You might watch the proceedings of such a banking concern with intense curiosity and amusement.  But I ask you, what prudent man among you would deposit his money in it, or invest in its stock?  And why would you not?  Because you would think that this is not sensible men’s business, but foolish boys’ play; that such management would necessarily result in reckless waste and dishonesty, and tend to land many of the bank’s officers in Canada, and not a few of its depositors or investors in the poor-house.  Such would be your judgment, and in pronouncing it you would at the same time pronounce judgment upon the manner in which the business part of our national Government, as well as of many if not most of our State and municipal governments, has been conducted for several generations.  This is the spoils system.  And I have by no means presented an exaggerated or even a complete picture of it; nay, rather a mild sketch, indicating only with faint touches the demoralizing influences exercised by that system with such baneful effect upon the whole political life of the nation.

Looking at the financial side of the matter alone—­it is certainly bad enough; it is indeed almost incomprehensible how the spoils system could be permitted through scores of years to vitiate our business methods in the conduct of the national revenue service, the postal service, the Indian service, the public-land service, involving us in indescribable administrative blunders, bringing about Indian wars, causing immense losses in the revenue, breeding extravagant and plundering practices in all Departments, costing our people in the course of time untold hundreds of millions of money, and making our Government one of the most wasteful in the world.  All this, I say, is bad enough.  It might be called discreditable enough to move any self-respecting people to shame.  But the spoils system has inflicted upon the American people injuries far greater than these.

The spoils system, that practice which turns public offices, high and low, from public trusts into objects of prey and booty for the victorious party, may without extravagance of language be called one of the greatest criminals in our history, if not the greatest.  In the whole catalogue of our ills there is none more dangerous to the vitality of our free institutions.

It tends to divert our whole political life from its true aims.  It teaches men to seek something else in politics than the public good.

It puts mercenary selfishness as the motive power for political action in the place of public spirit, and organizes that selfishness into a dominant political force.

It attracts to active party politics the worst elements of our population, and with them crowds out the best.  It transforms political parties from associations of patriotic citizens, formed to serve a public cause, into bands of mercenaries using a cause to serve them.  It perverts party contests from contentions of opinion into scrambles for plunder.  By stimulating the mercenary spirit it promotes the corrupt use of money in party contests and in elections.