A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship--to
adopt the tone of "P. P. "--was the election of General Taylor
to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to form a complete
estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the
incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile administration. His
position is then one of the most singularly irksome, and, in
every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can
possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either
hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event
may very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience,
to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests
are within the control of individuals who neither love nor
understand him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs
happen, he would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too,
for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to
observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of
triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its
objects! There are few uglier traits of human nature than this
tendency--which I now witnessed in men no worse than their
neighbours--to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the
power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to
office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of the most
apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active
members of the victorious party were sufficiently excited to
have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked Heaven for the
opportunity! It appears to me--who have been a calm and curious
observer, as well in victory as defeat--that this fierce and
bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the
many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs.
The Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they
need them, and because the practice of many years has made it
the law of political warfare, which unless a different system be
proclaimed, it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But the
long habit of victory has made them generous. They know how to
spare when they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may
be sharp indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will;
nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they
have just struck off.
In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much
reason to congratulate myself that I was on the losing side
rather than the triumphant one. If, heretofore, I had been none
of the warmest of partisans I began now, at this season of peril
and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my
predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and
shame that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, I
saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those
of my democratic brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity
beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell.