Patronage (politics)

“ In almost every instance we find the same or a similar class of offices elsewhere successfully administered under the competitive rule, and nothing can be more certain than that the withdrawals asked for would result simply in turning over the positions concerned to the abuses of patronage mongering and spoils politics. ”

“ So long as public offices are a matter of patronage to any extend, so long will that patronage exercise a demoralizing influence and constitute a most serious danger to the working of our democratic institutions. ”

“ It is the use of the power of patronage; it is the universal giving and taking away of all place and office, for reasons no way connected with the public service, or the faithful execution of the laws; it is this which threatens with overthrow all the true principles of the government. Patronage is reduced to a system. It is used as the patrimony, the property of party. Every office is a largess, a bounty, a favor ”

“ A nation endeavours to select the genuine species of merit, an individual, the spurious; one seeks for the means of producing publiek good; the other, for the means of advancing selfish designs. National patronage is applied with a view to national self government; individual patronage buys talents, or pacifies enmity, for the purpose of destroying national self government. Therefore popular patronage strives to reward such merit and to procure such services, as will advance republican principles ”

“ For this institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am astonished to hear any person dissent. ”

“ Such aggregations of wealth and influence, connected as they usually are or soon become with social distinctions, naturally come to be regarded as the fountains of patronage by those who are in search of it. ”

“ The leading words of the title limit each other; it is a history of the civil service from the standpoint of the patronage, and of the patronage with regard solely to the public offices. The aim has been to give fully the development of policy and practice as to the relation of these two elements of our public life, from the foundation of the government to the present day. ”

“ And if influence is to be exerted by the executive for improper purposes, it will be quite as easy, and in its operation less seen, and less suspected, to give the stipulated patronage in another form, either of office, or of profitable employment, already existing. And even a general disqualification might be evaded by suffering the like patronage silently to fall into the hands of a confidential friend, or a favourite child or relative. ”

“ But it is not merely inconsiderate and rash legislation, which is to be guarded against, in the ordinary course of things. There is a strong propensity in public bodies to accumulate power in their own hands, to widen the extent of their own influence, and to absorb within their own circle the means, and the motives of patronage. ”

“ Let us, therefore, now consider what the people would really gain by a general abolition of the right of patronage. What is most to be desired by such a change is, that the country should be supplied with better ministers. ”

“ Many members chosen in New York and Pennsylvania owed their election to a skilful abuse of the patronage at home, and few abandoned their arts at the threshold of the capital. Thus it happened that, while the main fountain remained fairly pure, the stream of the patronage was mudded by the soil through which it flowed. It is to the states, too, that we must look for prophecies of the future; for nearly all our great national political movements have grown slowly and unevenly, appearing first in one state, then in another, and remaining for many years local in their manifestation. ”

“ In a country like ours, whose institutions rest on the popular will, we must rely for our social and literary means and honors, exclusively on personal exertions, springing from the bosom of society. We have no external helps and reliances, sealed in expectations of public patronage, held by the hands of executive, or ministerial power. ”

“ It is thus that patronage transforms any party into an aristocracy of interest. The money dispensed by the executive power of England, creates a powerful aristocracy of interest, unfriendly to the national interest. The patronage of the President of the United States, is aggravated by life temptation to employ it for his re-election. This aristocracy of patronage, arises from a division of property by law, and the only modes of reconciling it with republican government, are, to settle salaries by a standard, too low to create a party of interest ”

“ In the first place, it is to be remembered that patronage acts, not only on those who actually possess office, but on those also who expect it, or hope for it; and in the next place, office-holders, by their very situation, their public station, their connection with the business of individuals, their activity, their ability to help or to hurt according to their pleasure, their acquaintance with public affairs, and their zeal and devotion, exercise a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers. ”

“ Never before had a strong, determined president faced two houses of Congress opposed to him in so momentous a crisis; and for the first time the question of their respective constitutional powers over the patronage became one of widespread interest. In order to make the succeeding events intelligible, it is necessary to discuss briefly the constitutional provisions on this subject, and the questions that were left open. ”

“ The arguments against shielding the legislature from executive patronage, are, that it may deprive patriots of merited reward, and the community of valuable services. Rewards to be bestowed by executive or monarchical ambition, and services to be guided by executive or monarchical designs. Political merit, consists in preferring; the service of a nation to the service of an individual; individuals consider that quality as merit, which is subservient to their interest or designs; hence monarchs, instead of allowing merit to patriots, persecute them as traitors. ”

“ When, however, the opposite party comes to power and finds its opponents securely lodged in offices which but just now were patronage and from which its own members may have been but recently expelled, a severe strain is put upon the belief in the morality of civil service reform ”

