He Cannot, Moreover, Understand How The Duties
Can Be Conducted, Seeing That Men Must Be Called On To Resign Their
Places As Soon As They Have Learned To Make Themselves Useful.
And,
finally, he is lost in amazement as he contemplates this barefaced
prostitution of the public employ to the vilest purposes of
political manoeuvring.
With us also patronage has been used for
political purposes, and to some small extent is still so used. We
have not yet sufficiently recognized the fact that in selecting a
public servant nothing should be regarded but the advantage of the
service for which he is to be employed. But we never, in the lowest
times of our political corruption, ventured to throw over the
question of service altogether, and to declare publicly that the one
and only result to be obtained by government employment was
political support. In the States, political corruption has become
so much a matter of course that no American seems to be struck with
the fact that the whole system is a system of robbery.
From sheer necessity some of the old hands are kept on when these
changes are made. Were this not done, the work would come
absolutely to a dead lock. But as it is, it may be imagined how
difficult it must be for men to carry through any improvements in a
great department, when they have entered an office under such a
system, and are liable to be expelled under the same. It is greatly
to the praise of those who have been allowed to grow old in the
service that so much has been done.
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