eakness, since it was felt that the North was fairly entitled to
present the next candidate. The others, who at one time and another
had aspirations, like De Witt Clinton and Tompkins, were never really
formidable, and may be disregarded as insignificant threads in the
complex political snarl which must be unravelled.

[Illustration: Stratford Canning]

As a study of the dark side of political society during this (p. 150)
period Mr. Adams's Diary is profoundly interesting. He writes with a
charming absence of reserve. If he thinks there is rascality at work,
he sets down the names of the knaves and expounds their various
villainies of act and motive with delightfully outspoken frankness.
All his life he was somewhat prone, it must be confessed, to
depreciate the moral characters of others, and to suspect unworthy
designs in the methods or ends of those who crossed his path. It was
the not unnatural result of his own rigid resolve to be honest.
Refraining with the stern conscientiousness, which was in the
composition of his Puritan blood, from every act, whether in public or
in private life, which seemed to him in the least degree tinged with
immorality, he found a sort of compensation for the restraints and
discomforts of his own austerity in judging severely the less
punctilious world around him. Whatever other faults he had, it is
unquestionable that his uprightness was as consistent and unvarying as
can be reached by human nature. Yet his temptations were made the
greater and the more cruel by the beliefs constantly borne in upon him
that his rivals did not accept for their own governance in the contest
the same rules by which he was pledged to himself to abide. Jealousy
enhanced suspicion, and suspicion in turn pricked jealousy. It is (p. 151)
necessary, therefore, to be somewhat upon our guard in accepting
his estimates of men and acts at this period; though the broad general
impression to be gathered from his treatment of his rivals, even in
these confidential pages, is favorable at least to his justice of
disposition and honesty of intention.

At the outset Mr. Clay excited Mr. Adams's most lively resentment. The
policy which seemed most promising to that gentleman lay in antagonism
to the Administration, whereas, in the absence of substantial party
issues, there seemed, at least to members of that Administration, to
be no proper grounds for such antagonism. When, therefore, Mr. Clay
found or devised su