pleasure. This decision was determined by
the weight of Madison's authority. But Webster, nearly fifty years
afterwards, opposing his authority to that of Madison, while admitting
the decision to have been final, declared it to have been wrong. The
year 1820, which saw the great victory of slavery in the Missouri
Compromise, was also the year in which the second great triumph of the
spoils system was gained, by the passage of the law which, under the
plea of securing greater responsibility in certain financial offices,
limited such offices to a term of four years. The decision of 1789,
which gave the sole power of removal to the President, required positive
executive action to effect removal; but this law of 1820 vacated all the
chief financial offices, with all the places dependent upon them, during
the term of every President, who, without an order of removal, could
fill them all at his pleasure.

A little later a change in the method of nominating the President from
a congressional caucus to a national convention still further developed
the power of patronage as a party resource, and in the session of
1825-26, when John Quincy Adams was President, Mr. Benton introduced his
report upon Mr. Macon's resolution declaring the necessity of reducing
and regulating executive patronage; although Mr. Adams, the last of the
Revolutionary line of Presidents, so scorned to misuse patronage that he
leaned backward in standing erect. The pressure for the overthrow of the
constitutional system had grown steadily more angry and peremptory
with the progress of the country, the development of party spirit,
the increase of patronage, the unanticipated consequences of the sole
executive power of removal, and the immense opportunity offered by the
four-years' law. It was a pressure against which Jefferson held the
gates by main force, which was relaxed by the war under Madison and the
fusion of parties under Monroe, but which swelled again into a furious
torrent as the later parties took form. John Quincy Adams adhered, with
the tough tenacity of his father's son, to the best principles of all
his predecessors. He followed Washington, and observed the spirit of
the Constitution in refusing to remove for any reason but official
misconduct or incapacity. But he knew well what was coming, and
with characteristically stinging sarcasm he called General Jackson's
inaugural address "a threat of re-form." With Jackson's administration
in 1830 th