Patronage Monopoly and the Pendleton Bill [pp. 185-207]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW
with politics; yet all our politicians treat even the clerks and
messengers of these officers as the servants and propagandists
of parties and factions.
In the article before referred to, it was shown to be as clear
in the light of history as it is in the light of principle, that the
power of appointment and removal is as much a public trust as
the offices themselves; that there is no right to appoint any
but the worthy and competent, nor to remove, except for causes
grounded solely in the public welfare. All other appointments
or removals, knowingly made,-and consequently all removals
by a public officer for personal and party purposes,-are as
clearly breaches of public trust as it would be to wilfully accept
base coin for taxes, or to use public money from the treasury
for party objects. The rule of duty and the guilt of its violation
are the same, however more difficult detection and punishment
may be in one case than in the other. He who appoints an unworthy judge, revenue collector, appraiser, or letter-carrier, may
cause injustice and injury a hundred times greater than he who
robs an estate, embezzles the city funds, or breaks open a letter.
The most central fact and force in the degradation of our
civil service is the prostitution of this power of appointment
and removal. Being a power incident to other functions more
prominent in the eyes of the people-for no officer is selected
merely to appoint or remove others-its abuse is overshadowed
and little noticed. The people have not yet comprehended
that the power of the President, the heads of departments, and
even of great postmasters and collectors, which most affects the
citizen and the safety of the nation, is not that of directing the
public business, but that of dispensing a vast patronage-selecting and removing hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of
subordinates whose character and action for good or evil are
felt at every point. of private life. The exercise of this power
is generally as secret as the vast combinations of private selfishness and partisan influence by which that exercise is so often
bribed or coerced. We can see in the past the injustice of the
use of this power for the benefit of royal families, aristocracies,
state churches and hierarchies, but we do not yet see that its
use in this republic to support parties, factions, chieftains, senators, and great and little politicians, is no more defensible.
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