"These resolutions," said Mr. Adams, "are the fruit of the ingenuity of Martin Van Buren, and bear the impress of his character. The resolution to debate an executive nomination with open doors is without example; and the thirty-sixth rule of the Senate is explicit and unqualified, that all documents communicated in confidence by the President to the Senate shall be kept secret by the members. The request to me to specify the particular documents the publication of which would affect negotiations was delicate and ensnaring. The limitation was not of papers the publication of which might be injurious, but merely of such as would affect existing negotiations; and, this being necessarily a matter of opinion, if I should specify passages in the document as of such a character, any senator might make it a question for discussion in the Senate, and they might finally publish the whole, under color of entertaining an opinion different from mine upon the probable effect of the publication. Besides, should the precedent once be established of opening the doors of the Senate in the midst of a debate upon executive business, there would be no prospect of ever keeping them shut again. I answered the resolution of the Senate by a message stating that all the communications I had made on this subject had been confidential; and that, believing it important to the public interest that the confidence between the Executive and the Senate should continue unimpaired, I should leave to themselves the determination of a question, upon the motives of which, not being informed, I was not competent to decide." When the intrigues which embarrassed and disturbed the Presidency of Mr. Adams were in full vigor, his spirit and strength of character were conspicuously manifested. In April, 1827, whilst the state elections were pending, letters were shown to him complaining that the administration did not support its friends, and intimating that time and money must be sacrificed to his success. Mr. Adams remarked: "I have observed the tendency of our elections to venality, and shall not encourage it. There is much money expended by the adversaries of the administration, and it runs chiefly in the channels of the press. They work by slander to vitiate the public spirit, and pay for defamation, to receive their reward in votes."