rest on the student. Hence it is that foreigners, and especially Englishmen, intelligent and right-minded men, too, who make an effort to judge us and our history fairly, so habitually misunderstand it. The very "watch-words" of the Revolution, sacred and intelligible as such to us, have painful significance to them, and are associated with revolutionary convulsions elsewhere or radical and disorganizing movements at home, and the student of this class, tormented with the spectres thus conjured up in his own misdirected fancy, shuts up the book in despair, and is settled in the opinion that all revolutions and rebellions are pretty much alike, and all rebels worthy of the same summary fate. Hence, emphatically, it is that the ill-natured, malignant, mercenary scoffer at our institutions easily persuades himself, as he reads the story of our early trials, that his scoffs are just, and turns with supercilious loathing from the homely, domestic, republican memorials which volumes like these afford; the simple, unaffected tale of a rebel's wife, a New England matron, guarding her aged parents and little children from pestilence or the kindred chastisement of the

While we are prepared to maintain General Putnam's courage against all cavil, we do not insist upon his scholarship. The autograph of the following general order is now lying before us. We copy verbatim et literatim:

"head quartors ye 14. of December 1776. "All ofisors and solders boath thos that are Newly inlisted into the contenontil sarwis thos of the flieing Camp the melishey and all the Inhabitence of this City are requested to parad to morrow morning at 9 o'clock at the Markit to go on fitig to fortify this City and so on Every morning tel farther orders.

"ISRAEL PUTNAM."

1842.]

Violence of Party Obloquy.

15

British soldiery, seeing nothing in all this to command admiration or applause, and then looks with complacency on the venial debaucheries of a family of princes royal, and sees nothing repulsive or degrading in a high-born woman kissing a greasy butcher at the Westminster hustings and thinking, perhaps, that the vote she gained was cheaply bought. But the student, the American student, with some rare exceptions, can always study reverently and gratefully the annals of those times. He will find on their pages every variety of character, moral and intellectual, from Washington downwards to Arnold-the worst specimen, even before his treason, except in the article of brute courage, which our history exhibits; and, making due and reasonable allowance for peculiarity of circumstances and education, will, in every day's study, find new cause of grateful reverence for the memory of the really great men of those heroic times.

Among them, John Adams had few superiors in all the high qualities which those times demanded. He belonged especially to the Revolution. To his character and unquestioned public services, as we have already intimated, full, though, perhaps, reluctant justice, for the grasp of prejudice is scarcely relaxed in death, is now done. To our mind, it has always seemed that it would have been better for the truly great men of the Revolution, had their public career terminated when the victory was won and the struggle was over in which they gained their peculiar fame. To every thing since, the taint of party prejudice more or less extends. Even Washington, with all his purity and superlative merit, was not exempted from it; his policy was severely arraigned, his motives impugned, and, though we doubt whether a single unrepentant reviler now survives, yet, there are many living who remember the day when reproaches on the father of our country were more than whispered. Jay, and Hamilton, and Marshall were each the target for political obloquy, but on no one were the penalties of mingling in these new conflicts more severely visited than on Mr. Adams on no one more ungenerously and unjustly. Raised to the chief magistracy of the young nation as the fit successor of Washington, he was driven from power by one of those popular explosions which defy all calculation, prostrating hopelessly those against whom their force is aimed, and blackening and begriming the victors who profit by the shock. From 1762 to 1800, Mr. Adams was the active, the steadfast, and the honored servant of

the people. To them his best years, to their service, as these volumes attest, all familiar and domestic ease was devoted. He had encountered enemies by sea and land, he had labored by night and day in the infant councils of the republic, his voice had braced her up to energy when doubt had begun to sickly her resolute purposes, he had done as much in her civil service as any of her illustrious sons, and yet, in the prime of life and full vigor of his powers, he found himself thanklessly stripped of his honors, and in his room was placed, as the idol of the land, one whose public services and sacrifices and endurances had not been one tithe of his. From 1801 to 1826, Mr. Adams's seclusion was complete, and in the busy whirl of this busy land he paid the ordinary penalty of seclusion, and, being out of sight, was out of mind. During that time it may be truly said that popular prejudice had literally buried him. If his name were ever mentioned, it brought to utterance certain cabalistic catch-words which, fortunately, are beginning, for any purpose, to lose their efficacy, and, instead of "John Adams" raising, as well it might and now it does, the sacred associations of the Revolution and its heroic trials, "the reign of terror," and "the black cockade," and "midnight judges," and all the coinage of party vulgarity, were the phrases with which it was associated. Of the habits of Mr. Adams's retirement these volumes give no account. It was complete, and we believe it was contented. On the fourth of July, 1826, the knell of the old patriot was rung, and, with his great and apparently more fortunate rival, he slept with his fathers. From that instant there was a change of public feeling. It has been progressive; and now there is that due and growing appreciation of his character and services which prejudice so long withheld.

We have spoken of the sober judgment by which the student can discriminate among the great men of our history. There is even now, when biography and personal memorials are so incomplete, no difficulty in assigning to each his due position. It is no stereotyped form of panegyric, but rational and deserved praise, to say, that to Washington we find no parallel. He stands by himself in his matchless combination. of peculiar excellences, no one brighter than the rest, but all blended in a harmony of coloring which distinguishes no other character. There are classes of others. Men of high and ardent temperament, bold, rash men fit to lead a revo