Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/70

60 to them by treaty, to set apart a district west of the Mississippi for Cherokees disposed to emigrate there, and to secure to them and their descendants in perpetuity the peaceful and undisturbed enjoyment thereof. His was the correct doctrine in regard to the Indians: let them have justice; and, if they cannot be made as civilized and useful citizens as white people, let them be made as civilized and useful as it is possible to make them.

During the same session an attempt was made to arrest by law the flagrant abuses which President Jackson's arbitrary course in making removals and appointments had spread in the machinery of the general government and on the field of national politics. The statesmen of the time felt keenly the growing danger. They were alarmed at the demoralization which the vicious doctrine, that public office should be treated as the spoil of party victory, was infusing into all the channels of political life. They looked for a remedy. Arbitrary removals for partisan reasons, scarcely ever known before, never thought possible in the extent to which Jackson carried them, were the first scandal, in his treatment of the public service, which startled thoughtful men. It was natural, therefore, that a limitation of the removing power should have been the first remedy thought of. On February 9, 1835, Calhoun made a report from a committee appointed to inquire into the extent of the executive patronage, and kindred subjects. The report portrayed the existing abuses in a