Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/189

Rh work; and make of them what all executive directories be come, mere sinks of corruption and faction.

Madison replied: “The law terminating appointments at periods of four years is pregnant with mischiefs such as you describe.” And in a letter to Monroe he raised serious questions as to its Constitutionality. Its repeal was urged by the foremost statesmen in our history, Clay, Webster, Calhoun and others, but in vain.

An Administration conducted on Jeffersonian principles would not permit so iniquitous a law to survive; for if the law was mischievous then, it is, in consequence of the multiplication of the offices to which it applies and the greater “madness for spoils,” infinitely more mischievous now. A Jeffersonian Administration would certainly never think of still increasing the mischief by applying a four-year rule to offices to which the four-year law does not apply—such as the minor post-offices. And I am glad to learn that the rumor which ascribed to the Post-Office Department the intention of adopting such a rule is unfounded.

A Jeffersonian Administration would recognize that the mere practice of permitting officers belonging to the opposite party to serve out their four-year terms, then to be all supplanted by men of the ruling party, would not be a reform of real value. It might be an improvement upon more brutal practices formerly prevailing, but it will in the course of four years result in a general partisan change. It will be a clean sweep slowly and bashfully executed, a clean sweep ashamed of itself, but a clean sweep for all that, to be followed by another clean sweep when the other party comes into power; a substantial continuation of the old demoralizing abuse. It will have only one merit, the merit of carrying the proof of its own inconsistency on its face. Look at it. A Democratic executive