"constitutionalist," he did not worship the Constitution. He was much more than a "defender of the Constitution," — a defender of Human Rights.
Mr. Adams had this American sentiment and idea in an heroic degree. Perhaps no political man now living has expressed them so fully. With a man like him, not very genial or creative, having no great constructive skill, and not without a certain pugnacity in his character, this sentiment and idea would naturally develop themselves in a negative form, that of opposition to Wrong, more often than in the positive form of direct organization of the Right; would lead to criticism oftener than to creation. Especially would this he the case if other men were building up institutions in opposition to this idea. In him they actually take the form of what he called " The unalienable right of resistance to oppression." His life furnishes abundant instances of this. He thought the Indians were unjustly treated, cried out against the wrong ; when President, endeavoured to secure justice to the Creeks in Georgia, and got into collision with Governor Troup. He saw, or thought he saw, that England opposed the American idea, both in the new world and the old. In his zeal for freedom he sometimes forgot the great services of England in that same cause, and hated England, hated her with great intensity of hatred, hated her political policy, her monarchy, and her aristocracy, mocked at the madness of her king, for he thought England stood in the way of freedom.[1] Yet he loved the English name and the English blood, was "proud of being himself descended from that stock," thinking it worth noting, "that Chatham's language was his mother tongue, and Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own." He confessed no nation had done more for the cause of human improvement. He loved the Common Law of England, putting it far above the Roman Law, perhaps not without doing a little injustice to the latter.[2] The common law was a rude and
- ↑ See Address at Washington, 4th of July, 1821. Second Edition, Cambridge, passim.
- ↑ Reference is made to his speech in the House of Representatives, May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little remarkable that the false principle of the common law, on which Mr. Adams was commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a writer, M. Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. Sec pp. 6-8, and 20, 21.
