The Scarlet Letter

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.