jeopardy my reputation. Injuries received in his cause, have converted my political into a personal regard. I recognize as of the party to which I belong, every man who is anxious for the glory and happiness of Jackson and the prosperity of his Administration. And my heart tells me, that those who publicly utter dissatisfaction, and think more of their own than of his interest, cannot long maintain their attachment to his service. I know you to be heart and soul a Jacksonian, and while I admire your devotedness to your friends, lament that it may compromise your higher affection.

Yours truly, &c.

I have in my possession copies of a great number of my letters, addressed to others of the Bulletin party, and to influential gentlemen at Washington, breathing the same spirit; and I continued to entertain the same opinions of the "Statesman leaders," until I became a public officer with them at Boston, when I "found them out." I mean to say, that although I never thought them deserving, (when compared to many other members of the Jackson party in Boston and the State,) of the appointments which they obtained, yet, having been appointed, respect for the President required the submission of the party; but I did not know till afterwards, the intolerance, cupidity and arrogance of which they were capable.

One morning in April, 1830, when sitting disconsolate in my editorial chair and gloomily meditating on my scattered hopes, Mr. Charles G. Greene entered, and said that General McNeil the new Surveyor, had arrived in Boston, and desired to see me. I rode to the City with Mr. Greene. Gen. McNeil met me at the Statesman office; a vast gentleman, but of remarkable symmetry of person, nearly seven feet in height, and looking like one of the sons of Anak. I passed before his spacious penumbra, and attracted his approbation. He determined to appoint me his Deputy, for which I thanked him, and I was made a Deputy Surveyor on the spot. I had put myself in such a position that I could refuse nothing, adequate to my maintenance. The General was "a clever fellow," in the New-England sense, and an honorable man, distinguished for better services than those of party. I respected him, therefore, and determined to act as his disinterested counsellor and sincere friend.

Let my youthful reader reflect on the case I have been describing. Here was a young man, engaged in an honorable profession, (which already yielded him a sufficient income, and prom

ised future independence as well as distinction,) led away by that jack-o'lantern, (a baleful meteor,) the desire of office, to the gradual desertion of all his better hopes and prospects; madly plunging into the arena of party with "a zeal without knowledge;" deceived by false expectations, and selling off his library and his business; binding himself hand and foot, and through sheer ne cessity, putting himself at the mercy of any ordinary patron; obtaining an inferior appointment, and subjecting himself to all kinds of extortion, as all public officers inevitably do; sinking under the intolerable fatigue and confinement of labours as severe and as unintellectual as those of a horse in a bark-mill; observing his mind and body gradually decaying; compelled to endure in silence, the "insolence of authority;" receiving his wages of slavery monthly, and feeling that one dollar, fairly won in honorable competition by superior talent and industry, was worth a hundred, dealt out as they deal out, "at feeding time," food to the animals in a menagerie; conscious of the contempt of the free people by whom he was surrounded; and at last losing the only consolation which could have sustained him under such manifold humiliations, in the conviction that he had aided in bringing confusion and misrule on his country!

If there is any situation more completely wretched than this, I am ignorant of it. And yet such is the fate of all the inferior officers of the Customs, if they happen to be deserving of a better. My young reader, be assured, that when you exchange your present occupation for a place under Government, you recklessly fling away your happiness, and voluntarily accept of misery and degradation.

CHAPTER VI.

Reform.

"Jack Cade. Away with him, I say: hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck."- Shakspeare.

HAVING brought down my personal narrative to the period of my appointment as Deputy Surveyor of Boston, (on the 20th April '30,) I must retrace my steps a little, to show what our heroes of the Statesman faction had been doing. Dunlap had been "regularly made" District Attorney; Nathaniel Greene had persuaded Mr. Barry, the new Postmaster General, to give him the Post Office, and Henshaw had obtained the President's nomination to the Senate, as Collector of Boston. Mr. Brodhead's hopes had for a time been " sus. per coll." and he therefore plied with his wonted industry, the characteristic symbols of his trade,-the shears and goose: while Mr. Simpson, in the midst of his feathers, meditated on the lightness and vanity of human pursuits.

