text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/830

HISTORY] following this up by a distribution of offices and dignities right and left among his adherents. Léger was put to death in 678, and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II., with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge, were dispersed near Laon (680). But Ebroïn was assassinated next year in the midst of his triumph, having like Fredegond been unable to do more than postpone for a quarter of a century the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia; for his successor, Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having neither his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin. Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which

gave the king into the hands of Pippin, as also the royal treasure and the mayoralty, and by thus enabling him to reward his followers made him supreme over the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not until 752 that their line became extinct.

In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule of Pippin II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire fated to be as ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This political victory of the aristocracy was merely the consummation of a slow subterranean revolution which by innumerable reiterated blows had sapped the structure of the body politic, and was about to transfer the people of Gaul from the Roman monarchical and administrative government to the sway of the feudal system.

The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary monarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popular assemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare. They concentrated in their own hands all the powers

of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called “rois fainéants” enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the provinces they had an army of officials at their disposal—a legacy, this, from imperial Rome—who represented them in the eyes of their various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, never failed to oppose it—at first not so much on account of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spirit—and proceeded to weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officials—dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, centenarii—who had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant authority of the king’s missi, and the more rapacious because they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the gradual increase of charters of immunity.

Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade any royal official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or to exercise any administrative control on the domains of a bishop, an abbot, or one of the great secular nobles. On thousands of estates the royal government

gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by local law, and public taxation to change into special contributions; so that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were transferred to the great landlords, who thus became loyal adherents of the king but absolute masters on their own territory. The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating the least part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by granting immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality they established the local independence of the great landowners, by allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came confusion between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of property. The administrative machinery of the state still existed, but it worked in empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those who were amenable to its legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp, and the number of those whose affairs it should have directed dwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all. They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national magistracy.

Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradual process of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy wherein grades were marked by the varied scale of the wergild, a man being worth anything from thirty to six hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those

of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner. As in every social scheme where the government is without real power, the weakest sought protection of the strongest; and the system of patron, client and journeyman, which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to public disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the government. The Church’s patronage provided some with a refuge from violence; others ingratiated themselves with the rich for the sake of shelter and security; others again sought place and honour from men of power; while women, churchmen and warriors alike claimed the king’s direct and personal protection.

This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to man, were recognized by custom in default of the law, and were soon strengthened by another and territorial hierarchy. The large estate, especially if it belonged to the Church, very soon absorbed the few fields of the freeman.

In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional terms of tenancy-at-will or of the beneficium, thus multiplying endlessly the land subject to their overlordship and the men who were dependent upon them as tenants. The kings, like private individuals and ecclesiastical establishments, made use of the beneficium to reward their servants; till finally their demesne was so reduced by these perpetual grants that they took to distributing among their champions land owning the overlordship of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives only. These various “benefactions” were, as a rule, merely the indirect methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the holder of the beneficium and the owner; while this dependence of one man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king.

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/830


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cruttwell, Richard

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crystall, Thomas


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/950

INSTITUTIONS] solution, and when a discussion was begun in January 1875 on the projected constitutional laws prepared by the commission des trente, the only proposals made by the latter were for a more complete organization of the powers of one man, Marshal MacMahon. But on the 30th of January 1875 was adopted, by 353 votes to 352, an amendment by M. Wallon which provided for the election of an indefinite succession of presidents of the

Republic; this amounted to a definitive recognition of the Republic. In this connexion it has often been said that the Republic was established by a majority of one. This is not an accurate statement, for it was only the case on the first reading of the law; the majority on the second and third readings increased until it became considerable. There was a strong movement in the direction of a reconciliation between the parties; and there had been a rapprochement between the Republicans and the Right Centre. At the end of February were passed and promulgated two constitutional laws, that of the 25th of February 1875, on the organization of the public powers, and that of the 24th of February 1875, on the organization of the senate. In the middle of the year they were supplemented by a third, that of the 16th of July 1875, on the relations between the public powers.

