Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/76

66 uents. Then members of Congress found themselves set upon by a pressure of demand from partisan office-seekers, and Presidents from members of Congress, which demand constantly grew in overbearing and tyrannical force as it gradually acquired the sanction of established custom. That is the “spoils system” as we know it in our days. We therefore no longer see the agency of the evil in the Executive alone.

But even now no remedy has been devised the efficacy of which does not depend upon the action of the Executive. No reform law has ever been suggested — unless it be one forbidding members of Congress to meddle with appointments to office — which has not for its object to restrain the Executive in making arbitrary appointments and removals, or to serve the Executive as a protecting bulwark against the pressure of the spoils politicians. Neither is the prevention of arbitrary removals less important now than it was then; for the facility of making arbitrary partisan removals will always encourage the making of appointments for mere personal or partisan ends. The statesmen of the twenty-third Congress were, therefore, not only right in their day, but they would be equally right in our day, in proposing a measure to prevent the arbitrary use of the removing and appointing power. Nor was the measure they advocated, although mild, unwisely chosen.

Clay readily admitted the “necessity of some more summary and less expensive and less dilatory