Greene glided noiselessly into his new office, and in due time, politely showing the old Postmaster the back door, quietly installed himself as the chief of the Clerks in his Department. Owing however to the newness of the situation, and his being unaccustomed to the duties and routine of the office, some confusion and carelessness were detected by close observers. The Bulletin party complained openly and bitterly, that their letters addressed to distinguished gentlemen at Washington, either did not arrive there at all, or not until after the subject of which they treated, had been settled. Some statements were made in relation to this grievance in the Bulletin, to which Greene published a reply, declaring that previously to assuming the honors of his office, he served some time under the old Postmaster to acquire the requisite information, and that therefore he was not responsible if accidents had occurred. We cannot be too suspicious of charges emanating from the violence of party contention! Greene did not immediately remove any, or but very few of his Clerks.

Not so His Honor the Collector, the admirer of that "child of revolution" the great Napoleon. The sword of authority was no sooner in his hands, (although, as his appointment was not yet confirmed by the Senate, it ought to have been considered a temporary trust,) than he wielded it with a sternness and contempt of official life, worthy of Nadir Shah, or any other sanguinary despot. In a few days, the area of the Custom House was strewed with the heads of decapitated public officers, who had presumed to entertain political opinions different from his own, and his master's at Washington. As the victim was led to execution, he exclaimed "am I not an American citizen,—a republican, a faithful officer ?" The fatal nod was given, and his head rolled upon the pavement. Some of them were less mercifully treated; they were reserved to be tortured on the rack of suspense, and having for months endured its torments, were finally released from their misery by the fatal stroke. Others were insidiously smiled upon, and assured of favor; these becoming infatuated, rushed into the embraces of the party, and felt the concealed dagger piercing their bosoms,The official existence of the petty-officers of the Government was as wantonly sacrificed, as was human life, "in the reign of terror," by the conceited, cowardly and inhuman Robespierre.

The Statesman, and the spaniel presses under its influence, who have been taught to bark at the word of command, say that the Collector is the head man of the party;-they mean, he is the Headsman of the party.

There is a natural propensity to laugh at the unfortunate and applaud the successful. Many, therefore, being at a distance from the scene, considered this general sweep of the old public servants, as capital sport. A nearer view of its consequences would have excited more generous emotions. It is undoubtedly true, that the principle of rotation in office" is engrafted on the system of our Government; that the power which goes out from the people, ought to be frequently recalled, so that none entrusted with authority, may ever forget the source from whence it was derived. And perhaps it would be just and sound policy, to prohibit by law, any of the well paid public officers from holding their offices more than eight years. The public servants, who have fattened on salaries of from 2500 to 6000 dollars per annum, in eight years, ought, by common prudence and economy, to have saved a

comfortable subsistence for the rest of their lives. But to extend this rule to the petty officer, whose monthly pay hardly maintains his family; who has faithfully devoted the better part of his life to his humble duties, without a possibility of accumulating a fund for the support of his old age; to thrust out such a man on the bleak world, while yet fully competent to perform his official services, merely because he dared to exercise his birth-right as an American citizen and vote for the man of his choice, is a most monstrous act of injustice and barbarity. Actually taking off his head and the heads of his wife and children, exterminating his whole family, would be less cruel and inhuman. It would be perfectly right that Mr. Henshaw, with a salary and perquisites amounting to $5000 per annum, should, after receiving in 8 years $40,000 of the people's money, be required by them to surrender his trust;-but that A. B. an Inspector, who had received his 3 dollars a day, or C. D. a Clerk, who had received only 700 dollars a year, and who had performed much more laborious services than Mr. Henshaw, should be sent forth like Hagar, into the wilderness of penury and wretchedness, is a construction of the law of "rotation in office," which the generosity and justice of the people will never sanction. Cut off the heads of the tall poppies, lest they grow too lofty and imperious, but suffer the lowly plants of more real benefit to the gardener, to live and thrive in their humble beds.

But these last were the victims of the new Collector's vindictive temper, and party violence. Jackson cut off all above him, and he cut off all below. It has been asserted in the Statesman, that political opinions were not the cause of this proscription. It is false, as applied to the Custom House at Boston; and I now believe elsewhere. I know, that the election of Jackson having been ascertained, the under officers of the Customs who had embraced his cause, (and they were numerous,) were in the daily habit of threatning their brother officers, of the opposite party, with a "speedy reckoning." The day of reckoning came, in that messenger of wrath, the new Collector, and the predictions of his partizans were verified. And afterwards, when I was a public servant in the Custom House, I heard continual regrets that so many, (some half dozen,) of the Adams-men, were spared. It is indeed true, that when the generous and enlightened body of merchants of the City, witnessing such an indiscriminate and wholesale extirpation of the