purchase and setting up a
German newspaper in support of the administration, and inquiring if he
would permit his son, John Adams, to contribute to that object. He
replied that, on full consideration of the transaction, he deemed it his
duty to decline; that how far the employment of money to promote the
success of the election might be proper in others, it was not for him to
determine; he could only lament the necessity, if it existed; but to
apply money himself for the promotion of his own election he thought
incorrect in principle, and had invariably avoided it. He knew that
others were less scrupulous, and that it had been done by one individual
to the pecuniary embarrassment of his whole life. He had been solicited
to adopt a like course, but had uniformly declined, not from pecuniary
considerations, but because he could not approve of the thing.

In January, 1828, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, who had taken upon himself the
inglorious office of hunting up and disseminating malign aspersions
against President Adams, brought before the House of Representatives
statements concerning his accounts, which had been long before settled
at the treasury of the United States; and, after recapitulating the
number of the public offices he had held, and swelling to the utmost the
amount he had received out of the public treasury, terminated his
censorious attack with the mean sneer that he did not complain, since
every man should make his own living, if he can. To this, Mr. Everett,
of Massachusetts, replied, with truth and dignity, that whatever Mr.
Adams had received, be it great or small, was sanctioned by other
administrations, with which Mr. Adams had nothing to do, either in
establishing the office fixing the compensations, or seeking the
employment. For a third of a century passed in the service of his
country, neither he, nor his friends for him, with his knowledge nor
without his knowledge, ever solicited any public office or employment;
and that, taking into consideration the number of years passed by him in
the public service, and the variety and importance of the missions with
which he had been intrusted in whole or in part, no foreign minister had
ever received less than Mr. Adams, while many have received more. These
statements he supported by many minute, accurate, and unanswerable
details. In a like spirit Mr. Sargent, of Philadelphia, reprobated and
refuted the calumnies uttered against the administration relative to