again. I
answered the resolution of the Senate by a message stating that all the
communications I had made on this subject had been confidential; and
that, believing it important to the public interest that the confidence
between the Executive and the Senate should continue unimpaired, I
should leave to themselves the determination of a question, upon the
motives of which, not being informed, I was not competent to decide."

When the intrigues which embarrassed and disturbed the Presidency of Mr.
Adams were in full vigor, his spirit and strength of character were
conspicuously manifested. In April, 1827, whilst the state elections
were pending, letters were shown to him complaining that the
administration did not support its friends, and intimating that time and
money must be sacrificed to his success. Mr. Adams remarked: "I have
observed the tendency of our elections to venality, and shall not
encourage it. There is much money expended by the adversaries of the
administration, and it runs chiefly in the channels of the press. They
work by slander to vitiate the public spirit, and pay for defamation, to
receive their reward in votes."

At the beginning of the third year of his term of office the currents of
party began to run strongly towards the approaching struggle for the
Presidency. Mr. Adams, writing concerning the aspects of the time,
remarked. "General politics and electioneering topics appear to be the
only material of interest and of discourse to men in the public service.
There are in several states, at this time, and Maryland is one of them,
meetings and counter meetings, committees of correspondence, delegations,
and addresses, for and against the administration; and thousands of
persons are occupied with little else than to work up the passions of
the people preparatory to the presidential election, still more than
eighteen months distant."

Complaints were constantly made that the administration neglected its
friends, and gave offices to its enemies. Applications for appointments,
especially for clerkships, in the departments, were continual, and were
often made to Mr. Adams himself. He always refused to interfere
directly, or by influence, unless his opinion was sought by the heads
of the departments themselves, saying that to them the selection and
responsibility properly belonged. "One of the heaviest burdens of my
station," he observed, "is to hear applications for office, often urged,
accompanied