you, however, in the course of this investigation, that our law has not been abundant in its provisions for protecting a man from gross insult and disgrace. Indeed it was hardly to be expected, that the sturdy hunters, who laid the foundations of the common law, would be very refined in their notions. There is in truth much intrinsic difficulty in legislating on this subject. Laws must be made to operate equally on all members of the community; and such is the difference in the situations and feelings of men, that no general rule, on this subject, can properly apply to all. That, which is an irreparable injury to one man, and which he would feel himself bound to repel even by the instantaneous death of the aggressor, or by his own, would be a very trivial misfortune to another. There are men, in every civilized community, whose happiness and usefulness would be for ever destroyed by a beating, which another member of the same community would voluntarily receive for a five-dollar bill. Were the laws to authorize a man of elevated mind, and refined feelings of honor, to defend himself from indignity by the death of the aggressor, they must at the same time furnish an excuse to the meanest chimney-sweeper in the country for punishing his sooty companion, who should fillip him on the cheek, by instantly thrusting his scraper into his belly. But it is too much to conclude, from this difficulty in stating exceptions to the general rule, that extreme cases do not furnish them. It is vain, and worse than vain, to prescribe laws to a community, which will require a dereliction of all dignity of character, and subject the most elevated to outrages from the most vile. If such laws did exist, the best that could be hoped, would be, that they would be broken. Extreme cases are in their nature exceptions to all rules; and when a good citizen says, that, the law not having specified them, he must have a right to use his own best discretion on the subject; he only treats the law of his country in the same manner in which every Christian necessarily treats the precepts of his religion. The law of his Master is, "resist not evil;""if a man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also." No exceptions to these rules are stated; yet does not every rational Christian necessarily make them? I have been led to make these observations, not because I think them necessary in the defence of Mr. Selfridge; but because I will have no voluntary agency in degrading the spirit of my country. The greatest of all public calamities would be a pusillanimous spirit, that would tamely surrender personal dignity to every invader. The opposing counsel have read to you, from books of acknowledged authority, that the right of self-defence was not given by the law of civil society, and that that law cannot take it away. It is founded then on the law of nature, which is of higher authority than any human institution. This law enjoins us to be useful, in proportion to our capacities; to protect the powers of being useful, by all means that

nature has given us, and to secure our own happiness, as well as that of others. These sacred precepts cannot be obeyed without securing to ourselves the respect of others. Surely, I need not say to you, that the man, who is daily beaten on the public Exchange, cannot retain his standing in society, by recurring to the laws. Recovering daily damages will rather aggravate the contempt that the community will heap upon him; nor need I say, that when a man has patiently suffered one beating, he has almost insured a repetition of the insult.

It is a most serious calamity, for a man of high qualifications for usefulness, and delicate sense of honor, to be driven to such a crisis, yet should it become inevitable, he is bound to meet it like a man, to summon all the energies of the soul, rise above ordinary maxims, poise himself on his own magnanimity, and hold himself responsible only to his God. Whatever may be the consequences he is bound to bear them; to stand like mount Atlas,

"When storms and tempests thunder on its brow, And oceans break their billows at his feet." Do not believe that I am inculcating opinions, tending to disturb the peace of society. On the contrary, they are the only principles that can preserve it. It is more dangerous for the laws to give security to a man, disposed to commit outrages on the persons of his fellow-citizens, than to authorize those, who must otherwise meet irreparable injury, to defend themselves at every hazard. Men of eminent talents and virtues, on whose exertions, in perilous times, the honor and happiness of their country must depend, will always be liable to be degraded by every daring miscreant, if they cannot defend themselves from personal insult and outrage. Men of this description must always feel, that to submit to degradation and dishonor, is impossible. Nor is this feeling confined to men of that eminent grade. We have thousands in our country who possess this spirit; and without them we should soon deservedly cease to exist as an independent nation. I respect the laws of my country, and revere the precepts of our holy religion; I should shudder at shedding human blood; I would practise moderation and forbearance, to avoid so terrible a calamity; yet should I ever be driven to that impassable point, where degradation and disgrace begin, may this arm shrink palsied from its socket, if I fail to defend my own honor.

It has been intimated, that the principles of Christianity condemn the defendant. If he is to be tried by this law, he certainly has a right to avail himself of one of its fundamental principles. I call on you then to do to him, as in similar circumstances, you would expect others to do to you; change situations for a moment, and ask yourselves, what you would have done, if attacked as he was. And instead of being necessitated to act at the moment, and without reflection, take time to deliberate. Permit_me to state, for you, your train of thought. You

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

JOHN QUINCY, the son of John and Abigail Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, on the eleventh of July, 1767.* The years of his boyhood were spent at home, under the immediate supervision of his excellent mother, who taught him to read, and directed his thoughts to subjects of piety, patriotism and morality-characteristics for which he was eminently distinguished throughout his long and eventful life. On the appointment of his father, in 1777, as one of the commissioners to the court of Versailles, he accompanied him to Paris, where he arrived in April of the following year. Soon after reaching Paris he was placed at school, where he devoted himself with uncommon industry to the acquisition of the native language, at the same time perfecting himself in the usual classical branches. After an absence of eighteen months he returned to America, but to remain for a short time only.

