our liberties and our Union. So far as they were contending for independence I wished well to their cause; but I had seen, and yet see, no prospect that they would establish free or liberal institutions of government. They are not likely to promote the spirit either of freedom or order by their example. They have not the first elements of free or good government. Arbitrary power, military and ecclesiastical, was stamped upon their education, upon their habits, and upon all their institutions. Civil dissension was infused into all their seminal principles. War and mutual destruction was in every member of their organization, moral, political, and physical. I had little expectation of any beneficial result to this country from any future connection with them, political or commercial. We should derive no improvement to our own institutions by any communion with theirs. Nor was there any appearance of any disposition in them to take any political lesson from us. As to the commercial connection, there was no basis for much traffic between us. They want none of our productions, and we could afford to purchase very few of theirs. Of these opinions, both his and mine, time must be the test.”
This kind of reasoning appeared painfully cold by the side of Clay's glowing periods. But it must be confessed that Adams's prognostications have in the main stood the test of time far better than Clay's. It seems that Clay then did not command sufficient information to answer such arguments, for we find it recorded that when Adams had finished his lecture, Clay “did not pursue the discussion.” Neither would he, at that moment, have
