The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-23 00:00:00

LETTER FROM MR. ADAMS.

The anniversery of Wost India emancipation was
celebrated on the Ist ult. at various places in New
England. At Concord, an oration was delivered by
Ralph Waldo Emerson ; and at Hingham, there was
a meeting of 500 in a grove, a pic-nic, &c. The fol-
lowing letter was read, being from John Quincy
Adams to a friend :

"In declining the invitation which I received last
summer to attend the celebration of the Ist of August,
it was in nowise my intention to express disapproba-
tion of the celebration itself. The abolition of slavery
in the colonies of Great Britain, by the Parliament of
that realm, was an event at which, if the whole human
race could have been concentrated in one person, the
heart of that person would have leaped for joy. The
restoration of eight hundred thousand beings from a
state of grinding oppression to the rights bestowed
upon them by the God of nature at their birth, was
of itself a cause of rejoicing to the pure in heart
throughout the habitable earth. But that is not the
only or the most radiant glory of that day. It was
the pledge of power and of will of the mightiest na-
tion upon the globe that the bondage of man should
cease; that the manacle and fetter shall drop from
every limb ; that the ties of nature shall no longer be
outraged by man's inhumanity to man ; that the self-
evident truths of our declaration of independence shall
no longer be idle mockeries, belied by the transcendent
power of slavery welded into our constitution. It
was the voice of the herald, like that of John the
Baptist in the wilderness, proclaiming as with the
trumpet of the archangel, that the standing, funda-
mental policy of the British empire was thenceforth
the peaceable abolition of slavery throughout the
world.

" Well then may the friends of freedom and of man
rejoice at the annual return of that day. Well may
they, from far and wide, assemble and meet together
in mutual gratulation at the return of so blessed a
day. Well may they come in crowds to cheer and
encourage one another to contribute, every one ac-
cording to his ability, to the final consummation of
this glorious and stupendous undertaking. My un-
willingness to participate in it arose only from shame
for the honour and good name of my country, whose
Government, under a false and treacherous pretence
of co-operating with Great Britain fur the suppression
of one of the forms of this execrable system of slavery,
has now been for a series of years pursuing and ma-
turing a counteraction of the purpose of universal
emancipation, and organising an opposite system for
the maintenance, preservation, propagation, and per-
petuation of slavery throughout the earth.
" For the last fifteen years this unhallowed pur-
pose has been constantly, perseveringly, and unblush-
ingly persisted in, with a pertinacity of exertion and
perfidy in the use of the means never yet surpassed
by any conspiracy ever formed against the li-
berties of mankind. The dismemberment of the
neighbouring republic of Mexico, the re-institution
of slavery throughout an immense portion of her
territory, and the purchase or conquest of Ca.
lifornia, with the lying pretension of re-annex-
ing Texas to this Union, have been, and yet are,
among these profligate and unprincipled means. All
absurd and preposterous attempt to pick a quarrel with
Great Britain, upon false and frivolous pretences, is
another. The utter prostration of the exclusive constitu-
tional powers of Congress to declare war—the whole
compound budget of blunders and of crimes—the abor-
tive negotiations of a treaty of plunder and robbery,
which the Senate had the common sense and common
honesty almost unanimously to reject—the glaring
falsehood by which the Texans themselves were in-
veigled into negotiation—all these, and many more
enormities of the deepest dye, are but part and parcels
of the agony of slavery struggling for existence and
perpetuation against the awakening conscience of
mankind.

"The abortion of slave-mongering diplomacy, mis-
called a treaty, attempted is the last hours of
'an Administration detested and despised even
by his own partisans, is the last act of this
knot of conspirators against human freedom.
Their foul and filthy purpose has at length been
extorted from them. It is, by an exterminating
war, to rob Mexico of her provinces, and to defend
and perpetuate slavery by open war with England for
undertaking to abolish it throughout the world. A
self-styled President of the United States, and two
successive Secretaries of State of his own appoint-
ment, have, with shameless effrontery, avowed that
their project of wholesale treachery, robbery, and
murder, was undertaken and pursued for the delibe-
rate purpose of overreaching, overturning, and de-
stroying the system of policy of the British
nation to promote the abolition of slavery through-
out the world. I have long foreseen and
watched the progress of the two systems towards this
issue, and have given formal warning to my coun-
trymen, of it, by speeches in the House of Re-
presentatives in 1836, 1838, and 1842 ; by ad-
dresses to my constituents-1837 at Quincy, in
1842 at Braintree, and in 1843 at Dedham, and by
an address signed by twenty-two other Members of
Congress and myself, to the people of the free States,
at the close of the session of 1844—an address
falsely charged by the forty-ball weathercock here of
Texan annexation, nullification, and the blessing
slavery, as threatening the dissolution of the Union.
I have seen the steady and gradual approaches of
the two systems to the conflict of mortal combat, in all
their phases, from the strictly confidential letter of
Andrew Jackson, of 10th December, 1833, to the
Secretary, not Governor of Arkansas territory, to
that consummate device of slave-holding democracy,
the two-thirds rule of the late Democratic Convention
at Baltimore, and to the casting down of the glove of
defiance by our present Secretary of State, in his
letter to the British Plenipotentiary of the 18th April
last. The glove was indeed not taken up. We are
yet to learn with what ears the sound of the trumpet
of slavery was listened to by the British Queen and
her Ministers. We are yet to learn whether the suc-
cessor of Elizabeth on the throne of England, and her
Burleighs and Walsinghams, upon hearing that their
avowed purpose to promote universal emancipation
and the extinction of slavery upon the earth, is to be
met by the man-robbers of our own country with ex-
terminating war, will like craven cowards turn their
back and flee, or eat their own words, or disclaim the
purpose which they have avowed. That, my friend,
is the issue flung in their faces by President Tyler,
and his Secretary John C. Calhoun. And that is the
issue to which they have pledged, to the extent and
beyond the extent of their power, you and me, and
the free people of this Union, and their posterity, for
life and death, for peace and war, for time and
eternity.
Shall we respond affirmatively to the pledge ? No,
by the God of justice and mercy! No. My heart is
full to overflowing, but I have no more room for
words. Proceed, then, to celebrate and solemnise the
emancipation of eight hundred thousand British
slaves, whose bonds have been loosened by British
hands. Invoke the blessing of the Almighty with
prayer that the day may speedily come when the
oppressed millions of our land shall be raised to the
dignity and enjoy the rights of freedom, and when
the soil of Texas herself shall be as free as our own.
I cannot be with you, for age and infirmity forbid;
but for every supplication breathed by you for the
universal emancipation of man and the extinction of
slavery upon earth, my voice shall respond Amen !'