empt to
run the government, as has been sometimes said, "on business
principles." The President was to proceed, and did proceed, as if he had
in charge some great estate which he was to manage and direct as a
faithful and exact trustee. This, no one can deny, had the superficial
look of most admirable administration.

But President Adams had left out of account largely what we are
compelled to sedulously consider--public opinion. He had acquired most
of his experience abroad, and his principal service at home, as
Secretary of State, had been in a remarkably quiet time, when party
movements were neither ebbing nor flowing, so that he had forgotten how
strong and vigorous the democratic feeling was amongst the population of
these States. This is a forgetfulness to which all men are liable who
long occupy official position, and who seldom have to submit themselves
to that severe and rude competitive examination which the plan of
popular elections establishes. Unfortunately for him, he was not
responsible to a court of chancery for the management of his trust, but
to a tribunal composed of a multitude of judges. His accounts were to be
passed upon not by one learned and conservative auditor guided by
familiar precedents and rules of law, but a great, tumultuous popular
assembly, which would approve or disapprove by a majority vote. When,
therefore, it appeared to the people that he was forming a body of
permanent office-holders--was recruiting a civil army to occupy in
perpetuity the offices which they, the mass, had created and were taxed
to pay for--the fierce, and in many respects scandalous, partisan
assault which Jackson represented, if he did not direct, gathered
overwhelming force. It seemed to the popular view that a narrow, an
exclusive, an aristocratic system was being formed. The President
appeared to be, while honestly and carefully preserving their trust from
waste or loss, committing it to a control independent of them--an
official body which, having a permanent tenure, would be altogether
indifferent to their varying desires. Such a scheme of government was
therefore no more than an attempt to stand the pyramid on its apex: Mr.
Adams's administration, supported chiefly by those whose aspirations
were for an honest and capable bureaucracy, and who could not or would
not face the rude questionings of democracy, ended with his first four
years, and went out in such a whirlwind of partisan opposition as
brought