cation in his "Life of Cæsar": "It was the only extraordinary act, that remained for him to accomplish." Adams's end was also extraordinary; but it was not an abdication, and certainly not one coupled with unabated popular good-will. It was no more, no less, than the continuance of an equivocal attitude to the end. Who, that denies that, can tell us, for what definite public purpose he remained in political life after 1828? Was it to vindicate Hamilton's or his father's federalism? Or was it, to convince the world, that he was sincere in associating with the republicans who defeated his father? Or was it to show, that both were wrong, and that there was a truer way than either had, and that he was its embodiment? Flatterers called him the Nestor of the house. But where was his wisdom?

His re-entry was, we admit, a weak protest against a wrong rule; the one that excludes men, that once have been President, from other public positions; but was it dignified in him to do it by running for Congress in his native district? And if that is overlooked: Was it compatible with his national career to use his position for warring on the domestic institutions of the states, whose votes had hurled him from a chief magistracy, which he should never have gained by equivocal ways?

Adams knew, that the country was full of arbitrary politics; and that they prevented it from having the full use of its men of genius, talent, education, and discipline. He was himself the victim of a waste of acumen on the several foolish public questions of his time, to wit: how short the presidential term should be? whether there should be any or only a second re-election? and whether persons holding certain positions should not be held excluded from all candidacy? Perhaps the full perception of this mischievous public temper had not come to him before his own election by the House; but it must have come to him afterwards; for he must have seen, that every act of a chief executive needs time for proper fruition, and that short terms, with no understandings for some sort of continuity in a nation's policy, were depriving America of all executive as well as administrative efficiency.

There was the field of his greatness. Why did he not enter it? He had been in republican Cabinets, why could he not have been the President of such a one unequivocally? Why confine his movements in this direction to Clay? He-specially -was aware, that the country was sick, because there were not Presidencies enough for all its ambitious men; Jackson, Calhoun, Benton, needed some one, who could bring them and others into suitable public positions. If he could not be their common friend, it was madness in him to become their common

enemy. That he did, when he accepted the Presidency, by questionable ways; retained it on the same terms, and after he was ousted, came back to public life without having taken counsel with his better nature.

His father had just lived out a quarter of a century of forced retiracy, when he, the sou, stepped into the Presidency. Why must he play the counterpart of his father by a forced public life? In it he did no good, perhaps he could do none. He was to the newer states, with all his antecedents, an unwelcome stranger; and he must have felt this, when he came to Cincinnati as the man of science, to inaugurate by a grand speech the new astronomical observatory. When soon afterwards he died, his last words were: "Is this all of life?" All? What all? Was it a long memory of an overlong public life rushing in upon his mind at the moment of death? Did he realize that he never did get into the right position? He would not be the leader of the federalists, and he could not be that of the republicans or democrats; and yet he was a leader! But for what object? Most likely his convictions forbid the first; his name certainly prevented the other. He would have to have been much greater and wiser than his father to have a successful career amidst the many difficulties, that beset his path. We joined afterwards in a movement to make his son-Charles Francis— President, but found that the old trouble still existed. It was the family, that would arise in men's minds with memories, that forbid a cordial popular support. It was thus easy for small demagogues to uptrip arrangements that were unusually perfect. The fate of the Stuarts and the Bourbons was then repeated in America, minus the more tragic details; and once more it has proved true, that descendants of unpopular ancestors must do some very signal act to regain public favor. But when regained, they can keep it only by showing traits of character, which obliterate the family traits, that first offended public judgment. John Q. Adams's conduct, like that of the English and French families named, was the opposite; it kept alive and confirmed previous impressions. And this is the reason why, instead of curing diseases, he transmitted to the new generation nought but germs of mischief.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE SPOILERS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.

"The greatest power is lost by bad administration.”—Publius Syrus.

THE designation "spoiler" may seem severe, as a cognomen of the public men, that occupied the front seats in the politics of the United States, between 1848 and 1861, but we believe, that we could justify even a harsher name.

We must except therefrom Zacharias Taylor; his civic administration was too brief to decide upon its character. We believe him to have been a well-intentioned, good man, but as he died four months after his inauguration in 1849, it remains surmise, whether his plain soldierly sense would have saved the country from the folly of trying to settle the difficulties of the period by compromises? His successor took that direction, and to him we must devote a brief notice.

