lines;
then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they marched back to the ships
and sailed for Europe.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND THE RIGHT OF PETITION

He rests with the immortals; his journey has been long:
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong!
So well and bravely has he done the work be found to do,
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever true.
--Whittier.

The lot of ex-Presidents of the United States, as a rule, has been
a life of extreme retirement, but to this rule there is one marked
exception. When John Quincy Adams left the White House in March, 1829,
it must have seemed as if public life could hold nothing more for him.
He had had everything apparently that an American statesman could hope
for. He had been Minister to Holland and Prussia, to Russia and England.
He had been a Senator of the United States, Secretary of State for
eight years, and finally President. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the
greatest part of his career, and his noblest service to his country,
were still before him when he gave up the Presidency.

In the following year (1830) he was told that he might be elected to
the House of Representatives, and the gentleman who made the proposition
ventured to say that he thought an ex-President, by taking such a
position, "instead of degrading the individual would elevate the
representative character." Mr. Adams replied that he had "in that
respect no scruples whatever. No person can be degraded by serving
the people as Representative in Congress, nor, in my opinion, would an
ex-President of the United States be degraded by serving as a selectman
of his town if elected thereto by the people." A few weeks later he was
chosen to the House, and the district continued to send him every two
years from that time until his death. He did much excellent work in the
House, and was conspicuous in more than one memorable scene; but here
it is possible to touch on only a single point, where he came forward
as the champion of a great principle, and fought a battle for the right
which will always be remembered among the great deeds of American public
men.

Soon after Mr. Adams took his seat in Congress, the movement for the
abolition of slavery was begun by a few obscure agitators. It did not at
first attract much attention, but as it went on it gradually exasperated
the overbearing temper of the Southern slaveholders. One fruit of thi