PREFACE.

I TRUST I may be pardoned for offering some explanation of the form in which I have decided to put the present publication.

It is now six-and-twenty years since the event happened which devolved on me alone a grave responsibility as the custodian of a voluminous mass of manuscripts accumulated during seventy-five years of continuous service of two public men, father and son.

Of their value as materials contributing to the history of the rise and progress of the United States in its first century, I could not entertain a doubt. Their importance in elucidating a specific course of action, often connected with heavy responsibilities to the state, seemed equally obvious. Not insensible to the hazard attending their preservation in a country passing through social changes so rapidly as this does, and warned by well-known instances of dispersion and loss in other quarters, it has been my leading wish to place the essential portions of this collection intrusted to my care out of the reach of danger, by publication in my own day.

Moved by these considerations, I lost no time in entering upon my labors, by first preparing for the press a collection of the papers connected with the life and times of John Adams. This duty was fulfilled by the production in succession of ten large octavo volumes, requiring on my part the assiduous application of eight consecutive years. It is doing no more than justice to the liberality of the Congress of the United

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States, to recognize the assistance given to this part of the undertaking by a subscription for one thousand copies.

The next and far the most difficult part of the work yet remained. The papers left by John Quincy Adams were not only much more numerous, but they embraced a far wider variety of topics. Whilst the public life of the father scarcely covered twenty-eight years, that of the son stretched beyond fifty-three. Fully aware of the danger of losing time, if my design was fully to complete the task, I applied myself at once to the labor of reading for a selection not less than a preparation of materials for the press. But circumstances needless to detail just then interposed, which seemed to command my own services in public life at so wide a distance from home as to make a further prosecution of this plan for a time impracticable. Yet I may say with truth that, during this interval of nearly twelve years, the hope of returning to it was never out of my mind. And when at last relieved by the kindness of the government, at my own request, I hastened to resume the thread of my investigation just at the point where I had left it so long before.

The chief difficulty in the latter part of this enterprise has grown out of the superabundance of the materials. Not many persons have left behind them a greater variety of papers than John Quincy Adams, all more or less marked by characteristic modes of thought, and illustrating his principles of public and private action. Independently of a diary kept almost continuously for sixty-five years, and of numbers of other productions, official and otherwise, already printed, there is a variety of discussion and criticism on different topics, together with correspondence public and private, which, if it were all to be published, as was that of Voltaire, would be likely quite to equal in quantity the hundred volumes of that expansive writer.

But this example of Voltaire is one which might properly serve as a lesson for warning, rather than for imitation. No reader can dip into his pages in the most cursory manner without noticing how often a mind even so versatile as his repeats the same thoughts, and how much better character is understood by means of a single happy stroke, than by dwelling upon it through pages of elaboration.

The chief objects to be attained by publishing the papers of eminent men seem to be the elucidation of the history of the times in which they acted, and of the extent to which they exercised a personal influence upon opinion as well as upon events. Where the materials to gain these ends may be drawn directly from their own testimony, it would seem far more advisable to adopt them at once, as they stand, than to substitute explanations or disquisitions, the offspring of imperfect impressions painfully gathered long afterward at second hand.

It so happens that in the present instance there remains at record of life carefully kept by John Quincy Adams for nearly the whole of his active days, and in condition so good as but to need careful abridgment to serve the purposes above pointed out. It may reasonably be doubted whether any attempt of the kind has ever been more completely executed by a public man. The elaborate memoirs of St.-Simon, which fill twenty volumes, on the one side, and those of Grimm and Diderot, which make sixteen more, on the other, may be cited perhaps as similar examples of industry. But although each of these publications may perhaps have its points of superior attraction, they both want that particular feature which is most prominent here, the personification of the individual himself in direct connection with all the scenes in which he becomes an actor, and the examination to which he subjects himself far more severely than he does those about him. In this

respect the contrast between him and St.-Simon is striking, as also in a superiority in aspiration for the good and the pure both in theory and action, which is more or less felt to pervade every page.

After careful meditation over the materials of this great trust, I reached the conclusion that it would be best to set aside the rest of the papers, and fix upon this diary as altogether the surest mode of attaining the desired results. Having settled this point, the next question that arose was upon the mode of making the publication. It was very clear that abridgment was indispensable. Assuming this to be certain, it became necessary to fix upon a rule of selection which should be fair and honest. To attain that object I came to the following conclusions: 1st. To eliminate the details of common life and events of no interest to the public. 2d. To reduce the moral and religious speculations, in which the work abounds, so far as to escape repetition of sentiments once declared. 3d. Not to suppress strictures upon contemporaries, but to give them only when they are upon public men. acting in the same sphere with the writer. In point of fact, there are very few others. 4th. To suppress nothing of his own habits of self-examination, even when they might be thought most to tell against himself. 5th. To abstain altogether from modification of the sentiments or the very words, and substitution of what might seem better ones, in every case but that of obvious error in writing. Guided by these rules, I trust I have supplied pretty much all in these volumes which the most curious reader would be desirous to know.

I am not unaware of the objections commonly made to publications of this kind, in their relation to opinions or action ascribed to other persons no longer in life to protect their own reputations, or who have left scanty means of rectification behind them. I fully admit the force of a remark attributed