MILLARD FILLMORE

was one of the worst of the many political squashes of that time. He took the helm, after Taylor's death, as his constitutional successor; and he, with other soft-heads, went to work to patch-up laws, called compromises, which needed a full constitutional correction based on a true understanding of the principles involved. He and his Cabinet lost the country four precious years that should have been devoted to a better foreign policy as to Mexico, the West India Islands, a canal or railroad over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico; and for gaining the right position on the Pacific through the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty, the impotent measures as to a reform in public administration and the public service, were nought but intensifications of defects. that had grown up under previous administrations. The country now got on the inclined plane towards all kinds of

mischief, such as ended in Knownothingism, Abolitionism, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which may all be summed up in calling them: "Democratic frailties."

FRANKLIN PIERCE

was a vain, untrue man, and he never comprehended, indeed he never wanted to know, the actual situation. He meant to clinch the unclinchable compromises of 1850; but in December following, and in the spring of 1854, it was evident that they were as fragile as Pierce's word. Douglas, seduced by Atchison, had introduced into his Nebraska bill a clause repealing the Missouri Compromise; and the mythological fable of "Pandora” and her box received a new illustration. America then " all endowed," like her prototype, had in Douglas a new Epimetheus, who could not let well enough alone, and who would open the lid and give vent to all the furies that had been bred by the partisan contests of the preceding quarter of a century. The compromises, in which it was supposed they were locked up, proved of no avail, and Pierce succumbed the first of all!

American society now perceived, to its amazement, that both its great parties were in charge of engineers, who would obey no signals, but were determined on driving the trains, to their places of destination (the next election), ahead of the others, even at the risk of a smash-up. The old leaders of the democratic party, Van Buren and Benton, had lost all power over it, and in a similar way had the Whig party lost the guidance of Clay and Webster. Second-rate personages had assumed control in both parties, and they took possession of the locomotives, fired up the engines, and "drove the country," as a wary old statesman said, "to a place not to be mentioned to ears polite." Had this exciting race taken place between the two old parties, when under great leaders, and there would have been an acquiescence in the result of the election even in 1860; but the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the organization of the "Knownothing party," had completely unsettled party lines as well as principles and practices, so that there was a perfect hotch-potch of men and ideas in each party. There were now, beside the political differences, social issues on the subject of religion and the rights of property. The Catholic Church and slavery were made the defendants in the high court of clerical politics, and there were actually large numbers of the people, who believed, that these two, so-called, institutions had plotted

the overthrow of American freedom and corrupted the government.

The sober truth, as to both, was, that the people, connected with them, were earnestly defending themselves against attempts to drag them into the political arena. They certainly did not want to be the hobby-horses on which partisans would ride into office. The Protestant clergy was the one that had been long itching to play a political part; they saw their opportunity in the then imbroglio, and used a bewildered people for their designs. They seized the reins, but as they had to drive with politicians on the seats with them, and as these would often take one or both reins from them, there was much misguiding, which caused many mishaps. Which of the two had the worst effect on the other, is hard to tell, but one thing is certain, neither improved the other. The clergymen were bad politicians, the politicians bad churchmen. Confusion prevailed all over the Republic, and men and things were everywhere out of place. In both parties Freethinkers mingled with Catholics, anti-slavery men with pro-slavery, freetraders with protectionists, hard money-men with advocates of paper money, radical reformers with old foggy conservatives, liberals with persecutors, socialists with communists, nearly all having but one real object, political power. All the while they were professing religious freedom, the purification of government, and the moralization of society. The sincere men had no place in this melée; it was a field-day for the insolent, the hypocrites, and the incompetents. The seed sown by the "Equivocal Period" between 1824 and 1848 had thus produced a very different crop, from what had been expected, and the harvesting fell to other than the designed hands!

Many, very many, tendered their services as leaders, but how were the people to choose? The old machinery was out of order, and as to the new, warning upon warning arose against each plan. Each faction predicted of the other the dire calamities, that did happen after 1860.

We beg the reader to mark this fact; for it shows, that all had an instinctive presentiment of the bloody end, that did come in 1861; only each thought the other to be the guilty cause, and spent themselves in blaming others instead of correcting themselves. And what they accused each other of, was true of them all! Each was without the true public spirit. Prophet Isaiah, whose description of the condition of Hebrew society in his time applies very closely to that then prevailing in America, says, chap. iii. ver. 12: "O my people, they which lead thee, cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Who does not see, that these words applied with great force to what we call the Spoilers of American Government, who remained by 1857 and