Thus was built up the actual constitution of France. It differs fundamentally, both in form and contents, from previous constitutions. As to its form, instead of a single methodical text divided into an uninterrupted series of articles, it consisted of three distinct laws. As to

matter, it is obviously a work of an essentially practical nature, the result of compromise and reciprocal concessions. It does not lay down any theoretical principles, and its provisions, which were arrived at with difficulty, confine themselves strictly to what is necessary to ensure the proper operation of the governmental machinery. The result is a compromise between Republican principles and the rules of constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. On this account it has been accused, though unjustly, of being too monarchical. Its duration, by far the longest of any French constitution since 1791, is a sign of its value and vitality. It is in fact a product of history, and not of imagination. Its composition is as follows. The legislative power was given to two elective chambers, having equal powers, the vote of both of which is necessary for legislation, and both having the right of initiating and amending laws. The constitution assures them an ordinary session of five months, which opens by right on the second Tuesday in January. One house, the Chamber of Deputies, is elected by direct universal suffrage and is entirely renewed every four years; the other, the Senate, consists of 300 members, divided by the law of the 27th of February 1875 into two categories; 75 of the senators were elected for life and irremovable, and the first of them were elected by the National Assembly, but afterwards it was the Senate itself which held elections to fill up vacancies. The 225 remaining senators were elected by the departments and by certain colonies, among which they were apportioned in proportion to the population; they are elected for nine years, a third of the house being renewed every three years. The electoral college in each department which nominated them included the deputies, the members of the general council of the department and of the councils of the arrondissements, and one delegate elected by each municipal council, whatever the importance of the commune. This was practically a system of election in two and, partly, three degrees, but with this distinguishing feature, that the electors of the second degree had not been chosen purely with a view to this election, but chiefly for the exercise of other functions. The most important elements in this electoral college were the delegates from the municipal councils, and by giving one delegate to each, to Paris just as to the smallest commune in France, the National Assembly intended to counterbalance the power of numbers, which governed the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, and, at the same time, to give a preponderance to the country districts. The 75 irremovable senators were another precaution against the danger from violent waves of public opinion. The executive power was entrusted to a president, elected for seven years (as Marshal MacMahon had been in 1873), by the Chamber and the Senate, combined into a single body under the name of National Assembly. He is always eligible for re-election, and is irresponsible except in case of high treason. His powers are of the widest, including the initiative in legislation jointly with the two chambers, the appointment to all civil and military offices, the disposition, and, if he wish it, the leadership of the armed forces, the right of pardon, the right of negotiating treaties with foreign powers, and, in principle, of ratifying them on his own authority, the consent of the two chambers being required only in certain cases defined by the constitution. The nomination of conseillers d’état for ordinary service, whom the National Assembly had made elective, as in 1848, and elected itself, was restored to the president of the Republic, together with the right of dismissing them. But these powers he can only exercise through the medium of a ministry, politically and jointly responsible to the chambers, and forming a council, over which the president usually presides.

The French Republic is essentially a parliamentary republic. The right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term of office belongs to the president, but in order to do so he must have, besides a ministry which will take the responsibility for it, the preliminary sanction of the Senate. The Senate is at the same time a high court of justice, which can judge the president of the Republic and ministers accused of crimes committed by them in the exercise of their functions; in these two cases the prosecution is instituted by the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate can also be called upon to judge any person accused of an attempt upon the safety of the state, who is then seized by a decree of the president of the Republic, drawn up in the council of ministers. Possible revision of the constitution is provided for very simply: it has to be proposed as a law, and for its acceptance a resolution passed by each chamber separately, by an absolute majority, is necessary. The revision is then carried out by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to form a National Assembly. There have been two revisions since 1875. The first time, in 1879, it was simply a question of transferring the seat of the government and of the chambers back to Paris from Versailles, where it had been fixed by one of the constitutional laws. The second time, in 1884, more fundamental modifications were required. The most important point was to change the composition and election of the Senate. With a view to this, the new constitutional law of the 14th of August 1884 abolished the constitutional character of a certain number of articles of the law of the 24th of February 1875, thus making it possible to modify them by an ordinary law. This took place in the same year; the 75 senators for life were suppressed for the future by a process of extinction, and their seats divided among the most populous departments. Further, in the electoral college which elects the senators, there was allotted to the municipal councils a number of delegates proportionate to the number of members of the councils, which depends on the importance of the commune. The law of the 14th of August 1884 also modified the constitution in another important respect. The law of the 25th of February 1875 had admitted the possibility not only of a partial, but even of a total revision, which could affect and even change the form of the state. The law of the 14th of August 1884, however, declared that no proposition for a revision could be accepted which aimed at changing the republican form of government. The composition of the Chamber of Deputies was not fixed by the constitution, and consequently admitted more easily of variation. Since 1871 the mode of election has oscillated between the scrutin de liste for the departments and the scrutin uninominal for the arrondissements. The organic law of the 30th of November 1875 had established the latter system; in 1885 the scrutin de liste was established by law, but in 1889 the scrutin d’arrondissement was restored; and in this same year, on account of the ambitions of General Boulanger and the suggestion which was made for a sort of plebiscite in his favour, was passed the law on plural candidatures, which forbids anyone to become a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in more than one district at a time.

