scussions of "Executive Patronage."

I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in
respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States
Senate:

Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and
every person in office is an agent and servant of the people.
Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill
them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more
in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the
public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a
direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being
considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can
obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is
another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from
extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that
is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents
and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the
Government or the country.

Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to
be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and
appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding
by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving
pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make
sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their
places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for
electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed.
This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal,
incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the
complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power.
Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning,
never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some
apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an
equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his
dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a
stipend to obey his master."

II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of
the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the
dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for
England, "a system of out