ajority of the Senate, and its
design, as Mr. Adams says, "was to secure for Mr. Crawford the influence
of all the incumbents in office, at the peril of displacement, and of
five or ten times an equal number of ravenous office-seekers, eager
to supplant them." This is the very substance of the Spoils System,
intentionally introduced by a fixed limitation of term in place of the
constitutional tenure of efficient service; and it was so far successful
that it made the custom-house officers, district attorneys, marshals,
registers of the land-office, receivers of public money, and even
paymasters in the army, notoriously active partisans of Mr. Crawford.
Mr. Benton says that the four-years' law merely made the dismissal
of faithful officers easier, because the expiration of the term
was regarded as "the creation of a vacancy to be filled by new
appointments." A fixed limited term for the chief offices has not
destroyed or modified personal influence, but, on the contrary, it
has fostered universal servility and loss of self-respect, because
reappointment depends, not upon official fidelity and efficiency, but
upon personal influence and favor. To fix by law the terms of places
dependent upon such offices would be like an attempt to cure hydrophobia
by the bite of a mad dog. The incumbent would be always busy keeping his
influence in repair to secure reappointment, and the applicant would be
equally busy in seeking such influence to procure the place, and as the
fixed terms would be constantly expiring, the eager and angry intrigue
and contest of influence would be as endless as it is now. This
certainly would not be reform.

But would not reform be secured by adding to a fixed limited term the
safeguard of removal for cause only? Removal for cause alone means, of
course, removal for legitimate cause, such as dishonesty, negligence,
or incapacity. But who shall decide that such cause exists? This must be
determined either by the responsible superior officer or by some other
authority. But if left to some other authority the right of counsel
and the forms of a court would be invoked; the whole legal machinery of
mandamuses, injunctions, _certioraris_, and the rules of evidence would
be put in play to keep an incompetent clerk at his desk or a sleepy
watchman on his beat. Cause for the removal of a letter-carrier in the
post-office or of an accountant in the custom-house would be presented
with all the pomp of impeachment and