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/950


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cubbon, Mark


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cubitt, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cubitt, William (1791-1863)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cuddon, Ambrose


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cudmore, Richard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cuff, James Dodsley


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cuit, George (1743-1818)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cuitt, George (1779-1854)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Culbertson, Robert


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Culen


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannah, John (1792-1867)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Culin, Patrick


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cullen, Paul


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cullen, Robert


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cullen, William


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannah, John (1818-1888)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannam, Richard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannan, William


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannay, James


text:
The Civil Service and the Patronage/Chapter 04

far the national civil service alone has been considered; but it is no longer possible to ignore the states, inasmuch as many national officers were appointed from the states to act in the states, and much of the service was thus affected by local political ideals. It has been seen that members of Congress possessed great influence over appointments. Many members chosen in New York and Pennsylvania owed their election to a skilful abuse of the patronage at home, and few abandoned their arts at the threshold of the capital. Thus it happened that, while the main fountain remained fairly pure, the stream of the patronage was mudded by the soil through which it flowed. It is to the states, too, that we must look for prophecies of the future; for nearly all our great national political movements have grown slowly and unevenly, appearing first in one state, then in another, and remaining for many years local in their manifestation.

Slowly but persistently there were found developing in the states, during the period we have been studying, two tendencies that burst suddenly and violently into national politics: first, the custom of using the public offices openly and continuously as ammunition in party warfare; second, the evolution of the idea of rotation in office. These together constituted the spoils system. It has not seemed expedient to treat at length the history of every state, or to study transitory tendencies or inchoate theories in such states as are taken up; attention will be confined to those states and those phases of state history which are typical and suggestive.

Rotation in office is said to have been an old Dutch custom, brought over to New Amsterdam and continued in New York. It is to be found also in colonial New England; but perhaps the most significant instance of its early use in America was its incorporation by William Penn in the Pennsylvania “Frame of government” of 1682, which provided that no councillor should hold his office for more than three years continuously, being then obliged to retire for one year, “that all may be fitted for government and have experience of the care and burden of it.” This, then, was what the colonists ordinarily meant by rotation; it was to be applied to the lawmakers, and its objects were to educate the people and equalize the burdens of office-holding. With the quickening of political life, office ceased to be a burden; but the notion that it was a means of education persisted, and was welcomed by the democratic sentiment of the Revolution.

Although the “frame of government” had been discontinued in 1696, this particular provision was revived in the radical constitution devised for Pennsylvania in 1776. A similar regulation was adopted by the neighboring state of Maryland with regard to the delegates to Congress. New Hampshire followed Maryland's example, and this restriction was finally incorporated in the Articles of Confederation. In the Philadelphia convention of 1787 a debate arose over a proposition to apply rotation to the office of senator. Doubtless the unfavorable experience of the Confederation had much to do with the defeat of the proposal; but the persistence with which it was urged is evinced by the fact that it is found among the amendments to the constitution proposed by various state conventions.

The weakness of the argument that rotation would educate the public in the business of government was brought out by Pelatiah Webster, who said that, instead of making many men experienced in affairs, it made “many jacks at all trades, but good at none.” The idea of its educational value, however, was not dropped, but was transmogrified. Elbridge Gerry said of rotation that it “keeps the mind of man in equilibrio, and teaches him the feelings of the governed, and better qualifies him to govern in his turn.” This version of the benefits of rotation, that it was intended to educate the office-holder in the virtues of the people, grew in popularity during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when it was not supposed that the people needed instruction in the arts of government.

Education was not, however, the only motive for the adoption of rotation during the revolutionary period. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 provided, “In order that the people may not suffer from the long continuance in place of any Justice of the Peace, who shall fail of discharging the important duties of his office with ability or fidelity, all commissions of Justices of the Peace shall expire and become void, in the term of seven years.” The New Hampshire constitution of 1784 gave them tenure for five years instead of during “good behavior,” “in order that the people may not be oppressed.” Elbridge Gerry had this conception also in mind, for he spoke of the practice as a “check to the overbearing insolence of office.”

