An actual withdrawal of the ablest men from political life, such as we have come to deplore, began, then, at this early day. Many others were thrown out for too great honesty and truth in running counter to the popular notions of the day. John Adams incurred great unpopularity for having said that the English Constitution was one of the grandest achievements of the human race--an assertion which Callender disputed, with great popular success, by dilating upon the corruption of the English administration under George III, but an assertion which, in the sense in which it was made, no well-informed man would question. Sedgwick laid down the principle that the government might claim the last man as a soldier and the last dollar in taxation--an abstract proposition which is unquestionable, but which Callender disputed, once more with great popular success, by arguing as if it were a proposition to take the last man and the last dollar. Dexter lost a reëlection by opposing a clause of the naturalization law, that a foreign nobleman should renounce his titles on being naturalized. It was opposed as idle and frivolous, and favored as if every foreign nobleman would otherwise become by naturalization a member of Congress. Hamilton and Knox abandoned the public service on account of the meagerness of their salaries. Pickering, who left office really insolvent, and with only a few hundred dollars in cash, was pursued by charges of corruption on the ground of unclosed accounts. Wolcott, at the end of long and faithful service, was charged with the responsibility for a fire which broke out in his office, as if he had sought to destroy the records of corrupt proceedings.