Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/171

Rh functions. Thus the system weakens and demoralizes both ways. It is a disturbance of the Constitutional balances; it is a perversion of the powers of the government.

But, sir, on the whole, it strengthens the Executive in the worst sense, by giving him power over the meaner instincts of human nature. See how it works. The representative of the people stands before the Executive in the attitude apparently of an adviser, but in fact of a petitioner—an attitude always improper, and not seldom degrading. The appointments to office he asks for, even if they are calculated to promote the public good, are granted to him as favors, favors that can be withheld just as well as they can be granted. If such favors are necessary to him to keep up the machinery of his influence at home, then he feels himself, as he really is, in the power of the Executive.

The temptation is terribly strong, therefore, to buy those favors, even at the expense of his convictions and of his manhood. Thus it is that this system weakens the backbone and makes supple the knees of public men before the great dispenser of gifts. Thus it creates and nourishes that fawning servility which stifles the voice of honest criticism; and it requires very great emergencies indeed, like Andrew Johnson's glaring tergiversation, to break that dangerous spell.

But, on the other hand, the system is a source of peculiar dangers to the Executive also. Those who ascend the Presidential chair do not leave all the frailties of human nature behind them. The voice of interested sycophancy is apt to fill their ears and to befog their judgment. Even their errors find some who will applaud them. Even their follies will meet with obsequiousness. The servility which cringes before them is apt to lower their general estimate of manhood. They will form the dangerous conclusion that they can wield the people as readily as