they had rendered him. It was as if a victorious army had come to take possession of a conquered country, expecting their general to distribute among them the spoil of the land. A spectacle was enacted never before known in the capital of the Republic.
Jackson had not that reason for making partisan changes which had existed in Jefferson's days. For when Jackson became President the civil service was teeming with his adherents, whom John Quincy Adams's scrupulous observance of the traditional principle had left undisturbed in their places. There was, therefore, no party monopoly in the public service to be broken up. Yet now removals and appointments were made with the avowed object of rewarding friends and punishing opponents, to the end of establishing, as to the offices of the government, a monopoly in favor of the President's partisans. Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams had made in all seventy-four removals, all but a few for cause, during the forty years of their aggregate presidential terms. In one year, the first of his administration, Jackson removed four hundred and ninety-one postmasters and two hundred and thirty-nine other officers, and, since the new men appointed new clerks and other subordinates, the sum total of changes in that year was reckoned at more than two thousand. The first arbitrary dismissals of meritorious men indicated what was to come, and threw the service into the utmost con-
