ntial, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages of
official life, to view the incumbent at the incoming of a hostile
administration. His position is then one of the most singularly
irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched
mortal can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good, on
either hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event
may very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to a
man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within
the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by
whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather be
injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness
throughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness that is
developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is
himself among its objects! There are few uglier traits of human nature
than this tendency--which I now witnessed in men no worse than their
neighbors--to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of
inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to office-holders,
were a literal fact instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is
my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party were
sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have
thanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to me--who have been a
calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat--that this
fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished
the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The
Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them,
and because the practice of many years has made it the law of
political warfare, which, unless a different system be proclaimed, it
were weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit of
victory has made them generous. They know how to spare, when they see
occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but its
edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their custom
ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off.

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much reason
to congratulate myself that I was on the losing side, rather than the
triumphant one. If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of
partisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be
pretty acutely sensible wi