Herald of the times. [volume] (Newport, R.I.) 1830-1846, 1830-05-26

public walks and your retired moments,
from the very dawn of your administra-
ton, and whose avidity for office and
power made them utterly reckless Of the
honorable feeling and just rights of 9TH
ers, cried aloud for rotation in office. Is
that magical phrase, so familiar to the
demagogues of all nations, and Of times,
your great and much vaunted principle
of reform? If it be, by what kind of rota-
ry motion is it, that men who have been
but few years, or u few months in Of
fee, are swept from the boards, while
others (your friends) remain, who date
their official calends, perhaps, from the
time of Washington! What sort ofadap-
tation of skill to machinery is that which
brushes away those only who were op-
posed to your election; and leaves your
friends in full possession?
Your Official Organ would impose upon
the public the belief, that you had adop-
ted the Jeffersonian rule of honesty and
capacity, and that incumbents, as well as
applicants, were tested by that infallible
touchstone. The alleged delinquencies
of one or two public officers have for this
been made color, and the dye of their
avowed iniquity has been spread with in
dustrious cunning over the skirts Of every
innocent victim. Even of those few who
have been thus charged, their miscon-
duct (reported) was unsuspected, until
the prying eyes of their SUCCESSORS
came to inspect the official records of
their proceedings, when their delegated
ingenuity, as in duty bound, could do no
less than find them guilty, and therefore
could not have been the cause of their
dismissal. Yours, therefore, is not the
Jefersonian Rule. You ask, respecting
incumbents and applicants, other ques-
tions than, els he honest, is he capable :"
and the answer to your questions decides
the applicability of your rule. BY thus
ascertaining what your secret rule is not
we may easily come to the discovery of
what it is. Suppose you are serious
when you say you are controlled by a
rule, and that you do not move blindly
like other storms, but that you have eyes
which see, and ears which hear, and
hence that l have not yet described
your rule; there remains, however, but
one motive which could possibly have
governed you-"punishment of your po-
litical opponents, and rewards for your
friends" This is your rule, and how
ever you may wish to disguise it or to de-
ceive the world into the belief that your
secret principle is something of nobler
sort, the true one is visible to every eye
and, like a red meteor beams through
your midnight administration, portending
and working mischief and ruin. 1t was
prescribed to you before you had the
power to pursue it, by one to whom you
are allied by happy congeniality !;
whom you have neither the ability nor
the wish to disobey, before whose ON
nipotent breath yourPresidential strength
lies nevertheless as infancy: who, while
he suffers your heart to pursue its won't
ed palpltatiOns, seems to have locked up
the closet which confines your intellect.
In this imprisonment of your mental
powers, you see with his eyes, and hear
with his ears. 1t is a misfortune for this
great nation that you were born for him,
and he for yOu.-At one and the same
time he is your minion & your monarch,
your priest and your demon, your public
counsellor and your bosom friend. l
blush for my country when l see such
unnatural formations, such cancerOus
excresence fastened upon the body polite,
and the footstool of the President con-
verted into throne for slave.
The injustice of your new principle of
"Reform" would have been too glaring,
had it been at once boldly unfolded and
hence it is that it was brought out by de-
grees. AT first it was pretended that those
only who had made use of Office for elec-
tioneering purposes were to be "reform-
ed away" But when it was discovered
that there were in place many of your
own friends who had been guilty of this
unconstitutional improperly, as you have
been pleased to call it, who contrary to
any feeling of gratitude or sense of duty,
had stung the bosom which warmed, and
the hand which fed them, making use of
their office in the gift of Mr.. Adams as
the means of furthering your design upon
the Presidency to his exclusion, and that
your rule was a "two- edged sword"
which, if honestly borne, would "cut on
both Sides" it was soon carefully with
held, and finally gave way to much
more comprehensive scheme of reform.
1t was next declared that those in of.
hce who, in violence of opposition had
offended you in one particular, | need
not name it,) should meet with condign
punishment. Indeed you intimated in
your private conversation with my hus-
band that those who had passed that Ru-
bicon had sealed their destruction. But
the misfortune attending this rule was,