an impracticable government.  And this you may be assured was the real line of difference between the political principles of these two gentlemen.  Another incident took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate Hamilton’s political principles.  The room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton, and Locke.  Hamilton asked me who they were.  I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them.  He paused for some time:  ‘The greatest man,’ said he, ‘that ever lived, was Julius Caesar.’  Mr. Adams was honest as a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.

You remember the machinery which the federalists played off, about that time, to beat down the friends to the real principles of our constitution, to silence by terror every expression in their favor, to bring us into war with France and alliance with England, and finally to homologize our constitution with that of England.  Mr. Adams, you know, was overwhelmed with feverish addresses, dictated by the fear, and often by the pen of the bloody buoy, and was seduced by them into some open indications of his new principles of government, and in fact, was so elated as to mix with his kindness a little superciliousness towards me.  Even Mrs. Adams, with all her good sense and prudence, was sensibly flushed.  And you recollect the short suspension of our intercourse, and the circumstance which gave rise to it, which you were so good as to bring to an early explanation, and have set to rights, to the cordial satisfaction of us all.  The nation at length passed condemnation on the political principles of the federalists, by refusing to continue Mr. Adams in the Presidency.  On the day on which we learned in Philadelphia the vote of the city of New York, which it was well known would decide the vote of the State, and that, again, the vote of the Union, I called on Mr. Adams on some official business.  He was very sensibly affected, and accosted me with these words.  ’Well, I understand that you are to beat me in this contest, and I will only say that I will be as faithful a subject as any you will have.’  ‘Mr. Adams,’ said I, ’this is no personal contest between you and me.  Two systems of principles on the subject of government divide our fellow-citizens into two parties.  With one of these you concur, and I with the other.  As we have been longer on the public stage than most of those now living, our names happen to be more generally known.  One of these parties, therefore, has put your name at its head, the other mine.  Were we both to die to-day, to-morrow two other names would be in the place of ours, without any change in the motion of the machine.  Its motion is from its principle, not from you or myself.’’I believe you are right,’ said he, ’that we are but passive instruments, and should not suffer