Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/337

Rh places as long as their personal character remains untarnished and the performance of their duties satisfactory, the result will be “a permanent aristocracy of officeholders.” Is this so? Look back into the history of the Republic and you will find that under the early Administrations down to John Quincy Adams, public officers were kept in place as long as their character remained untarnished and the performance of their duty satisfactory. Where was the “aristocracy of officeholders” during that period? The officers of the Government were then a set of quiet, industrious, modest and unobtrusive gentlemen who did not try to control party politics, and did not steal, but did, as a general rule, studiously endeavor, by strict attention to their official business, to win the approval of the Government which employed them, and an honorable name for themselves. But no sooner was the good old custom supplanted by the system which transformed the offices of the Government into the spoils of party warfare, and made appointments and removals depend not upon the question of integrity and competence, but upon party service and claims to party reward, than a remarkable change occurred in the character as well as the pretensions of the officeholding class. No longer did they remain the quiet, unobtrusive and dutiful public servants they had been before, but they gradually attempted to control party politics in the different States, and transformed themselves into a regularly organized force of political prætorians employed by ambitious leaders to override the public opinion of the country. If there ever was anything that might be called an officeholding aristocracy in the worst sense of the term, it did not exist under the early Administrations when good official conduct was considered a valid title to continuance in place, but it was created by the spoils system which stripped the officer of his simple character of a servant of