r the Doctor's talent, which does not consist in preaching. The House of Representatives for several years past have annually chosen him their chaplain, rather as a sort

of pension for having been chaplain in the army during our Revolutionary War, than for any shining spiritual gifts now in his possession. But he is said to have great skill and ingenuity in mechanics, and is a candidate for the Superintendency of the Patent Office if Dr. Thornton should be appointed Agent to South America; and both he and the Doctor reminded me, when they were applying for these places, that he was Vice- President of the General Association of Baptist Ministers throughout the United States, and in that capacity had great political influence over the wrhole body of Christians of that denomination, amounting, as Thornton said, to more than two millions of people. The Doctor is, therefore, a better patentee for this world than for the next.

1 3th. Mr.1 was here this morning, the person some

weeks since introduced to me by Judge Story, and one of the claimants upon the Government of Spain. He told me that the principal, if not the sole, reliance of those claimants for obtain ing eventual indemnity for any part of their losses was upon me ; that the Committee of Foreign Relations had reported a bill for taking possession of Florida without providing at all for the claims, and that many of the Northern members were very un willing to vote for it in that shape. But the Northern members will not vote for taking possession of Florida at all. The Mis souri question has sickened them of slave States, and, although at the commencement of the session they were ready to vote for the measures recommended by the President, they would now scarcely accept Florida as a gift.

At one o'clock I attended the Cabinet meeting at the Presi dent's. The first subject considered was the case of a number of pirates now under sentence of death at Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans — all cases of privateers under the South American colors. The whole number is fortyfive. The opinion was unanimous that some of them must be executed, but that a large proportion of them should be re prieved. The papers relating to them were read, with a view to ascertain the individuals who, by any extenuating circum stances, might have any claim to be considered fit subjects for

mercy. A letter from Judge Johnson, who presided at the trials in Charleston and Savannah, sufficiently marked the discrimi nation to be made in those cases. There was a record of part of the evidence in the cases at New Orleans, from which one case of peculiar atrocity and one of strong mitigation were selected. There was an earnest petition in behalf of one of the men convicted at Richmond, and a recommendation in his favor by the District Attorney at Richmond. But the petition was from a brother of the culprit, living at Portland, Maine, and Crawford maintained there was nothing that recommended that case to favor more than any other. Stanard, the District Attorney, said in his letter that he had considered this man's case so much more favorably than the rest, that if the evi dence had been otherwise deficient he should have discharged

him and used him as a witness against the others. The most obvious feature in Crawford's character is decision, but, with strong sense, his opinions are sometimes so unaccountable that they surprise by their absurdity. He does not appear to be himself aware of the feelings which inspire them. He occa sionally throws out opinions for the sake of making an argu ment ; but in such cases I usually avoid taking it up. It was agreed that Mr. Wirt, the Attorney-General, should see Chief- Justice Marshall and enquire of him where the severity of the law and where the beneficence of humanity may best be dis pensed. There was a petition from Baltimore, signed by the District Judge, Bland, and several others, praying for a pardon for all the seven convicted there ; but there were no solid rea sons assigned for the prayer, and the opinion in the Cabinet was unanimous that Baltimore was, of all others, the place where the necessity of making an example was the most urgent. Bland was not upon the bench when these men were tried, but he passed sentence of death upon them, and I know not how he looked in pronouncing it. In Dr. Franklin's fable of Polly Taylor,1 the Judge on the bench, who convicts her of having had a bastard child, is the man by whom she was first seduced. If the pirates at Baltimore on receiving their sentence could have addressed the Court and told the whole truth, they could have

disclosed a scene of darker shades than the story of Polly Tay lor. There were two petitions from these men sentenced at Baltimore, evidently written by one of their lawyers, and in a very disgusting style of levity and insolence. It was con cluded that the public justice and example required the execu tion of two at each place, and that the rest might be reprieved and ultimately pardoned. Some question was made by Mr. Crawford whether the power of the President extended to a commutation of punishment; but it was not determined, and should, I think, be taken up and deliberately decided hereafter. Wirt said the power of the King to commute punishment was exercised only by special statutes.

