Assassination and the Spoils System [pp. 145-170]

THE PRINCE 7'0N RE VIEW.
pay for needless servants to work for his partner, or to pay for
the same needless servants to work for his party. The fact that
so few people see the matter in this light but illustrates the
blinding and demoralizing effects of our partisan methods and
our neglect of administrative affairs.
Among the reasons for the careful separation of legislative
from executive departments in the Constitution, none are more
important than those: on the side of legislation, that members of
Congress may have the independence and courage needed for
dealing fearlessly and thoroughly with all abuses in the executive
department, for holding every official to a strict account as the
Constitution contemplates, and also the time and disinterestedness essential for considering and maturing sound measures of
legislation touching a vast variety of interests on which the
prosperity of a nation depends; and, on the side of the Executive, that he may have the independence and courage essential
for the selection, discipline (and for removals, as the public interest may require) of that great number of officials through
whom his high trust of seeing that the laws are faithfully executed is discharged, and also that every one of those officials may
feel a direct and undivided responsibility to.the Executive, without
which all unity and rigor of administration are impossible. And
it needs no proof from our sad experience to make it plain that
nothing can be more fatal to such objects than a mingling and
barter of the functions of these departments, sure to lead to appointments, enactments, and appropriations being pledged and
made as conditions of each other, to confirmations by Senators
being based on legislation promised for their States, to economy
forborne lest the appointees of members of Congress should lose
their places or their salaries, to incompetent appointments made
to please legislators, to executive authority defied by subordinates under guarantee of protection by members of Congress.
In the Constitution itself there is a great departure from this
principle of separation of functions, which, even without the aid
of a spoils system, tends to such abuses, so far as the Senate is
concerned. For, altho the duty of selecting officials is emphatically executive, and the President is to nominate, the Senate is to confirm many of the higher officials before the appointment is completed. It was the intention, and in general the
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