thing to Mr. Adams as to her troubles about first visits, to the effect that she had adopted the rule of not returning any visits, although she had hurt some feelings by it. While she acted wisely and best, perhaps, in this course, the whole matter was quite disgusting.

On the 3d of July, 1819, Mr. Adams wrote in his Diary in speaking of the French minister:

"He asked also whether he and Madame de Neuville should call upon Mrs. Monroe to take leave. As I could not answer him on this subject, he said the foreign ministers were placed in an unpleasant predicament by not knowing whether their visits would be received, and yet being unwilling to omit any mark of respect to the President's family which might be expected. I told him I would make some inquiry, and let him know the result."

But, surely enough, on the next day, George Hay came over and told Mr. Adams that Mrs. President Monroe could not receive Hyde de Neuville and his wife. Poor De Neuville! this subject of etiquette at the court of the great American Republic was far more difficult than making treaties with a man quite his equal in stubborness. Poor Tom Jefferson! little did his pupil, when his own slipshod tracks were scarcely cold, heed his example as to republican usages and simplicity.

As has been said, the marriage of Mr. Monroe's daughter, who died in 1850, and was buried at Oak Hill by the side of her mother, was the first wedding at the White House. This was, of course, an important event and was destined to start anew the "awful" question of etiquette among the foreign ministers, and in the President's family. The matter was brought to a point by some of the foreign diplomates employing

Mrs. Adams, the wife of the Secretary of State, to visit Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Hay at the White House to ascertain what would be expected of them in the case. Mrs. Hay decided that as she did not receive visits from, or exchange visits with the foreign ministers and their families, her sister should not do so, and hence no note should be made of this extraordinary event at the President's House. But this was not the end of the affair. A few days after the marriage, Mr. Monroe sent his brother with this strange instruction to the Secretary of State, "that he wished him to notify the foreign ministers that they might pay, with their ladies, the wedding visit to Mr. and Mrs. Gouverneur, and that it would be returned; but that it must stop there."

But for the honor of the President, it turned out after a time, before much mischief was done, that "Lieutenant" Monroe, as the private secretary was called, had himself manufactured this new piece of etiquette, and that the President had not chosen to interfere in the wise conclusion reached by his family as to avoiding a public display of their domestic relations.

On the evening of the 6th of March, 1824, there was a party at the White Mansion; and it was given by Mrs. Hay. This was a revolution in the stern etiquette which had been so long adhered to, and caused no little gossip and all sorts of speculations about town and among small-minded society people, and the theme was greatly intensified by the fact that the foreign ministers and their families were invited.

CHAPTER XXXII.

"THE PEOPLE, THE SOVEREIGNS."

HE little duodecimo book of two hundred and

THE

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seventy-four pages, called The People, The Sovereigns," was written by Mr. Monroe after the close of his Presidency. For many years the manuscript lay in the hands of Mr. Monroe's grandson and administrator, Samuel L. Gouverneur, and not until in 1867, did he put the loose fragments together and print it. And even then Mr. Gouverneur did not venture in this step until advised by Samuel Tyler, George Bancroft, and others, who examined the work, to do so, and who exhibited in their advice how utterly unreliable the judgment of such men is, in many respects, quite likely to be.

One chapter of the little volume is devoted to a comparative view of government and society, and the remaining part of the work is a comparative view of the Government of the United States and the ancient republics of Athens, Lacedemon, and Carthage. Mr. Monroe had in contemplation a similar review of the political history and lessons of Rome, but death prevented the execution of this trifling work.

These obsolete governments afforded great fascination to the political writers of the first quarter of a century of this Nation, and from them they drew their

illustrations, as well as much of their theory. Such a charm is there yet to the average unlearned ad hominem American politician about the glorious days of Greece and Rome, that if he can do no more than ring the meaningless names in his speeches, he deems himself honored and successful. The examples of Greece, Rome, and Carthage are worth little to the world, and never were worth any thing to this Republic, and the display of so-called learning about them is always folly, and often disgusting.

There never was anything more untrue which is so universally taken as an aphorism of wisdom than the old hack that the school of experience and example is the best and the only one in which most people learn. Nations and governments are subject to the same general principles as individual persons. The great mass of mankind learn but poorly in any way, and the bulk of evidence goes to show that the little advance which is made is not to be traced to one source more than another. Evil, not so much good, is contagious. What could these old, wicked, defunct States of the Old World have in them applicable to an age in which earth and man, all things, are new?

Mr. Monroe starts out in this work in these words:

Having served my country, from very early life, in its most important trusts, abroad and at home, my mind has been turned in the discharge of my public duties to the principles of the system itself, in the success of which I have taken, and always shall take, a deep interest. I have witnessed our difficulties, and have seen with delight the virtue and talent by which they were surmounted. In looking to our future progress, some important questions occur to which great attention is due. Are we not still menaced

with dangers? Of what nature are they, and to what cause or causes imputable? To these objects my mind has also been drawn with great interest; and having now leisure, it is my intention to express my sentiments freely on them, in the hope that I may thereby render some service, and under the conviction that in those instances in which I may err, I shall do no harm.

It has been often affirmed that our Revolution forms the most important epoch in the history of mankind, and in this sentiment I fully concur. But whence does it derive its importance? The sentiment is founded in a belief that it has introduced a system of new governments better calculated to secure to the people the blessings of liberty, and under circumstances more favorable to success, than any which the world ever knew before. If such be the fact, the truth of the affirmation must be conceded, for surely no event can be so important, as the establishment of a new system of government, which by its intrinsic merit, and the force of example, promises to promote so essentially the happiness of mankind.

Other republics have failed. Their career, though brilliant, was marked by contentions which frequently convulsed and finally overthrew them. To what causes were those contentions imputable? Was it that the governments respectively were so defective that their failure was inevitable? Or were the societies, of which those republics were composed, incapable of such governments? To one or other of those causes, or to a combination of them, their fate must have been imputable. Do like causes exist here? If they do, it follows that we are exposed in a certain degree at least to a like fate. These are fair objects of inquiry, and I propose to inquire into them. To present in a clear and distinct light the difference. between the governments and people of the United States, and those of other countries, ancient and modern, and to show that certain causes which produce disastrous effects in them do not exist in most instances, and are inapplicable in all, to ours, is an inquiry of great extent, if pursued in