This new theory led to an extension of rotation from legislative to executive offices, and in this form it continued to gain ground until 1830. By that date, fifteen states had some such regulation in regard to the office of governor; that is, he should have a definite term, could serve a definite number of terms, and then, either forever, or for some fixed period, could not serve again. Nineteen states had similar regulations in their

in regard to some offices; and included in this number were nearly all the states that had new constitutions. The states differ interestingly in details. Even conservative Massachusetts distrusted the officer in charge of the public funds, and Maine followed her example in 1820 by providing that the treasurer should not hold continuously. Pennsylvania and the states that copied her contented themselves with restricting the eligibility of the chief executive, and did not see fit to apply rotation where it might have proved a more practical safeguard.

In eleven states the office of sheriff or marshal was made rotative, a fact which is significant because of the light it throws on an otherwise anomalous provision in one of the laws for the organization of the national government. Of all the officers provided for by the great administrative acts of the first Congress, the marshals alone were to serve a fixed term; all the others, even the district attorneys, created by the same act, were to serve during the pleasure of the executive. The reappointment of the marshals was not forbidden, and seems to have taken place as a matter of course; but, standing as a solitary exception to the general rule, this limitation attached to one class of commissions could not have been the result of oversight, but must have had some object, although a search for direct evidence as to its cause has been in vain. In 1821 Madison had quite forgotten it, and supposed that the only precedents for the Four Years' Law of 1820 were to be found in the case of the territorial offices, the regulations for which were carelessly adopted in toto from the Confederation.

The indirect evidence to which one naturally first turns is the practice of the colonies and of England. Virginia and Pennsylvania at one time chose their marshals or sheriffs annually, and so, apparently, did New Hampshire; in the other colonies, either they served indefinitely or the practice is

English precedent may have had unusual weight in this case, for several of the framers of the judiciary act were close students of English law. Blackstone, whose work was certainly consulted, says that the under-sheriffs, whose functions would most resemble those of the marshals, could serve but one year, under heavy penalty. These precedents may explain the provision of the national law, but the widespread application of rotation to this particular office must have rested on some living principle. The fact seems to be that the sheriff or marshal was regarded with suspicion because of his relation to the court, particularly for his part in the selection of the jury. It was this latter function that rendered him more dangerous than the attorney, whose term is seldom regulated.

Rotation, therefore, meant to the men of the formative period the limitation of the number of years during which a man might continuously hold an elective office. Its main objects were to educate as many of the people as possible in the business of political life, and to protect them from the usurpations of men habituated to office. It did not in strictness apply to the appointive offices of the civil service, nor could it logically be extended to very many of them, as few were calculated to give much political experience, or conferred powers liable to become dangerous to the people. By association of ideas, however, rotation in office came to be regarded as an end in itself, and to be regarded as applicable to all offices. The first steps in this extension are apt to be overlooked, for formal rotation was never widely extended by legislative enactment. The simple fixation of a term of office, however, even when reappointment

was not forbidden, was caused by the same democratic feeling that led to rotation, and ultimately produced the same results; this introduction of the fixed term for general administrative offices should, therefore, be regarded as a stage in the evolution of the idea of rotation.

The process of transition is illustrated by the case of the marshal which has just been considered. The office involved powers which might become dangerous to the people, and, as it was elective, rotation was applied to protect them; when appointment was substituted for election, a definite term was provided to take the place of rotation. The justices of the peace were not usually elective, and, as their functions were such as might possibly become dangerous, it was provided that they should be commissioned for fixed periods. In both these cases limitation of term was clearly a substitute for rotation. Associated thus closely with the popular doctrine of rotation, the limited term came to be regarded as essentially democratic, and was soon extended to offices which conferred no dangerous powers. As in the case of rotation, the form remained popular after the principle had been forgotten.

South Carolina was the first state to make this extension on a large scale. It is found in her first constitution of 1776, and was gradually extended, until by 1812 nearly all the offices were limited in term. In this state there were no swiftly succeeding party changes, and the limited term does not seem to have led to a real rotation in office. State politics were exceptionally pure, and there are no indications of an abuse of the patronage, except possibly at the time of the nullification troubles. By 1820 the idea was gaining ground in Pennsylvania, where rotation had always been popular, in Ohio, and in most of the newer states.

