ng his name to an executive order
asserting sound principles, the order was swept away like a lamb by a
locomotive.

Nothing but a miracle, said General Harrison's attorney-general, can
feed the swarm of hungry office-seekers.

Adopted by both parties, Mr. Marcy's doctrine that the places in the
public service are the proper spoils of a victorious party, was accepted
as a necessary condition of popular government. One of the highest
officers of the government expounded this doctrine to me long
afterwards. "I believe," said he, "that when the people vote to change
a party administration they vote to change every person of the opposite
party who holds a place, from the President of the United States to
the messenger at my door." It is this extraordinary but sincere
misconception of the function of party in a free government that leads
to the serious defence of the spoils system. Now, a party is merely a
voluntary association of citizens to secure the enforcement of a
certain policy of administration upon which they are agreed. In a free
government this is done by the election of legislators and of certain
executive officers who are friendly to that policy. But the duty of the
great body of persons employed in the minor administrative places is in
no sense political. It is wholly ministerial, and the political opinions
of such persons affect the discharge of their duties no more than their
religious views or their literary preferences. All that can be justly
required of such persons, in the interest of the public business, is
honesty, intelligence, capacity, industry, and due subordination; and to
say that, when the policy of the Government is changed by the result
of an election from protection to free-trade, every book-keeper and
letter-carrier and messenger and porter in the public offices ought to
be a free-trader, is as wise as to say that if a merchant is a Baptist
every clerk in his office ought to be a believer in total immersion. But
the officer of whom I spoke undoubtedly expressed the general feeling.
The necessarily evil consequences of the practice which he justified
seemed to be still speculative and inferential, and to the national
indifference which followed the war the demand of Mr. Jenckes for reform
appeared to be a mere whimsical vagary most inopportunely introduced.

It was, however, soon evident that the war had made the necessity of
reform imperative, and chiefly for two reasons: first, the enormou