accomplished, open
wide all the floodgates of corruption. Will a change produce a reform?
Pause and ponder! Slavery, the Indians, the public lands, the collection
and disbursement of public moneys, the tariff, and foreign affairs--what
is to become of them?"

In September, 1840, Mr. Adams remarked, on the electioneering addresses
then made, preparatory to the next election of President: "This practice
of itinerant speech-making has suddenly broken out in this country to a
fearful extent. Electioneering for the Presidency has spread its
contagion to the President himself, to his now only competitor, to his
immediate predecessor, to the candidates Henry Clay and Daniel Webster,
and to many distinguished members of both branches of Congress. The
tendency of all this is to the corruption of popular elections both by
violence and fraud."

Again, in October ensuing: "One of the peculiarities of the present time
is that the principal leaders of the political parties are travelling
about the country from state to state, and holding forth, like Methodist
preachers, to assembled multitudes, under the broad canopy of heaven.
Webster, Clay, W. C. Rives, Silas Wright, and James Buchanan, are among
the first and foremost in this canvassing oratory; while Andrew Jackson,
and Martin Van Buren, with his heads of departments, are harping on
another string of the political accordion, by writing controversial
electioneering letters. Besides the principal leaders of the parties,
numerous subaltern officers of the administration are summoned to the
same service, and, instead of attending to the duties of their offices,
roam, recite, and madden, round the land."

In a speech made on the 28th of December, 1840, Mr. Adams severely
denounced the policy pursued by the government in respect of the navy
pension fund; stating that it amounted to one million two hundred
thousand dollars; that, without any authority, it had been loaned to
different states, and vested in their stocks, which, for the most part,
were either depreciated in value, wholly lost, or unsalable. That fund,
he maintained, was a sacred trust, and proceeded to state fully and at
large the manner in which it had been violated without authority.

Mr. Adams then went on to state the proceedings of the Executive
relative to the Smithsonian fund. He said that about the 1st of
September, 1838, the sum of five hundred and nine thousand dollars had
been deposited in the Mint of Philad