Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/433

Rh Presidential aspirants are going to try to foist on the incoming President their next friends, their confidential agents and tools for Cabinet places, especially for the Treasury, the Post-Office, the Interior and the Navy, which have a large patronage, to run those Departments in their respective interests. In that regard Governor Hayes should be cautioned by his friends and you ought to write or talk to him about it. He might just as well appoint the Presidential candidates themselves as their wirepullers. All of which is respectfully submitted.

On the whole there appears to be some wisdom in the above. I suppose you are overrun with the most urgent recommendations, and some attempts of the kind described by my correspondent may have been made. It will probably be impossible to satisfy all the great party leaders consistently with your principles and aims. In that case would it not be the most prudent policy to give neither of them an advantage, but to fill all the places according to your own views of the public good? If the confidential friend of one is appointed, and the friend of another one is not, the latter will have a grievance. If the confidential friends of all of them are left out, each one will at least have the compensating satisfaction to know that none of the others is preferred. In that way you may come nearest pleasing them all, and strengthen your Administration for all good purposes at the same time.

From your last letter I infer that you have made no selection yet for the Post-Office. That place, on account of its large patronage and its consequent importance for an aspiring politician to have it run in his interests may be the object of a struggle around you. Would it not, in that case, be well to think once more of Governor Jewell, who was probably the best Postmaster-General the country has had for a generation, and who has already