“ There is a headlong tendency to this, and it is necessary to restrain it by wise and effective legislation. There is still another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, of extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, to which I have already incidentally alluded; and that is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the government or the country. ”

“ By detaching the patronage of one man, into elective legislatures, to select talents for publick service, the nation will reap a harvest of services, as abundant as the Harvest of rewards, which virtue and patriotism will reap. When one man dispenses the rewards to merit, merit will consist in our attachment to the interest of one man. When the legislature is converted into a school for those intrigues and artifices, begotten and nurtured by the admission of executive patronage within its walls, the antipathy of the mind against fraud and deceit will be gradually erased ”

“ It is better for a nation to have no elective legislature, than one which can furnish an individual with money and offices, and receive them from him ; because this commerce requires more money and offices, than executive power would need without a legislature; and because the abuse would be more clearly seen, if the executive power created the national oppressions, which it dispensed in patronage. The English patronage produces heavier burdens to the nation, than it would do, if there was no House of Commons. ”

“ In coming to the conclusion that Executive patronage ought to be diminished and regulated, on the plan proposed, the committee rest their opinion on the ground that the exercise of great patronage in the hands of one man, has a constant tendency to sully the purity of our institutions, and to endanger the liberties of the country. This doctrine is not new. A jealousy of power, and of the influence of patronage, which must always accompany its exercise, has ever been a distinguished feature in the American character. ”

“ Exercised by various transitory bodies of men, it produces no fraudulent party combinations, because such bodies escape both from vice and rancour, as a cloud escapes from view; and the happy divisions of our government, bestow an opportunity to disperse a tumour, constituting a species of accumulation of power, of the most acrid nature, in relation to our principle of division, in all its applications. Accumulated, patronage becomes the real legislator of a nation, under whatever forms laws are constructed ”

“ The English example and universal experience prove, that the patronage of an individual corrupts what nations consider as merit and patriotism. To bestow on one man a great patronage, from a hope that it will reward the virtues which it destroys, is founded upon a probability, that a moral cause will produce a different effect here, from that which it has constantly produced elsewhere, and is now producing in England. ”

“ The one or two which have extensive subordinate patronage should not be surrendered to the bigotry of clique or of individuals on the idea of a partition between factions, but should be entrusted to persons who have largeness of views, judgments, and local knowledge enough to administer the subordinate patronage on the same principle on which the administration itself acts. ”

“ As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to party stronger.
III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the incapable. ”

“ Any system of civil service under which the subordinate positions of the government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing; and we, therefore, favor a reform of the system, by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions, without practically creating a life tenure of office. ”

“ Necessity is the argument of tyrants: it is the creed of slaves.” Further, what evils must result if that formidable political weapon, the patronage of the Company, were transferred to the Ministers then in power, and finally to the Crown? ”

“ The president intended then to use the patronage in his struggle with Congress, and he found it an apt and powerful instrument. Fear of removal might be counted on to keep some Republicans loyal to their official chief, while the Democrats, who constituted the bulk of his supporters, would be especially pleased to get back to the pastures from which they had been driven five years previous. Moreover, no president except Lincoln had had such numerous rewards to distribute. ”

“ Do you not observe at a glance, that, from the time of William III., by reason of the foreign policy which I denounce, wars have been multiplied, taxes increased, loans made, and the sums of money which every year the government has to expend augmented, and that so the patronage at the disposal of ministers must have increased also, and the families who were enthroned and made powerful in the legislation and administration of the country must have had the first pull at, and the largest profit out of, that patronage? ”

“ While the patronage system is defended in the name of democratic tradition, its paternalistic impact on the political process is actually at war with the deeper traditions of democracy embodied in the First Amendment. ”

“ You answer by reminding him of our own experience that in the last four presidential elections that party which possessed the patronage was regularly beaten; that therefore the patronage has certainly not proved an element of strength sufficient to save a party from defeat; that it is rather an element of weakness in creating disappointments and animosities, and in making, by its inevitable abuse, the party possessing it odious to public spirited citizens. ”

“ What will become of that power of local leaders whose greatness consisted only in their possession of the Government patronage; whose influence was formidable only because at their very frown every placeman within their reach had to tremble ”

“ He used the patronage of the government in many cases avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form combinations and to produce political effects advantageous to the Union cause, and in still others simply to put the right man into the right place. ”

“ People of every trade and calling, when out of work, thought they had a right to a part of the government patronage, no matter how unsuited they were, from their former occupations, to serve as armorers. ”