were zealous in support of the government, and would exert their influence to make it a success. When the break-up of the Cabinet occurred, and an anti-administration party was organized, only staunch Federalists received office. In a letter to Colonel Timothy Pickering, Secretary of War, Washington said: "I shall not, while I have the honor of administering the government, bring a man into any office of consequence knowingly whose political tenets are adverse to the measures the general government are pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide." During Adams' administration the utterances of Federal leaders in the Senate were very emphatic on this point. Senator Bayard announced "that the politics of the office-seeker would be the great object of the President's attention, and an invincible objection if different from his own."1 Senator Otis said that "the pecuniary claims of Henry Miller for extra clerk hire," occasioned by his inability to keep up with his office work while electioneering for Adams, was "a paltry consideration infinitely outweighed by the service he was rendering to his country." 2 The direct influence of patronage was more potent then than it is now; for the conduct of politics was further removed from the people, and was more largely an affair of personal management and 1 Annals of Congress, 1797-1798, p. 1232. individual negotiation, which could be greatly promoted by executive favors. "This is the great spring of all in the minds of senators and representatives," wrote John Adams, "to obtain favors for favorites among their constituents, in order to attach them by gratitude, and establish their own influence at home and abroad."1 Adams attributed his defeat for reëlection to the presidency to a matter of this sort. Washington, when in command of the little army put on foot during the French war scare in 1798, refused to give Peter Muhlenberg an officer's commission. "And what was the consequence?" said Adams. "These two Muhlenbergs (Peter and Frederick) addressed the public with their names both in English and in German, with invectives against the administration and warm recommendations of Mr. Jefferson. The Muhlenbergs turned the whole body of the Germans, great numbers of the Irish, and many of the English, and in this manner introduced the total change which followed in both houses of the legislature and in all the executive departments of the national government." 2 Removals from office were for a long time hindered by the feeling that they were in the nature of an attack on property rights. In England, the disposition to regard public trusts in private hands as a species of property was so strong that so 1 Adams' Works, Vol. IX., pp. 633, 634. 2 Ibid., Vol. X., p. 122. bitter an assailant of political corruption as Junius conceded that the nomination boroughs were entitled by usage and prescription to rank as property. It is true that removals from office on party grounds were practised under George III, but the national instinct of justice was deeply violated. In 1762-1763, Henry Fox broke the power of the elder Pitt and secured a parliamentary majority for the Bute ministry by sweeping removals of Pitt's supporters and by the ruthless use of all the patronage of the government; but he made himself execrated by public opinion, and the literature of the day contains expressions of the deepest abhorrence. George III personally pursued the same tactics, with ruinous results, and in the end he had to abandon the system and rest the administration of affairs on the talents and popularity of the younger Pitt. A great purification of politics followed. Having under the cabinet system of government the power of shaping issues by exercising a direct initiative in legislation, an administration supported by a popular mandate was to a large extent relieved of the necessity of using bribery or trafficking in offices to facilitate the transaction of the public business; for the administration was in a position to invoke the power of public opinion to overawe intriguers and mutineers. When Jefferson became President he found the offices in the possession of the Federalists. In But trying to bring in his party friends, he was hampered by this sentiment that a man had a property right to the retention of his office. When he removed Elizur Goodrich from the collectorship of New Haven, he was disturbed by the energy of public remonstrance. Writing in reply, he said: "Declarations by myself, in favor of political tolerance, exhortations to harmony and affection in social intercourse, and respect for the equal rights of the minority, have on certain occasions been quoted and misconstrued into assurances that the tenure of office was not to be disturbed. could candor apply such a construction? When it is considered that under the late administration those who were not of a particular cast of politics were excluded from all office; when, by a steady pursuit of this measure, nearly the whole offices of the United States were monopolized by that sect; when the public sentiment at length declared itself and burst open the doors of honor and confidence to those whose opinions they approved, was it to be expected that this monopoly of office was to be continued in the hands of the minority? Does it violate their equal rights to assert some rights in the majority also. Is it political intolerance to claim a proportionate share in the direction of public affairs? If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few, by resignation none, Can any other mode than that of removal be proposed? This is a painful office; but it is made my duty and I meet it as such." Nevertheless, the force of hostile sentiment was so strong that he made few removals. So long as the gentry retained their class control of the government, the tenure of office was rarely disturbed on avowed party grounds. |