With suffering Greece, now is the crisis of her fate—­her great, it may be her last struggle.  Sir, while we sit here deliberating, her destiny may be decided.  The Greeks, contending with ruthless oppressors, turn their eyes to us, and invoke us, by their ancestors, by their slaughtered wives and children, by their own blood poured out like water, by the hecatombs of dead they have heaped up, as it were, to heaven; they invoke, they implore from us some cheering sound, some look of sympathy, some token of compassionate regard.  They look to us as the great Republic of the earth—­and they ask us, by our common faith, whether we can forget that they are struggling, as we once struggled, for what we now so happily enjoy?  I cannot say, sir, they will succeed; that rests with heaven.  But, for myself, sir, if I should to-morrow hear that they have failed—­that their last phalanx had sunk beneath the Turkish cimetar, that the flames of their last city had sunk in its ashes, and that nought remained but the wide, melancholy waste where Greece once was—­I should still reflect, with the most heartfelt satisfaction, that I have asked you, in the name of seven millions of freemen, that you would give them, at least, the cheering of one friendly voice.”

The committee having in charge the raising of a fund for the assistance of the Greeks, in New York, addressed a circular to the venerable ex-President John Adams, to which they received the following reply:—­

“Quincy, Dec. 29, 1823.  “Gentlemen:—­I have received your circular of the 12th inst., and I thank you for the honor you have done me in addressing it to me.  Be assured my heart beats in unison with yours, and with those of your constituents, and I presume with all the really civilized part of mankind, in sympathy with the Greeks, suffering, as they are, in the great cause of liberty and humanity.  The gentlemen of Boston have taken measures to procure a general subscription in their favor, through the State, and I shall contribute my mite with great pleasure.  In the meantime I wish you, and all other gentlemen engaged in the virtuous work, all the success you or they can wish; for I believe no effort in favor of virtue will be ultimately lost.

“I have the honor to be, Gentlemen, your very humble Servant,
          
                                       “John Adams.”

The sympathies of John Quincy Adams were ardently enlisted in behalf of the Greek Revolution.  But with a prudence and wisdom which characterized all his acts, he threw his influence against any direct interference on the part of the Government of the United States.  It would have been a departure from that neutral policy, in regard to European conflicts, on which the country had acted from the commencement of our national existence, alike injurious and dangerous.  He knew if we once entered into these wars, on any pretext whatever, a door would be opened for foreign entanglements and endless conflicts, which would result in standing armies, immense national debts, and the long trail of evils of which they are the prolific source.