Adams says, “was to secure for Mr. Crawford the influence of all the incumbents in office, at the peril of displacement, and of five or ten times an equal number of ravenous office-seekers, eager to supplant them.”  This is the very substance of the Spoils System, intentionally introduced by a fixed limitation of term in place of the constitutional tenure of efficient service; and it was so far successful that it made the custom-house officers, district attorneys, marshals, registers of the land-office, receivers of public money, and even paymasters in the army, notoriously active partisans of Mr. Crawford.  Mr. Benton says that the four-years’ law merely made the dismissal of faithful officers easier, because the expiration of the term was regarded as “the creation of a vacancy to be filled by new appointments.”  A fixed limited term for the chief offices has not destroyed or modified personal influence, but, on the contrary, it has fostered universal servility and loss of self-respect, because reappointment depends, not upon official fidelity and efficiency, but upon personal influence and favor.  To fix by law the terms of places dependent upon such offices would be like an attempt to cure hydrophobia by the bite of a mad dog.  The incumbent would be always busy keeping his influence in repair to secure reappointment, and the applicant would be equally busy in seeking such influence to procure the place, and as the fixed terms would be constantly expiring, the eager and angry intrigue and contest of influence would be as endless as it is now.  This certainly would not be reform.

But would not reform be secured by adding to a fixed limited term the safeguard of removal for cause only?  Removal for cause alone means, of course, removal for legitimate cause, such as dishonesty, negligence, or incapacity.  But who shall decide that such cause exists?  This must be determined either by the responsible superior officer or by some other authority.  But if left to some other authority the right of counsel and the forms of a court would be invoked; the whole legal machinery of mandamuses, injunctions, certioraris, and the rules of evidence would be put in play to keep an incompetent clerk at his desk or a sleepy watchman on his beat.  Cause for the removal of a letter-carrier in the post-office or of an accountant in the custom-house would be presented with all the pomp of impeachment and established like a high crime and misdemeanor.  Thus every clerk in every office would have a kind of vested interest in his place because, however careless, slovenly, or troublesome he might be, he could be displaced only by an elaborate and doubtful legal process.  Moreover, if the head of a bureau or a collector, or a postmaster were obliged to prove negligence, or insolence, or incompetency against a clerk as he would prove theft, there would be no removals from the public service except for crimes of which the penal law takes cognizance.  Consequently, removal would be always and justly regarded