Such a movement could not advance far without affecting the national government, and a rapid survey of a few of the laws

relating to the tenure of office will, besides illustrating this fact, put in its proper relation Crawford's Four Years' Bill, the political aspect of which has already been discussed. The Northwest Ordinance, which was continued in force, and the governmental provisions of which were extended to the territory south of the Ohio, by the first Congress, provided a fixed term for governor and secretary, but allowed the judges to hold for good behavior. This precedent with regard to territories was always followed by the Federalists. In organizing the judiciary they made the singular distinction between marshals and attorneys which has already been noted, and the term of directors of the Bank of the United States they fixed in 1791 at one year. At the close of Adams's administration they provided that the justices of the peace in the District of Columbia should hold for five years.

Under Jefferson the tendencies of the times readily found expression, and it is therefore not surprising to find that the demand for short terms was distinctly recognized. The law providing for the government of Louisiana limited the term of the judges to four years, a provision which remained in the various laws for that territory. Not so when Michigan was set off. There the older arrangement was followed, perhaps because the territory was already under the Ordinance of 1787, for in 1812, when Missouri was set off from Louisiana, the limited term was again employed. The practice continued to be irregular. In 1817 Alabama was provided with judges holding for good behavior; while in 1819 Arkansas, a portion of Louisiana, was to have them with a four years' term. In 1817 the office of reporter of the Supreme Court was created for three years only, and was so continued by successive acts until 1842.

The law of 1820, then, did not fail to cast its shadow before, nor did the unfavorable comment which it excited prevent the more extensive application of its principles. In 1822 and 1823 new territorial acts limited the terms of the judges; the Michigan law was changed in this respect, and the surveyors-general were added to the officers holding with a limited tenure.

After the incoming of Jackson the idea of a fixed term seems to have been fully recognized. Indian agents, postmasters, some clerks, the judges for Iowa, were all to have commissions expiring at the end of four years. In 1840 a term of five years was fixed for certain receivers-general of public moneys. The office of commissioner of pensions was created for two-year periods only. A surprising exception occurred in 1836, when the act organizing Wisconsin provided that judges should be appointed to serve during good behavior. Possibly this exception was a result of the great discussion of the civil service which occurred in that year.

Whatever may have been true of Crawford, it is certain that many other politicians wished this limitation to lead to actual rotation in the minor offices. When certain senators requested Adams to send in “different nominations, and to introduce a principle of change or rotation,” they gave voice to a growing demand. It is evident that the end to be obtained was exactly opposite to that which made rotation popular, for every limitation of the term of appointive offices, every new nomination called for, increased the power of the executive; but, though its meaning had completely changed, the word “rotation” continued to have a true democratic ring in popular discussions. Later, a still further twist was given to its significance: offices came to be regarded simply as prizes; and the phrase “rotation in office” served to give a pleasing and respected form to the doctrine that they should be shared as widely and as rapidly as possible.

While the path of the spoils system was thus being prepared, and a theoretical basis for it established, the actual practice was keeping pace with the theory. New York was the first state in which the offices were openly and continuously used for partisan purposes. There the royal appointments had been conspicuously bad, and colonial politics especially active. This experience was probably responsible for the elaborate attempt, made in the first constitution, to limit the appointing power of the executive, and to secure proper recognition for the various

geographical sections. The state was divided into four districts, each represented by an equal number of senators. One senator from each district was elected by the House of Representatives to serve in the council of appointment. With these four the governor was associated, but in exactly what capacity was not made clear by the constitution. The original idea seems to have been that the nominations should be made by the council, and that the governor was to approve or disapprove; but later the governor claimed that the exact reverse was true.

The conditions which governed the working of this machinery of appointment were complicated, and do not readily admit of brief explanation. New York politics had been controlled in the colonial period by family groups or combinations, based largely on land and old manorial privileges. The power of some of these groups was broken by the Revolution, but a large part of the population lacked American political experience and ideals, and were still ready to follow leaders; hence the influence of certain families remained. The Livingstons were the most conspicuous; the Van Rensselaers were prominent for years; and the Schuylers, united with Alexander Hamilton by marriage, dominated the Federalist party. Besides these older families, the long governorship of George Clinton seems to have created a strong permanent interest, which passed to his nephew, De Witt Clinton, while in New York City the democracy was marshalled by such organizations and leaders as Tammany Hall and Aaron Burr. Although Republican formulas were used, politics continued to be a game played by a number of factions, some aristocratic, some democratic, by bosses and patrons. The political situation reproduced in miniature that of England during the eighteenth century.

