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adequate proof, and the ascertainment of which must therefore be left to the enlightened discretion of the appointing officer—that is, to the recommendation of some influential politician. And of the persons who had to leave the service, either by resignation or removal for some minor delinquency, only three had entered it through the portal of competition.
The reason for all this is simple. Men's motives of conduct are not seldom seriously affected by the circumstances under which they live. The person appointed to the office under the old spoils system usually obtains his place as a reward for political service rendered or in expectation of some political service to be rendered. He knows that he has more or less powerful political influence behind him. As that influence put him into office, he relies upon that influence to keep him in office also, in case his conduct be not as good as it should be. And usually that reliance is not misplaced. I speak from personal experience. When I was Secretary of the Interior I never removed a clerk for inefficiency, or habitual drunkenness, or other misbehavior, without being rushed upon by one or more Congressmen, sometimes even United States Senators, who vociferously insisted that the delinquent must be restored to his place; and when I refused, which I always did, I was often violently denounced as an official who did not understand his business; and I was even now and then threatened with dire consequences. It requires only the plainest common sense to see that such a system is not likely to inspire the person so appointed to office with a keen sense of official responsibility. It will not incite him to do his best or to be scrupulously correct in his conduct. It will rather encourage the idea that he has been put in office to hive him a comfortable berth, and that, if, in trying to make a good thing of it, he does something reprehensible, there will be influence behind him powerful enough to get him out of the scrape. It thus throws temptations into his way very dangerous to a character that is not fireproof. It is therefore not surprising that among the public servants so appointed there should be so many going astray to a more or less serious extent, as shown
