John Quincy Adams was the first President, after the civil revolution of 1800, who entered upon the duties of his office with views of the Constitution as latitudinarian as were those of Hamilton, and the only one of that stamp who possessed sufficient force of character to make his will the rule of action for his cabinet, and who lived long enough to make it to some extent effectual. Although elected as a convert to the principles of the then Republican party, he was no sooner seated in the Presidential chair than he disavowed those principles in their most important features--those of Constitutional construction--and marked out a course in that regard which he intended to pursue. He thereby united that party against his reëlection to an extent sufficient to defeat it by an overwhelming majority. Of the party which thus a second time vindicated the Constitution, by far the most effective ingredient was the landed interest. But though the most powerful, it was yet far from being its only valuable element, for, to use Mr. Jefferson's words on the former occasion, there was besides "a great mass of talent on the Republican side." If there be any whom experience has not yet satisfied of the power of the landed interest, and of its capacity to cope successfully with the money power of the country, enormous as has been the growth of the latter, let them consider the facts disclosed by the census. By that of 1850, our population, as affecting the point under consideration, is shown to have consisted at that time of _farmers_, two millions three hundred and sixty thousand; of planters, twenty-seven thousand; of laborers engaged in agriculture, thirty-seven thousand; of persons engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and mining, one million six hundred thousand; in law, medicine, and divinity, ninety-four thousand. Let them compare these with previous enumerations, and they will see how invariable and large is the disproportion in numbers between the agricultural and other classes. That disproportion must of course have been greater during our colonial existence and at the Revolutionary period, when our commerce was trifling, and we were almost if not entirely destitute of manufactures. We are hence able to form an idea of the extent to which the defense of the principles which the colonists cherished, and for the maintenance of which the Revolution was made, rested on the broad shoulders of the landed interest from the beginning to the end of that great contest.