"J.Q.Adams." When Mr. Polk declared it to be high treason for any American to countenance these foreign Anti-Slavery Con- ventions, he Httle anticipated, that he should hereafter . deem it expedient, officially to pronounce the writer of such a note, " a great and patriotic citizen."
We have already noticed Mr. Adams's strenuous oppo- sition to the annexation of Texas, and his stern denunciation of the policy long pursued towards Mexico, and we have found his name associated with the little band who dared to vote against the Mexican war, and who, in deri- sive but prophetic language, were called " The immortal fourteen."
But if to question the justice of the war, was giving " aid and comfort " to the enemy, how deep the treason while the war was waging, to refuse in aiding its prosecution ! Yet a few weeks before his death, Mr. Adams voted for a resolution withdrawing our troops from Mexico, relinquishing all claims for the expenses of the war, and estabhshing the desert between the Nueces and the Rio Grande the boundary between the two countries ;
and almost the last vote he ever gave, was for an amendment to the bill raising a loan of sixteen millions, viz. :
'* Provided that no part of the money received under the authority of this act shall be applied to any expenses that shall hereafter be incurred by the prosecution of the war with Mexico."
If Mr. Adams shocked the slaveholders by the freedom of his language, he was no less regardless of the sensi- bihties of their alHes. Irritated by their subserviency, and their constant endeavors to thwart him, he exclaimed on the floor, " There is no end to the devices and inge- nuity of the servile ^mrt of this house, for the purpose of suppressing the right of petition. I do not mean by the servile part of this house, the slaveholding part of it." He asserted " Northern subserviency to southern dictation is the price paid by a northern administration (Mr. Van Buren's) for