s the effect upon
the executive? With us the patronage of the government, at any rate
in the civil service, has been reduced to a minimum. Our executive is
to a very great extent, indeed, independent of the government of the
day. “Men may come and men may go,” but permanent secretaries “go on
for ever.” So do commissioners and their clerks, and the thousands of
stipendiaries to whom it matters not one straw whether the Radicals
are in or the Tories. With us, when a man has gained an appointment by
passing a good examination at eighteen or nineteen years old, it is his
own fault if he ever loses it. Practically, there is no getting rid
of him as long as he can do his work; he is as safe as a judge, and
irremovable. But in America, we hear, every four years they shuffle the
cards, and away they go! What results from this? Am I wrongly informed?
or is there more absolute patronage, patronage _pur et simple_, in
the hands of the President of the United States than in any other
hands on the face of the earth? Assuming that it is so, what, I ask,
must be the effect upon the moral sentiments of the people at large,
inevitably brought day by day and hour by hour into relations with a
class of eager office-seekers, hungry, alert, jealous, disappointed,
unprincipled, or vindictive, according to their success or failure, in
getting what they consider their due. Do the “outs” accept the logic of
facts without demur, and forthwith betake themselves to other callings?

That in every change in the chief magistracy of a nation every
stipendiary of the executive, from the postman to the judge of the
supreme court, should get his dismissal, and the Democrat clerk in
the custom-house who was behindhand with his work on Monday evening
should leave his arrears to be made up by his Republican successor on
Tuesday morning; that when President A enters upon his office, a new
game should be begun, and the pieces be all set up again, regardless
of the position in which the knights or the pawns were when President
B was checkma