Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/185

Rh be Democrats? Not he. He deplored that the Federalists should have found it necessary to fill almost all the offices with Federalists. He denounced this as an injustice; but he did not propose to retaliate by being as unjust as they had been. He simply declared his purpose to equalize the possession of the offices between the parties by making a small number of removals, but only for cause, and then by filling vacancies as they might otherwise arise in the ordinary course of things with a just proportion of Democrats. This done, then Jefferson would joyfully return to the regular practice of making appointments on the sole ground of fitness without regard to party.

It was thus clearly Jefferson's professed object, not to make the Government service a partisan service, but on the contrary to take from it the character of a partisan service which it had borne before; and then to start it anew on a distinctly non-partisan basis.

How did he carry out this plan? He did, indeed, make some removals, perhaps a few more than he had originally intended, and more than his Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, wished him to make, but in the eight years of his two Presidential terms he made after all only thirty-nine; and, as he often solemnly affirmed, not one of them solely for party reasons. There being at that time no law limiting the tenure of offices to four years, and officeholders being not in haste to die and unwilling to resign, the process bringing about the equilibrium was necessarily trying to patience. But Jefferson saw no danger to his country nor to his party in the circumstance that a large number of the offices still remained in Federalist hands; for, being a sensible man, he knew that a postmaster had to receive and distribute not Democratic or Federalist letters, but simply letters; that a collector of revenue had to handle not Democratic or Federalist