John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

5. VII. A succession of visitors occupied the whole day. Mr Forsyth called at my house to enquire of the arrangements to be made for his voyage to Spain— He is to embark in the Hornet at Boston for Cadix and I am to prepare his instructions for him as speedily as possible— Mr Thomas Ludwell Lee Brent, now the Secretary of Legation at Madrid remains there in that capacity; and young Fenwick goes out with Mr Forsyth, as his private Secretary— Mr John Graham was at the Office; also to enquire how and when he is to embark upon his Mission to Rio de Janeiro— The President has determined that he is to go in the Congress Frigate now at Norfolk; and after landing him she is to go and cruize to protect our trade in the Indian Ocean— Mr Hendricks the member of the House of Representatives from Indiana, came with some accounts of Printers— Mr Levett Harris, to take leave, and to say something about the settlement of his own 54accounts— He has been here several weeks, endeavouring again to obtain some declaration or document from the President, acquitting him of the charges of official corruption, while he was Consul at St. Petersburg in the years 1808 and 1809. He has obtained a certificate from Coxe, who was Consul at Tunis, the effect of which is to discredit J. D. Lewis, whom he represents as the source of all the accusations against him; and he has procured declarations from Rodde of Revel and from Küsel of Archangel discrediting their own former testimony against him— They are artfully drawn up, appearing to disavow, but not contradicting any of the facts they had stated. I had most of them from Rodde of Revel himself. (see Vol 4. of this Diary Journal of 13. May 1814. p. 102) and Harris has never dared deny them to me— They make in my opinion a case of corruption in Harris, so gross, that the only scruple I have ever had with regard to my own conduct in relation to it—a doubt, whether I ought not to have reported it to the Government at the time, and broken off all friendly intercourse with him forever— But Rodde’s communication to me was confidential, and under an injunction of secrecy. The part of an informer, always ungracious, is doubly so, when performed by one public Officer against another, with whom he is in relations intimately associated— I was aware that if I made the charge the witnesses being themselves sharers of both the filth and the lucre, might be tampered with and bribed perhaps into a denial of their own statements. The proof was distant and precarious, and I was going for an indefinite time to be far distant both from the proof, and from the place where it was to be produced. There were circumstances which would at that time have given a charge from me against Harris the appearance of being dictated by personal animosity or resentment— He had through an intrigue of Daschkoff’s supplanted W. S. Smith my nephew as Secretary to the mediation Mission, and the world would readily enough have concluded as Bayard did, and told Harris so, that I must be his personal enemy— Lastly, and chiefly, for the considerations hitherto mentioned were only prudential, referring to myself, but this touches the public concern in the case, Harris was no longer in the situation to sell or betray the interest of his country by his venality. The occasion had gone by. He might be left in the place then assigned to him, without jeopardizing any important public interest. I was therefore silent and have never taken any part concerning the charges against him, other than was indispensable— His attempt, without giving any notice to me, to saddle the public with the expence of a Messenger for his nephew John, because he brought one copy of my despatches, at the proposal of the mediation, is an instance of unprincipled rapacity, at which I have found it difficult to keep my temper. He has pushed for it to the last moment, and affected this day, to say, that he thought, upon the explanations he had given me, that I had waved my objection to the charge. He asked also now for an outfit as charge d’Affaires at St. Petersburg; a charge which he had not made, but which he said he understood had been allowed to others— But he had charged more than the amount of an outfit for expences of his journey from St. Petersburg to London, in pursuit of Messrs. Bayard and Gallatin, and back to St. Petersburg. I told him I had objected to that charge; but the President had directed it to be allowed in lieu of an outfit— As no credit was given him to draw for his Salary, when he was sent to St. Petersburg as Charge d’Affaires, and he was obliged to live upon his own means, I advised and the President directed, that he should be allowed interest upon his Salary as it became quarterly due until he was paid— Even this allowance of interest is contrary to the rules of the Treasury, and as they have ways of masking every thing there, Pleasonton objected to it as interest, and wanted to allow it under the name of loss of exchange— I refused this; for in public affairs one of the strongest safe guards of integrity is to call things by their true names; and speak of them as they are— Mr Artiguenave, sent in to my Office a note requesting to see me only for a minute—tres pressé— It was to tell me that Mr de Neuville had sent for him this morning, in great agitation, and begged, intreated, implored him not to recite this Evening the Abbe Raynal’s declamation upon American Independence— It was très beau— He, de Neuville admired it was much as any man; but he conjured him not to repeat it— If he did, not one person of any of the foreign Legations would attend— No! let him take a Scene or two from Shakespear Amoureux; a most excellent (senseless) piece; and so said Artiguenave, what am I to do?— I told him by all means to gratify Mr De Neuville, and turn Shakespear— I attended his Séance in the Evening, and Shakespear it was, a French Shakespear. He also repeated an Ode of Le Brun, who he said had been called Le Pindare Français— The Ode is called Le Vaisseau, and is a loose and dilated paraphrase in eight or ten stanzas, of a smaller number of lines in Gray’s Bard. He also gave us Oreste in the last Scene of Racine’s Andromaque. There were fifty or sixty person composing the auditory.