Political patronage

“ You answer him by pointing out the fact, that political parties do exist without patronage in ever so many foreign countries, and that they did exist in this country without the use of offices or patronage before the spoils system was introduced, and that they were then as full of life and energy as ever since.—He excitedly asks you whether you really think that a party can win without patronage, and whether the popular interest in politics can be kept up without holding out to the people the prospect of a large distribution of offices if their party wins. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Feeling that they cannot, in this respect, count upon such men when in power, the ordinary party politician is averse to putting such men into power. It may therefore be said that the greater a part the patronage, the distribution of offices as party spoils, plays in the management of a political party, the stronger will be the tendency in it to exclude from places of power men eminent by character and ability, who are likely to take a high view of their public duty, and accordingly to treat the patronage business with neglect or even disdain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is the leader of a great party engaged in a most important contest. The character of the government, the welfare of the greatest city of the republic, one of the greatest cities of the world, is at stake. But this is nothing to him. All he things of is not the interest of three and a half millions of people, not the prosperity and good name of one of the world's most important emporiums of commerce and industry—what he thinks of is simply the spoils of office—patronage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have reverenced power more in its high abuses and summary movements, than in its calm and constitutional energy, when it dispensed blessings with an unseen, but liberal hand. They have surrendered to faction, what belonged to the country. Patronage and party, the triumph of a leader, and the discontents of a day, have outweighed all solid principles and institutions of government. ”

“ There was, of course, a price-list for various kinds and periods of reputation; and a citizen with a large fortune could buy what was for human life immortality. But the chief business of the office was political, to enforce the privileges and enhance the fame of the marble citizens, and especially of those in power—a great noble, a child of the monarch, or one whom the court and the minister delighted to honour. ”

“ Political offices are chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king, the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of birth. ”

“ Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party must destroy patriotism. ”

“ It is already to-day the capital fact of our whole political system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by the owner of a group of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any other form of open authority. ”

“ On that score we can not surely fail in knowing at least how to build up a reputation and establishment of our own. In debuts of this kind many talk of principle—political principle—party principle, as a sort of steel-trap to catch the public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle, as it is called—all party—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every office in the state, from the prime minister down to the humblest employé in the post-office or customs, was conferred to secure the fidelity of political supporters. Liberality to opponents, the public good, fair dealing, the claims of long service to the country, destitution, charity, noble descent, patriotic conduct, were alike scouted, and by common consent banished from the consideration of public men. ”

“ As your nomination and election marked a most hopeful revival in political morals, so may your administration, born of the noblest impulses of the American people, become a lasting example of good government, to serve as an instruction and encouragement to coming generations and to write your name into the annals of the Republic with imperishable honor. ”

“ In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them. ”

“ It is to us a matter of indifference what party triumphs, or who is uppermost. The Government may change to-morrow, and the day after, and so on for a month long, and yet we remain just as we were. Monarchy, Commonwealth, Democracy—what you will—may rule the hour, but the sous-lieutenant is but the servant who changes his master. ”

“ From hence, without doubt, it follows that should differences arise, it is the will of those in whose minds the work of government is elaborated, that in the last resort must prevail. From mere labor, power may be severed; but not from labor joined with responsibility. This capital and vital consequence flows out of the principle that the political action of the Monarch shall everywhere be mediate and conditional upon the concurrence of confidential advisers. ”

“ Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatness. The public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties. ”

“ We want public officers who shall really be men of business. We want laboring men to carry on the affairs of government, who shall be paid for their labor and their labor only. Let us see what the Whigs will do to make their constitutional monarchy appear decent to the brightening eye of the public. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Our extra-constitutional party conventions, short-lived and poor in power as they are, constitute our only machinery for that sort of control of the executive which consists in the award of personal rewards and punishments. ”

“ But neither combination nor connection, in any moral and rational sense of the term, has anything to do with a system of government which perpetually sets up the great offices of state as the prizes of a contest between two organized factions, to one of which each citizen is bound to adhere, owing to his party an allegiance in fact higher than that which he owes to his political conscience or to the state. ”

“ Representation, invented by the crown to destroy the barons, was used by the people against the crown; and is now used by the crown against the people. The conquered nobility, reduced from sovereigns to subjects, became the chief disciples of royal patronage ; and having lost the power of annoying the king, revenged itself upon the people, by uniting with the king to annoy them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lessons of the past should be unlearned, and such officials, as well as their successors, should be taught that efficiency, fitness, and devotion to public duty are the conditions of their continuance in public place, and that the quiet and unobtrusive exercise of individual political rights is the reasonable measure of their party service. ”

“ Q. You say that your duty is to preserve the purity of the public taste; was that also the object of the earlier of your predecessors?
A. Seemingly not, as the office was called into existence to serve as a bar to the dissemination of opinions of an entirely political character.
Q. But that is not now the raison d'être of the appointment?
A. Oh, no; for nowadays, thanks to the newspapers, politics enjoys free trade. ”

“ At the opening of every great political campaign, we hear a great deal about the privileged classes; the ruffled-shirt and silk-stocking gentry: and sometimes men prattle about the aristocracy of talent, or the aristocracy of wealth—but who ever heard any complaints of our legal aristocracy—an oligarchy rather—for they make all the laws, they expound all the laws, and they hold all the offices worth having—in perpetuity. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In other States the development has not been so complete. It is true, the bosses were sometimes baffled by revolts of public sentiment, and occasionally by a spirited President, who showed them his teeth in repelling their dictatorial demand for the absolute control of the federal patronage, or by some dutiful governor, who had a sense of higher obligation and a will of his own. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In a system in which all offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests to it, and who find it of personal advantage ”

“ The magnitude of the patronage at the President's disposal intensified the popular alarm; and the promptness with which a large proportion of those holding office echoed the President's sentiments and defended his policy, was taken as a signal that acquiescence therein would be the one condition upon which the honors and emoluments of public place could be enjoyed. ”

“ The great game of the government was to sow, if not dissension, at least distrust, in the ranks of the national party,—to chill the ardor of patriotism, and, wherever possible, to excite different views, and different roads to success, amongst the popular leaders of the time. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This revolution of opinion in the rank and file has been followed by a marked change of front on the part of the salaried officials, and by a growing distrust of the aristocratic and middle-class representa- tives of both the great political parties. ”