Probably no system of appointment could have been better devised to continue this condition than that just described for New York. It successfully divested every one of any feeling of responsibility, and opened an opportunity for an endless variety of jobs and deals, combinations and recombinations. The council, although requested by the House of Representatives, refused to publish its minutes. How completely the popular will could be thwarted may be seen later.

From 1777 until 1795 continuously George Clinton was governor. His opponent at his first election was Philip Schuyler, whom he seems to have much respected, and whom he later appointed surveyor-general. Many of the offices had been filled before he entered on his duties, and he wrote that he would remove no man from office without a hearing. Either he or the council of appointment did, however, distress one man by making him third, instead of second, on a list of judges. In answer to some protest from Schenectady, he said that, so far as he had anything to do with appointments, the people of every part of the state should be equally represented. The Tryon County people proposed that they be allowed to choose their own county officers, because three of the council of appointment are “unquainted with us, and the other hath but an imperfect knowlidge of us”; but Clinton would not accede to the request, although the method was actually used in the case of Vermont, the conditions of which were totally unfamiliar to him and his colleagues. He urged the Vermonters to be impartial, and to have regard for merit and abilities; in particular he hinted that they give lucrative offices to refugees. During his first governorship, Clinton had little call to be prescriptive; almost the only opponents in office were those whom he placed there, and it should be said that these were numerous. He closely controlled the council of appointment, and once when the Federalists secured it, he managed to delay a good deal of business until a new council was elected. Although his use of the patronage was moderate, it was skilful, and was one of the chief means by which he maintained his hold on the state.

The establishment of the national government weakened the influence of the state executive in New York, particularly as the new appointments were largely controlled by Hamilton. The latter, however, could not successfully cope with the governor in the use of offices for party purposes; and the Livingstons were driven by the neglect of the national government into alliance with Clinton, who, in spite of lost patronage and the strong government reaction of the early nineties, was able to keep his office until 1795. His successor, John Jay, announced in his first message to the legislature that he would “regard all his fellow citizens with an equal eye, and. . . advance merit wherever found.” Appointments were, however, confined to Federalists. The few direct removals seem to have been made for cause, but some for party purposes were brought about indirectly as follows: the commissions of justices of the peace ran for only three years, but it was customary to recommission the incumbents; under Jay, when the new lists were made out, the names of Clintonians were omitted. It is probable that Jay was deceived into signing these commissions, and that the first intimation he received of their prescriptive character was from the denunciations of the opposition press.

In 1800 the New York Republicans elected a council of which De Witt Clinton was a member. The council promptly claimed for its members a nominating power concurrent with that of the governor, to whom it denied even a veto. This interpretation the Federalists had successfully maintained against Clinton in 1794; and, as has been mentioned, it seems to have been what was intended when the constitution was framed. Jay, however, rejected it; hence during the last part of his term the appointing power was dead-locked, and the curious spectacle

was presented of a Republican council maintaining the correctness of a Federalist precedent, while a Federalist governor, supported by the advice of Clinton, the Republican ex-governor, denounced it as unconstitutional. A constitutional convention called to pass upon the question in 1801 decided in favor of the council. From this time until 1821 the history of the patronage in New York coincides with that of the council of appointment. The establishment of the supremacy of the council greatly facilitated the growth of the spoils system. In 1801 George Clinton was again elected governor; but he was then old, and his nephew, De Witt Clinton, controlled the council and the appointments. He followed quite exactly the tactics of Jefferson, reinstating with a great flourish of trumpets the few who had been removed during Jay's term, and with this start carrying out a genuine proscription, so severe that his uncle refused, in some instances, to sign the minutes of the council. According to the Evening Post, it was still felt necessary to justify removals by traducing the character of those removed; but this sense of shame soon disappeared, and all parties acted openly on the belief that they were held together by the cohesive power of public office, and that to the victors belonged the spoils.

The spoils system was particularly dangerous in New York, because of the enormous extent of the patronage. The council of appointment, according to a report presented in the constitutional convention of 1821, filled directly 8287 military and 6663 civil offices, and compensation was relatively high. It appointed nearly all the state officers, all mayors, and some minor city officers, militia officers, and justices of the peace. The potentialities of this mass of patronage are illustrated by the machine created by Judge Spencer, one of the chief political

figures of the time. Apart from his abilities, which were very good, he owed his influence to his manipulation of the appointments of justices of the peace. In his circuits he would make friends of prominent local politicians, who would recommend to him persons to be appointed justices of the peace. He would obtain the desired commissions at Albany, and this would aid his friends in securing an election to the legislature. Once there, they would vote for a council of appointment which would listen to the suggestions of Judge Spencer.

