Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/75

Rh puts personal considerations above all others and keeps in view the solidarity of senatorial advantages, had not yet risen to the dignity of a system. The danger that “tenure of office laws” might be come sources of corrupt practices in the Senate did not yet appear. The principal agency of evil was, therefore, still seen in the Executive. Nor was this at all illogical. “Spoils” politics had indeed been carried to an alarming extent in some states before. The greed of office-seekers had been many a time complained of in Washington. But the wisdom and patriotic firmness of the men in the executive chair of the national government had successfully restrained the dangerous tendency down to the close of John Quincy Adams's administration. It was then, with Jackson's advent to power, the executive hand that opened the flood gates, against the judgment, and even against the indignant protest, of the first order of statesmen in Congress. Nothing could have been more natural, therefore, than that the Executive should have been held wholly responsible for the mischief, and that in restraints to be put upon the Executive the remedy should have been sought.

It is true, the aspect of the matter has since changed somewhat. The offices of the government having once been declared to be the “spoils” of the victorious party, Senators and Representatives in Congress seized upon the opportunities thus opened to them. They learned how to serve themselves by apparently serving their constit-