In November, 1779, his father was appointed by Congress a minister plenipotentiary for negotiating a treaty of peace and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain, and on the thirteenth of that month he embarked for France, taking with him his two eldest sons, John Quincy and Charles. After a protracted and tempestuous voyage, the frigate in which they were passengers was obliged to put into the port of Ferrol, in Spain, from whence they travelled over land to Paris. Here young John Quincy again commenced his studies, which he continued until his removal to Amsterdam. At the latter place he attended school for a few months, and finally entered the University of Leyden, "to learn Latin and Greek under the distinguished teachers there, and to attend the lectures of the celebrated professors in the University." The reasons of this last transfer are evident in the following remarks of John Adams: "I should not wish to have children educated in the common schools of this country, where a littleness of soul is notorious. The masters are mean-spirited wretches; punishing, kicking and boxing the children upon every turn. There is a general littleness arising from the contemplation of stivers and doits. Frugality and industry are virtues every where, but avarice and stinginess are not frugality."

In 1781, at the age of fourteen, John Quincy Adams accompanied Mr. Francis Dana, on his mission to Russia, and subsequently became his private secretary. At St. Petersburg he remained until October, 1782, when he again joined his father in Holland. From this place he journeyed to Paris, was present at the signing of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States; and afterwards visited England, Holland and France, whither his father was called during his diplomatic career. At London he enjoyed the society of the most eminent of the British statesmen, was introduced to the floor of the House of Parliament, and attended the debates, in which Burke, Sheridan, Fox and others took part. With every one he was a favorite, and his uncommon precocity attracted the attention of the eminent men, who, at that

* He was named John Quincy, from the following circumstances: His mother was the daughter of the Rev. William Smith, pastor of the Congregational Church, in the town of Weymouth. The wife of Mr. Smith, the maternal grandmother of John Quincy Adams, was Elizabeth, a daughter of John Quincy, who is mentioned by Hutchinson as the owner of Mount Wollaston, had shared largely in the civil and military distinctions of his time and country, and in honor of him the present town of Quincy received its name. Mr. Quincy died a few hours after the birth of Mr. Adams, and at the special request of the grandmother, the name of her father, then lying dead, was given to the infant, who was baptized the next day, in the Congregational Church of the parish of Braintree.-Upham.

time, adorned the councils of both nations. Jefferson, then minister at Paris, wrote to Eldridge Gerry-"I congratulate your country on their prospect in this young man: " while others gave evidence of the respect they held for his talents and attainments.

He returned to Boston in 1785, bearing with him the subjoined letter, from his father to Benjamin Waterhouse, from which a just estimate of his acquirements can be formed:

Auteuil, 24 April, 1785.

This letter will be delivered you by your old acquaintance John Quincy Adams, whom I beg leave to recommend to your attention and favor. He is anxious to study some time at your University before he begins the study of the law, which appears at present to be the profession of his choice. He must undergo an examination, in which I suspect he will not appear exactly what he is. In truth, there are few who take their degrees at college, who have so much knowledge. But his studies having been pursued by himself, on his travels, without any steady tutor, he will be found awkward in speaking Latin, in prosody, in parsing, and even, perhaps, in that accuracy of pronunciation in reading orations or poems in that language, which is often chiefly attended to in such examinations. It seems to be necessary, therefore, that I make this apology for him to you, and request you to communicate it in confidence to the gentlemen who are to examine him, and such others as you think prudent. If you were to examine him in English and French poetry, I know not where you would find anybody his superior; in Roman and English history, few persons of his age. It is rare to find a youth possessed or so much know. ledge. He has translated Virgil's Æneid, Suetonius, the whole of Sallust, and Tacitus's Agricola, his Germany, and several books of his Annals, a great part of Horace, some of Ovid, and some of Cæsar's Commentaries, in writing, besides a number of Tully's orations. These he may show you; and although you will find the translations in many places inaccurate in point of style, as must be expected at his age, you will see abundant proof that it is impossible to make those translations without understanding his authors and their language very well.

In Greek his progress has not been equal; yet he has studied morsels in Aristotle's Poetics, in Plutarch's Lives, and Lucian's Dialogues, the choice of Hercules, in Xenophon, and lately he has gone through several books in Homer's Iliad.

In mathematics I hope he will pass muster. In the course of the last year, instead of playing cards like the fashionable world, I have spent my evenings with him. We went with some accuracy through the geometry in the Preceptor, the eight books of Simpson's Euclid in Latin, and compared it, problem by problem, and theorem by theorem, with le père de Chales in French; we went through plane trigonometry and plane-sailing, Fenning's Algebra, and the decimal fractions, arithmetical and geometrical proportions, and the conic sections, in Ward's Mathematics. I then attempted a sublime flight, and endeavored to give him some idea of the differential method of calculation of the Marquis de L'Hôpital, and the method of fluxions and infinite series of Sir Isaac Newton; but alas! it is thirty years since I thought of mathematics, and I found I had lost the little I once knew, especially of these higher branches of geometry, so that he is as yet but a smatterer, like his father. However, he has a foundation laid, which will enable him with a year's attendance on the mathematical professor, to make the necessary proficiency for a degree. He is studious enough, and emulous enough, and when he comes to mix with his new friends and young companions, he will make his way well enough. I hope he will be upon his guard against those airs of superiority among the scholars, which his larger acquaintance with the world, and his manifest superiority in the knowledge of some things, may but too naturally inspire into a young mind, and I beg of you, Sir, to be his friendly monitor in this respect and in all others.

