It was, however, soon evident that the war had made the necessity of reform imperative, and chiefly for two reasons:  first, the enormous increase of patronage, and second, the fact that circumstances had largely identified a party name with patriotism.  The great and radical evil of the spoils system was carefully fostered by the apparent absolute necessity to the public welfare of making political opinion and sympathy a condition of appointment to the smallest place.  It is since the war, therefore, that the evil has run riot and that its consequences have been fully revealed.  Those consequences are now familiar, and I shall not describe them.  It is enough that the most patriotic and intelligent Americans and the most competent foreign observers agree that the direct and logical results of that system are the dangerous confusion of the executive and legislative powers of the Government; the conversion of politics into mere place-hunting; the extension of the mischief to State and county and city administration, and the consequent degradation of the national character; the practical disfranchisement of the people wherever the system is most powerful; and the perversion of a republic of equal citizens into a despotism of venal politicians.  These are the greatest dangers that can threaten a republic, and they are due to the practice of treating the vast system of minor public places which are wholly ministerial, and whose duties are the same under every party administration, not as public trusts, but as party perquisites.  The English-speaking race has a grim sense of humor, and the absurdity of transacting the public business of a great nation in a way which would ruin both the trade and the character of a small huckster, of proceeding upon the theory—­for such is the theory of the spoils system—­that a man should be put in charge of a locomotive because he holds certain views of original sin, or because he polishes boots nimbly with his tongue—­it is a folly so stupendous and grotesque that when it is fully perceived by the shrewd mother-wit of the Yankee it will be laughed indignantly and contemptuously away.  But the laugh must have the method, and the indignation the form, of law; and now that the public mind is aroused to the true nature and tendency of the spoils system is the time to consider the practicable legal remedy for them.

The whole system of appointments in the Civil Service proceeds from the President, and in regard to his action the intention of the Constitution is indisputable.  It is that the President shall appoint solely upon public considerations, and that the officer appointed shall serve as long as he discharges his duty faithfully.  This is shown in Mr. Jefferson’s familiar phrase in his reply to the remonstrance of the merchants of New Haven against the removal of the collector of that port.  Mr. Jefferson asserted that Mr. Adams had purposely appointed in the last moments of his administration officers whose designation he should