The danger to the political morality of the state was keenly appreciated, and was one of the chief causes for summoning the convention of 1821. In the new constitution then framed the council of appointment was abolished, and the appointing power was given to the governor by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Only 28 military and 325 civil appointments, however, were left to be thus disposed of; for the vast majority of the minor offices, as those of justice of the peace and the militia offices, were to be filled by direct popular election. The spoils system, however, was too firmly established to yield to these measures. Indeed, the power of the governor was more increased by the abolition of the council of appointment than it was lessened by the withdrawal of the minor offices; and his power over the patronage that remained was still further extended by the fact that the convention fixed a definite term for many of the offices which had previously been held “at pleasure.” The making of the minor offices elective, moreover, did not remove them from the realm of politics; it merely necessitated a new method of management. Manipulation of the legislature ceased to be sufficient; small elective and petty nominating bodies had to be controlled. The want was soon supplied; and the Albany Regency, whose members first perfected a caucus system, and acquired the art of managing directly the small subdivisions of the electorate, obtained as its reward a firm and lasting hold on New York politics.

Almost contemporaneous with the establishment of the spoils system in New York was its triumph in Pennsylvania, but the conditions of its rise were very different. The revolution of 1776 in the latter state was preceded by a long and bitter triangular contest between the Quakers, the proprietary party, and certain democratic elements. The last named won, and in their hour of triumph, organized by George Bryan and advised by Benjamin Franklin, they framed what was probably the most democratic constitution the country has ever known. With a legislature of but one house and a multiple executive, it afforded none of those checks and balances that were considered essential by most statesmen of the period. From the first, therefore, the more conservative elements of the population, under the name of Republicans, fought for a revision. This struggle, which continued until the adoption, in 1790, of a constitution which provided for a stronger executive, served to divide the state into two distinct parties and to prevent the development of such factions as were found in New York; it accounts largely for the early development of party organization and nominating conventions, and, through these, of the spoils system.

Under the first constitution most appointments in Pennsylvania were controlled by the legislature, either alone or in conjunction with the president of the commonwealth who also was practically elected by it. Though no instances of removal have been found, complaint was made that offices were used to win adherents, and it is mentioned as remarkable that Rittenhouse should have held his office of treasurer for thirteen successive years, under legislatures now of one party, now of the other. In 1783 the Council of Censors called the attention of the legislature to the low standard of the holders of public offices. Mifflin, the first governor under the new constitution, began his term by refusing to reappoint certain officers who had served under the old. Although elected as a Constitutionalist, that is,

as of the more democratic party, he soon turned Federalist, and apparently confined his appointments to members of that party.

Such was the situation that Thomas McKean found when, in 1799, he was elected governor, first of the fin de siècle Republican victors. He accused of combination against him the “officers and expectants of office under the President of the United States, not only in Pennsylvania, but in neighboring states,” and he wrote to John Dickinson, “I have been obliged (though no Hercules) to cleanse the Augean stable.” To Jefferson, in July, 1801, he outlined his theory of the civil service. “It appears,” he said, “that the anti-Republicans, even those in office, are as hostile as ever, though not so insolent. To overcome them they must be shaven, for in their offices (like Samson's hair-locks) their great strength lieth; their disposition for mischief may remain, but their power of doing it will be gone. It is out of the common order of nature, to prefer enemies to friends; the despisers of the people should not be their rulers.” The whole tone of this letter indicates that already in Pennsylvania the civil offices were considered as ammunition for political warfare, — a fact which Jefferson must have seen clearly when he wrote to McKean, “Some states require a different regimen from others.”

It is impossible to say exactly how far McKean carried out the policy he sketched. The Eagle reported that, of twenty-one particular appointments, seven were reappointments, one a promotion, and thirteen were new. Probably most of the latter were occasioned by removals. The proscription did not stop with the limits of the governor's authority, for the mayor of Philadelphia is said to have swept all Federalists from office in that city. In making appointments, McKean seems to have consulted his own pleasure; he is said to have been guilty of nepotism and favoritism, and his conduct received much

unfavorable criticism. When, in 1805, the Duane branch of the party broke with him, and he was reëlected a second time by a combination of the Quids and Federalists, he removed from office men whom he had himself appointed. It is unnecessary to follow the successive party changes; the only point of interest is that henceforth the spoils system was accepted in Pennsylvania. Here, as in New York in 1821, the politicians took advantage of the democratical slogan of “rotation in office” to effect a limitation of tenure, and thus to make more easy the path of the spoilsman.

