g of America, and if Congress did not
accept his offer, that they would give him thirty thousand pounds for
the generosity of it(2); but John, like a mole, was grubbing his way to
it under ground. He knew that Lund Washington was unknown, for nobody
had heard of him, and that as the president had no children to succeed
him, the vice-president had, and if the treason had succeeded, and the
hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the
head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good
people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a
delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition.

1 See supra footnote on p. 288.--_Editor._

2 See vol. ii. p. 318 of this work.--_Editor._

Knowing, as I do, the consummate vanity of John Adams, and the
shallowness of his judgment, I can easily picture to myself that when
he arrived at the Federal City he was strutting in the pomp of his
imagination before the presidential house, or in the audience hall, and
exulting in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, "Is not this great Babylon,
that I have built for the honour of my Majesty!" But in that unfortunate
hour, or soon after, John, like Nebuchadnezzar, was driven from among
men, and fled with the speed of a post-horse.

Some of John Adams's loyal subjects, I see, have been to present him
with an address on his birthday; but the language they use is too tame
for the occasion. Birthday addresses, like birthday odes, should not
creep along like mildrops down a cabbage leaf, but roll in a torrent of
poetical metaphor. I will give them a specimen for the next year. Here
it is--

When an Ant, in travelling over the globe, lift up its foot, and put it
again on the ground, it shakes the earth to its centre: but when YOU,
the mighty Ant of the East, was born, &c. &c. &c, the centre jumped upon
the surface.

This, gentlemen, is the proper style of addresses from _well-bred_ ants
to the monarch of the ant hills; and as I never take pay for preaching,
praying, politics, or poetry, I make you a present of it. Some people
talk of impeaching John Adams; but I am for softer measures. I would
keep him to make fun of. He will then answer one of the ends for which
he was born, and he ought to be thankful that I am arrived to take his
part. I voted in earnest to save the life of one unfortunate king, and
I now vote in jest to save another. It is my fate to be always plagued
with