Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/120

110 into the whole body politic a spirit of lawlessness which lived after him, and of which the demoralizing influence is felt to this day. Our public life has not yet recovered from the example, which he was the first American President to set, of a chief magistrate breaking, without remorse, some of his most explicit pledges given when he was an aspirant, — thus encouraging that most baleful popular belief that in politics there is no conscience, and that in political jugglery and deceit the highest are no better than the lowest. The present generation has still to struggle with the barbarous habits he introduced on the field of national affairs, when his political followers, taking possession of the government as “spoil,” presented the spectacle of a victorious soldiery looting a conquered town. There can be nothing of a more lawless tendency than the “spoils system” in politics, for it makes the coarsest instincts of selfishness the ruling motives of conduct, and inevitably brutalizes public life. It brought forth at once a crop of corruption which startled the country.

It is a remarkable fact that, during the latter part of Jackson's presidency, the general condition of society corresponded strikingly with the style in which the popular idol used to “take responsibilities,” to disregard legal restraint, and to unchain his furious passions against his “enemies.” Lawless ruffianism has perhaps never been as rampant in this country as in those days. “Many of the people of the United States are out of joint,”