the order of the day there.” The remedy was an amendment to the Constitution declaring “any member of Congress ineligible to office under the general government during the term for which he was elected, and for two years thereafter, except in cases of judicial office.” This letter was generally understood. It was hardly taken as the promise of a valuable reform to be carried out if Jackson should become President. Nobody attached much importance to that; certainly Jackson did not, for when he did become President, he, as we shall see, appointed a much larger number of members of Congress to office than had been so appointed by any one of his predecessors. But it was taken as a proclamation by General Jackson that he had been defrauded of the presidency by a corrupt bargain between a sitting member of Congress and a presidential candidate, the member of Congress obtaining a cabinet office as a reward for seating the candidate in the presidential chair. It pointed directly at Adams and Clay. Thus — it being also understood that, according to custom, Adams would be supported by his followers as a candidate for a second term — the campaign of 1828 was opened, not only constructively, but in clue form, with the cry of “bargain and corruption” sanctioned by the standard-bearer of the opposition. It became more lively with the opening of the Nineteenth Congress in December, 1825.
Under Monroe, during the “era of good feeling,” there had been individual opposition to this
