Under the faithful supervision of one so vigilant as Mr. Adams, the foreign relations of the Government could not have been neglected.  The intimate knowledge of the condition of foreign nations, their resources and their wants, which was possessed by himself and by Mr. Clay, the Secretary of State, afforded facilities in this department, from which the country reaped the richest benefit.  During the four years of his administration, more treaties were negotiated at Washington than during the entire thirty-six years through which the preceding administrations had extended.  New treaties of amity, navigation and commerce, were concluded with Austria, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanseatic League, Prussia, Colombia, and Central America.  Commercial difficulties and various arrangements of a satisfactory character, were settled with the Netherlands, and other European Governments.  The claims of our citizens against Sweden, Denmark and Brazil, for spoilations of commerce, were satisfactorily consummated.

“As time advances, the evidences are accumulating on all sides, that the administration of John Quincy Adams was one of the most wise, patriotic, pacific, just, and wealth-producing, in the history of the country; and no small part of that benefit may justly be ascribed to the aid he received from his Secretary of State.  Mr. Adams himself was a great statesman, bred in the school of statesmen, and all his life exercised in the business of state, with recognized skill, and approved fidelity.  The seven years immediately preceding the administration of Mr. Adams, was a period of great commercial embarrassment and distress; and the seven years subsequent to his entrance on the duties of chief executive, was a period of great public and private prosperity.” [Footnote:  Cotton’s Life of Clay.]

While Mr. Adams was thus seeking to foster and encourage the industrial and monetary interests of the country, he was not forgetful of the important claims of literature and science.  President Washington, during his administration, had repeatedly urged on Congress the importance of establishing a national university at the capital; and he had located and bequeathed a site for that purpose.  But his appeals on this subject had been in vain.  In Mr. Adams’s first message, he earnestly called on Congress to carry into execution this recommendation of the Father of his Country—­insisting that “among the first, perhaps the very first instrument for the improvement of the condition of men, is knowledge; and to the acquisition of much of the knowledge adapted to the wants, the comforts, and the enjoyments of human life, public institutions and seminaries of learning are essential.”