At the beginning of the third year of his term of office the currents of party began to run strongly towards the approaching struggle for the Presidency. Mr. Adams, writing concerning the aspects of the time, remarked. "General politics and electioneering topics appear to be the only material of interest and of discourse to men in the public service. There are in several states, at this time, and Maryland is one of them, meetings and counter meetings, committees of correspondence, delegations, and addresses, for and against the administration; and thousands of persons are occupied with little else than to work up the passions of the people preparatory to the presidential election, still more than eighteen months distant." Complaints were constantly made that the administration neglected its friends, and gave offices to its enemies. Applications for appointments, especially for clerkships, in the departments, were continual, and were often made to Mr. Adams himself. He always refused to interfere directly, or by influence, unless his opinion was sought by the heads of the departments themselves, saying that to them the selection and responsibility properly belonged. "One of the heaviest burdens of my station," he observed, "is to hear applications for office, often urged, accompanied with the cry of distress, almost every day in the year, sometimes several times in the day, and having it scarcely ever in my power to administer the desired relief." In May, 1827, Mr. Adams wrote to a friend: "Mr. Van Buren paid me a visit this morning. He is on his return from a tour through Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, with C. C. Cambreling, since the close of the last session of Congress. They are generally understood to be electioneering; and Van Buren is now the great manager for Jackson, as he was, before the last election, for Mr. Crawford. He is now acting over the part in the Union which Aaron Burr performed in 1799. Van Buren, however, has improved, in the art of electioneering, upon Burr, as the State of New York has grown in relative strength and importance in the Union. Van Buren has now every prospect of success in his present movements, and he will avoid the rock on which Burr afterwards split." These general conclusions, formed on observation and knowledge of character, projects, and movements, time has proved to be just. At this day there can be no doubt that, during a tour through the Southern section of the Union, in April and May, 1827, by Van Buren and Cambreling, one a senator, the other a representative in Congress from New York, an alliance was formed between the former and Jackson, having for its object to supersede Mr. Adams and to elevate themselves in succession to the Presidency. The result is illustrative of the means and the arts by which ambition shapes the destinies of republics, by pampering the passions and prejudices of the multitude, by casting