The second subject discussed was the application from the Governor of Georgia for treaties to be held with the Creek and Cherokee Indians. Calhoun had expressed himself to me very much averse to the measure ; he said, and now repeated, that those nations had lately made very extensive cessions, and with great reluctance; that the attempt now to obtain further ces sions would certainly not succeed, unless we should bully them, and at a great expense. A treaty would cost fifty thousand dollars, and we should be obliged to pay very nearly the full value for the lands if we obtained them. To all this Crawford assented, but said there would be great dissatisfaction in the State if the application should be rejected. There was an ex pedient proposed of holding one of the treaties with the Creeks, the Cherokees being still more reluctant at making any further cession.

The President finally asked me what was my opinion. I said the United States were bound by compact with the State of Georgia to obtain the cessions as soon as possible, and my opinion was that we ought to do precisely what the State of Georgia asked us to do. It was accordingly so determined, and that a message should immediately be sent to Congress recommending that provision be made by law for holding the treaty.

There is in this affair, among other things, much of Georgia party politics. Clark, the present Governor, is an inveterate enemy of Crawford, and was chosen in opposition to Troup,

who was Crawford's friend, and the candidate of his partisans. Clark now urges the holding of these treaties, and, in his letter to me, recommends, if the President should think that the citizens of Georgia are so much interested in the event, that

persons from other States should be selected as Commissioners; that General Jackson should be one of them — adding that twothirds of the people of Georgia would have more confidence in him than in any other man. This is a home-thrust at Crawford, whose deadly enmity with Jackson is now perfectly notorious, and to whom is attributed the whole persecution of Jackson on account of the Seminole War. Crawford would take no satisfaction in the success of Clark, or of Jackson, in rendering important and acceptable service to the people of Georgia. This disposition to thwart a personal enemy or rival, even at the sacrifice of the public interest, is a vice so deeply rooted in human nature that it shows itself in every form of Government, and in none more than in ours. It is, I firmly believe, the greatest obstacle to the performance of useful ser vice. The meeting broke up about four o'clock.

This and to-morrow evening were assigned for receiving the visits of congratulation at the President's on the marriage of his daughter. Lieutenant Monroe called at my house, to say, as from the President, that he wished me 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 re turned ; but that it must stop there. I was not at home ; but it seems that Lieutenant Monroe had mistaken his message. I went with Mrs. Adams this evening to the wedding-party. The message was from the ladies, and to Mrs. Adams. But as she, in consequence of the conversation with Mrs. Hay last week, had already given notice to the Diplomatic Corps that they were not to know the President had a daughter married, it was finally concluded by Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Hay to leave things as they are.

1 4th. An account, preceding the mail from New York, an nounced the arrival there of a vessel from Liverpool bringing the intelligence of the death of the British King, George the Third, and of the Duke of Kent. It had first been known

here yesterday. The papers this day received confirmed it. The Duke of Kent died on the 24th of January, and the King the 2Qth of the same month. George the Third had reigned sixteen years the sovereign of this country. I suppose there are about half a million of souls in this Union who were once his subjects ; four-fifths of that number born his subjects — of whom I was one. The forty-fourth year is revolving since the people of North America cast off their allegiance to him and declared their independence. Of the fifty-six signers of that instrument, only four are at this day numbered among the living — John Adams, of Massachusetts, my father, Thomas Jef ferson, of Virginia, William Floyd, of New York, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland. The last ten years of the life of George the Third he has been kept in confinement at Windsor, in a state of mental alienation, blind, and perhaps deaf. Imagination can scarcely conceive a state of existence more calamitous, or a contrast more awful of the extremes of human grandeur and debasement in one person. George the Third was a man of good but ordinary capacity, possessed of many private virtues, and no vices but those incidental to a royal education. His reign has been a most tempestuous period in the history of the civilized world. His influence over it has been negative and inauspicious. As the great head and champion of the cause of existing institutions against all innovation, he has contributed to perpetuate abuses of the most pernicious character, to re-cement with human blood the ruinous and perishing edifice of feudality, and to prolong the deadly struggle between the absurd and artificial distinctions of hereditary rank and the tendencies of the age to the common level of democracy. The papers this day received give ac counts also of a mutiny of troops in Spain which were des tined to South America, and the consequences of which must be momentous.

1 8th. G. A. Otis was at the office. He is proceeding with his translation of Botta's History of the American Revolution, and borrows my French translation of it to take with him to Philadelphia. But his main object was to renew and urge his solicitation for a Consular appointment abroad, and particularly

for that of Liverpool, from which he wished that Mr. Maury should be removed ; not that he (Otis) would wish to supplant any man, but because Maury is an old man, and that the busi ness of his office is, and for some time has been, transacted by his clerk, who is an Englishman.