Sir, the theory of our institutions is plain; it is, that government is an agency created for the good of the people, and that every person in office is the agent and servant of the people.  Offices are created, not for the benefit of those who are to fill them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the public service requires.  This is the theory.  But the difficulty in practice is, to prevent a direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can obtain them.  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.  It is, in an especial manner, important, if it be practicable, to apply some corrective to this kind of feeling and opinion.  It is necessary to bring back public officers to the conviction, that they belong to the country, and not to any administration, nor to any one man.  The army is the army of the country; the navy is the navy of the country; neither of them is either the mere instrument of the administration for the time being, nor of him who is at the head of it.  The post-office, the land-office, the custom-house, are, in like manner, institutions of the country, established for the good of the people:  and it may well alarm the lovers of free institutions, when all the offices in these several departments are spoken of, in high places, as being but “spoils of victory,” to be enjoyed by those who are successful in a contest, in which they profess this grasping of the spoils to have been the object of their efforts.

This part of the bill, therefore, Sir, is a subject for fair comparison.  We have gained something, doubtless, by limiting the commissions of these officers to four years.  But have we gained as much as we have lost?  And may not the good be preserved, and the evil still avoided?  Is it not enough to say, that if, at the end of four years, moneys are retained, accounts unsettled, or other duties unperformed, the office shall be held to be vacated, without any positive act of removal?

For one, I think the balance of advantage is decidedly in favor of the present bill.  I think it will make men more dependent on their own good conduct, and less dependent on the will of others.  I believe it will cause them to regard their country more, their own duty more, and the favor of individuals less.  I think it will contribute to official respectability, to freedom of opinion, to independence of character; and I think it will tend, in no small degree, to prevent