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

TIJE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
to treating the government as a price of war. It is the doc
trine of the pirate and the robber, appealing only to selfishness,
to hate, and to savagery. The demoralizing effects of such a
system continually enforced before the eyes of the people must
be manifest. It is the highest evidence of the beneficent influence of our institution and of the patriotism of our people that
political virtue has not been extinguished. The system required
the power of appointment, promotion, and removal to be exercised, not as a trust, but to coerce elections, to bribe votes, to
strengthen chieftains, to reward henchmen, to balance factions,
to purchase silence and subserviency.
Under Van Buren's advice, Jackson soon made three times as
many removals as all those made by his predecessors. Before
his administration ended that corruption began in the New York
Post Office which culminated in the astounding defalcation of
Fowler. Until reformed by Mr. James, through competitive examinations, the office was, generally, a disgraceful illustration of
partisanship, inefficiency, and extravagance. Jackson's first New
York collector, the partisan Swartwout, fled to Europe a defaulter
for more than a million of dollhrs, and soon after Hoyts, his
successor-a favorite from Van Buren's law-office-and Price,
the spoils-system district-attorney, were also defaulters in vast
amounts. Imitating the example at Washington, sweeping
removals in those offices were made to balance factions and
gratify leaders. Extravagance, inefficiency, and corruption of
many kinds in the Custom House were the swift consequences.
Ceaseless scandals in its administration, unavailing complaints
from the merchants, constant interference by its officials with
the freedom of elections, numerous perfunctory investigations
by Congress without the courage or purpose to expose abuses
damaging to the party, a perpetual use of places and salaries
as bribes for votes-all these rules were a part of the disgraceful
history of the office, which were unchecked until the limited
enforcement of the civil-service rules under President Grant.
These frequent and unjust removals prevented the most
worthy entering the customs service, kept those within it in a
ceaseless turmoil of anxiety, discouraged fidelity, invited the incompetent and disreputable to press for places, degraded the
moral tone and the public estimate of the service itself.
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