In March, 1786, he entered the junior class of Harvard College, and the following year took his first degree. He now removed to Newburyport, and commenced the study of law in the office of the celebrated Theophilus Parsons,* afterwards chief justice of Massachusetts, and on

Theophilus Parsons, the son of a clergyman, was a native of Byfield, Massachusetts, where he was born in the month of February, 1750. He was educated at Harvard College, kept school at Portland, and was admitted to the practice of law

finishing his course, established himself at Boston. Here, besides attending to the duties of his profession, he devoted himself to the discussion of the great political questions of the day. In 1791, his essays, over the signature of Publicola, appeared in the Boston Centinel. In these papers he reviewed some portions of Paine's Rights of Man, and questioned the ultimate success of the French Revolution. His essays signed Marcellus, in which he advocated the policy of neutrality subsequently adopted by President Washington, were pubished in April, 1793. In the following winter he published another series of papers, sustaining the course of President Washington in reference to the French Minister, Genet. These productions attracted the favorable attention of the President, and, in 1796, Mr. Adams was sent on a mission to the Netherlands. During the next seven years he was in Europe, occupied in the several diplomatic missions to Holland, England, and Prussia. President Washington, a short time prior to his retirement, appointed him Minister to Portugal; but before he arrived at his post his destination was changed to Berlin. He continued there from the autumn of 1797, until April, 1801, during which period he concluded an important commercial treaty with that government. In September, 1801, he returned to America, soon after was elected to the Senate of his native State, and in March, 1804, took his seat in the United States Senate, having been elected to that honorable station by the legislature of Massachusetts. While a senator in Congress, he was appointed Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric in Harvard College. In 1808, he resigned his seat in the Senate, and was shortly after sent by President Madison as Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia. His services at the Russian court were of the highest importance. "By his instrumentality," says his biographer, "the Emperor of Russia was induced to mediate for peace between Great Britain and the United States." President Madison named him at the head of the commissioners sent to negotiate the treaty which terminated the war of 1812. On the conclusion of that treaty, Mr. Adams proceeded to London, where, with Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin, he negotiated a convention of commerce between the United States and Great Britain. He was subsequently appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. In 1817, he returned to the United States, and assumed the chair of Secretary of State, under the administration of President Monroe. Here he continued eight years, discharging the duties of his office with the highest ability and success, and greatly increasing his reputation as a statesman and patriot.

In 1825, he was elected President of the United States. How well he discharged the duties of this position is familiar to all. On retiring, at the end of his presidential term, he remained out of public life until 1831, when he was elected to the lower House of Congress, where he remained, constantly and assiduously devoted to the interests of his country and his fellow-men, until his death. His services, while in Congress, are too numerous and too intimately connected with the history of his country, to require but a passing notice in the present sketch.

at that place. When Portland was burnt, he returned to his father's at Byfield. The learned Judge Trowbridge, who lived in Cambridge, retired to the same town during the war, and carried with him his law library. Mr. Parsons availed himself of the Judge's books and conversation; and studied so intently as to impair his health, and to make the continnance of his life exceedingly precarious for many years. He became an invalid, very thin in person, and an afflicted hypochondriac. After the war he opened an office in Newburyport, and soon rose to eminence. He afterwards removed to Boston. In 1806, on the resignation of Chief Justice Dana, he was appointed to the vacated station, and held it to the elose of his life, October 80th, 1813.

"He was the most learned lawyer of his time, and was called the giant of the law. He comprised in his professional attainments, among other things, a full and accurate knowledge of the common law, civil, maritime, and ecclesiastical law, the law merchant, the statute and common law of his own country, and the law of nations. He retained all the learning which he thought it necessary to acquire, and from the methodical order of his mind, all he knew was ever familiarly at his command. His speeches to juries and judges were neither eloquent nor elegant, in any thing but pertineney and argument. They were never long, and he was among the few who could discern when they have said enough for their purpose. His eloquence was earnestness, his manner easy, familiar, persuasive, and never vehement. His memory was his brief, and the best one that a lawyer can use. His career on the bench was an era in judicial ability, and in despatch of business. It would be assuming too much to pronounce on the character of his judgments. Very few of them have not been approved by the able minds which have since been employed on the same subjects. Some of them have been especially respected for their explanatory and illustrative notice of what may be distinguished as the common law of the State." He was a finished Greek scholar and mathematician, and delighted in the current literature of the day. During his whole life he was an habitual student. It was his habit to sit and study from twelve to fifteen hours a day; and this without exercise or relaxation. In private life he was social, fond of good stories, and told them well, full of anecdote, and quick at repartee.-Sullivan's Familiar Letters.