Immediately on his arrival home, Mr. Adams was reappointed a delegate from Massachusetts to the continental congress; but he never resumed his seat in that body, which was now just about to expire. - When the new government came to be organized under the newly adopted federal constitution, as all were agreed to make Washington president, attention was turned to New England for a vice president. This office was then regarded as of much higher consequence than now. In fact, as the constitution originally stood, the candidates for the presidency and vice presidency were voted for without any distinct specification, the second office falling to the person who had the second highest vote. Out of 69 electors, John. Adams had the votes of 34; and this being the second highest number, he was declared vice president. The other 35 votes were scattered upon no less than 10 candidates. By virtue of his new office he became president of the senate, a position not very agreeable to his active and leading temperament, better fitted for debate, but one in which the close division in the senate, resulting often in a tie between the supporters and the opponents of the new system, gave him many times a controlling voice.

In the first congress he gave no fewer than 20 casting votes, always upon important organic laws, and always in support of Washington's policy. - Down to this period Adams had sympathized in political feeling and sentiment with Jefferson, with whom he had served both in the continental congress and abroad. On the question of the French revolution, which now burst upon the world, a difference of opinion arose between them. From the very beginning Adams, then almost alone, had augured no good from that movement. As the revolution went on and began to break out in excesses, others began to be of this opinion. Adams then gave public expression to some of his ideas on that subject in a series of "Discourses on Davila," furnished to a Philadelphia newspaper and afterward collected into a volume. Taking the history of nations, particularly Davila's account of the French civil wars, and the general aspects of human society as his text, Adams pointed out as the great springs of human activity, at least in all that related to politics, the love of superiority, the desire of distinction, admiration, and applause; nor in his opinion could any government be permanent or secure which did not provide as well for the reasonable gratification as for the due restraint of this powerful passion.

Repudiating that democracy pure and simple then coming into vogue, and of which Jefferson was the advocate, he insisted that a certain mixture of aristocracy and monarchy was necessary to that balance of interests and sentiments without which, as he maintained, free governments could not exist. This work, which reproduced more at length and in a more obnoxious form the fundamental ideas of his " Defence of the American Constitutions," made Adams a great bugbear to the ultra-democratic supporters of the principles and policy of the French revolutionists; and at the second presidential election in 1792, they set up as a candidate against him George Clinton of New York. But Mr. Adams was reelected by a decided vote. The wise policy of neutrality adopted by Washington received the hearty concurrence of Adams. While Jefferson left the cabinet to become in nominal retirement the leader of the opposition, Adams continued as vice president to give Washington's administration the benefit of his casting vote.

It was only by this means that a neutrality act was carried through the senate, and that the progress was stopped of certain resolutions which had previously passed in the house of representatives, embodying restrictive measures against Great Britain, intended or at least calculated to counterwork the mission to England on which Mr. Jay had already been sent. - Washington being firmly resolved to retire at the close of his second presidential term, the question of the successorship now presented itself. Jefferson was the leader of the opposition, who called themselves republicans, the name democrat being yet in bad odor, and, though often imposed as a term of reproach, not yet voluntarily assumed except by a few more ultra partisans. Hamilton was the leader of the federal party, as the supporters of Washington's administration had christened themselves. But though Hamilton's zeal and energy had made him, even while like Jefferson in nominal retirement, the leader of the federalists, he could hardly be said to hold the same place with them that Jefferson did with the republicans, whose presidential candidate he was, a position among the federalists which belonged less to Hamilton than to Adams or Jay, whose greater age and longer public service placed them more conspicuously in the public eye.

Hamilton, though he had always spoken of Adams as a man of unconquerable intrepidity and incorruptible integrity, and as such had already twice supported him for vice president, would yet have much preferred Jay. The position of Adams was, however, such as to render his election more probable than that of Jay, and to determine his selection as the candidate of the federalists. Jay, by his negotiation of the famous treaty which bore his name, had for the moment drawn down upon himself a strong feeling of hostility on the part of its numerous and bitter opponents. Adams stood, moreover, as vice president in the line of promotion, and was more sure of the New England vote, which was absolutely indispensable to the success of either. One of the candidates being taken from the North, it seemed politic to select the other from the South, and the federalist leaders pitched for that purpose upon Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina. Indeed, there were some, and Hamilton was among the number, who secretly wished that Pinckney might receive the larger vote, and so be chosen president over Adams's head - a result, from the likelihood of Pinckney's obtaining more votes than Adams at the South (as he really did), almost sure to happen could the northern federal electors be persuaded to vote equally for Adams and for Pinckney, which Hamilton la-bored to effect.