Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/344

332 aristocratic pretensions, who was a living proof of the fact that it did not require much learning to make a famous general or to be elected President, and whose example, therefore, assured them that every one of them had a chance at high distinction for himself.

But President Jackson soon furnished a new point of attack. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the accession of a new President was followed by a systematic proscription for opinion's sake in the public service. What we understand by “spoils politics” had, indeed, not been unknown before. It had been practiced largely and with demoralizing effect in the state politics of New York and Pennsylvania. But by the patriotic statesmen who filled the presidential chair from the establishment of the Constitution down to the close of the term of John Quincy Adams, public office had been scrupulously regarded as a public trust. Removals by wholesale for political reasons, or the turning over of the public service to the members of one party as a reward for partisan services rendered, or as an inducement for partisan services to be rendered, would have been thought, during the first half century of the Republic, not only a scandal and a disgrace, but little less than a criminal attempt to overthrow free institutions. Even when, after a fierce struggle, the government passed, by the election of Jefferson, from the Federalists to the Republicans, and the new President found the