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ning votes with money, or with money's worth—what else is it, to call it by its right name, than bribery? And what is the excuse with us? That it has long been a custom, and that it cannot be broken off without the risk of disrupting the party and of destroying the influence of the Administration with Congress. Was I not right in saying that the spoils system had so blunted and debauched the popular sense of right and wrong in politics as to reconcile many otherwise decent people to practices essentially corrupt? If this is one of the prevailing notions of the time with us, it cannot cease to be so too soon.
Mr. Quincy seems to think so too, for he said on the same occasion that he favored the enactment of a law placing the consular service under regulations protecting it against being used as he has used it. I am also warmly in favor of such legislation. But in England the corrupt practice mentioned was stopped, and the loose notion of the time was broken without a restraining law—by the courageous moral sense of men in power. Would not Mr. Quincy be more satisfied with himself now, had he at least made a beginning in the same direction while he had the power?
Looking at the matter, not from the moral point of view, but from that of practical politics—what has been accomplished? Has, in point of fact, all this manipulation of the patronage saved the party from disruption, and has it given the Administration smooth sailing in Congress? In the light of recent events it may have dawned upon Mr. Quincy that he would have not only served his country better, but also his party and the Administration, had he been less afraid of the ideas of advanced Civil Service Reformers, and had he bent all his talents and energies to the task of giving the country a consular service in the highest degree fitted to minister to the wants of American commerce, and to do honor to the American name abroad, by preserving and encouraging all that was good in the consular force then existing, by weeding out only what was bad, and by devising the best possible methods for ascertaining, not
