arked: "Whether
it is for my own good is known only to God. As yet I have far more
reason to lament than rejoice at the event; yet I feel not less my
obligation to Mr. Monroe for his confidence in me, and the duty of
personal devotion to the success of his administration which it
imposes." Before the lapse of a year that administration was assailed
in Congress and in the newspapers, and the attacks were concentrated
on Mr. Adams. The calumnies by which his father's administration had
been prostrated five-and-twenty years before were revived, and poured
out with renewed malignity. Duane, in his _Aurora_, published in
Philadelphia, and his coaedjutors in other parts of the Union,
represented him as "a royalist," "an enemy to the rights of man;" as
a "friend of oligarchy;" as a "misanthrope, educated in contempt of
his fellow-men;" as "unfit to be the minister of a free and virtuous
people." Privately, and through the press, Mr. Monroe was warned that
he "was full of duplicity;" "an incubus on his prospects for the next
presidency, and on his popularity." When these calumnies were uttered,
as some of them were, in the House of Representatives, they naturally
excited the indignation of Mr. Adams, and the anxiety of his friends.
Being asked by one of them whether it would not be advisable to expose
the conduct and motives of rival statesmen, in the newspapers, he
answered explicitly in the negative, saying: "The execution of my
duties is the only answer I can give to censure. I will do absolutely
nothing to promote any pretensions my friends may think I have to the
presidency." On being told that his rivals would not be so scrupulous,
and that he would not stand on an equal footing with them, he replied:
"That is not my fault. My business is to serve the public to the best
of my abilities in the station assigned to me, and not to intrigue for
my own advancement. I never, by the most distant hint to any one,
expressed a wish for any public office, and I shall not now begin to
ask for that which, of all others, ought to be most freely and
spontaneously bestowed."

Among the difficulties incident to the office of Secretary of State,
that of making appointments was the most annoying and thankless. They
were sought with a bold and rabid pertinacity. Success was attributed to
the favor of the President; ill success, to the influence of the
Secretary. When the applicant was a relative his patronage was naturally
expected; but, wit