The results of the spoils system in New York and Pennsylvania seem to have been as different as were the circumstances of its growth. The average standard of men called into the New York state service was certainly higher. Nearly always some men of eminent ability were to be found in the civil list. This was partly due to the system of family cliques which made politics fashionable, and also partly to the fact that at first the confusion of factions, and later the even balance of parties, always afforded an opportunity for talent. Many other causes might, of course, be enumerated. Besides this difference there seems to have been more actual corruption in Pennsylvania than in the neighboring state, if we except New York City. Cases of actual sale of office are reported. Niles gives an instance in which a note was actually sued out, the drawer of which had promised to pay the holder a certain sum if he were appointed to a post which the latter was about to resign, the consideration

presumably being the influence of the old occupant with the governor. Naturally the offices of the national government local to these states did not escape the contagion. The charges of Governor McKean and Governor Clinton, and the case of Dr. Leib, have been mentioned; and it is to be presumed that New York and Pennsylvania appointments caused presidents before Jackson's day to pass sleepless nights.

While these two states are most noted and most notable for the abuse of the patronage during this period, they did not stand alone. In many localities where there was no complaint of proscription, the immunity was due to the long and continued domination of one party; the same process was going on, but took the form of the silent exclusion of one party from power. In New Hampshire there was nothing like a spoils system; but in 1801 it was stated that all the vacancies would be filled with Federalists, and again in 1815, when the governor and council belonged to different parties, the appointments were in deadlock. Moreover, the Langdon family controlled and absorbed all the patronage which the Republicans could command. Rhode Island was praised as the land of “steady habits”; attention was called to the fact that one treasurer had served for forty-five years, and that there had been only six secretaries in colony and state during one hundred and twenty-seven years. Our wonder somewhat diminishes when we find that the total annual state expenditure in 1828 was only $8010.75; and the praise is not entirely deserved, for, when the Rhode Island Tammany Society succeeded in carrying the state for the Republicans in 1810, they made a partial sweep. When the Federalists came back the next year they acted magnanimously in leaving some of their opponents in office, and so the evil was stayed.

Of the northern states, Massachusetts was perhaps the most exemplary in the conduct of the civil service; yet there, as in Rhode Island, an element existed eager for the spoils. Under

the early state government there was practically no complaint as to appointments; but when the Federalists began to condemn Jefferson's removals, their opponents replied by accusing them of excluding all Republicans from office. The best vindication of their administration is found in the conduct of James Sullivan, the first Republican governor. He was a strong, conscientious man, and refused to make any removals. The radicals of the party under the lead of Levi Lincoln controlled the executive council and urged proscription, finally putting on file a protest in which they argued that to make no removals “would be arraigning the wisdom and justice of the national administration, a censure and reproach of its most deliberate acts.” Had they been able to add that the conduct of the Federalist governors had been notoriously unfair, Sullivan could hardly have resisted. The next year the executive council was composed of Federalists, who worked harmoniously with Sullivan; and when the succeeding election brought in once more a Federalist governor, no removals were made.

In 1810 another Republican, Elbridge Gerry, was elected governor. In his first term he made no removals and reappointed those whose commissions expired, although he doubtless found the great majority of office-holders Federalists. His course disappointed his followers; and there is probably some grain of truth in the charge of his enemies, that the Republicans made a change of policy a condition of his renomination, — that is, there was probably some understanding as to what course he would pursue. After his reëlection the Republican legislature proceeded to make the path toward a proscription as smooth as possible. They did this by the trick, so often mentioned, of fixing a definite tenure for certain offices, thus hiding the increase of executive patronage under the guise of a democratic innovation. The most important offices to which this

limited term was applied were those of the county sheriffs and the clerks of the county courts. Still further to smooth the path of the governor, the appointment to the offices last mentioned was transferred from the court itself to the governor and council, and it was of course arranged that the commissions should expire during the term for which Governor Gerry had been elected.

When the time came for Gerry to declare himself, the respectable old commonwealth was stirred to its depths. The protests of the Federalists were long and caustic and edifying, while on the Republican side a stern puritanic note was raised by a country minister who preached his election sermon from the text, “But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come to pass that those that ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.” Governor Gerry fulfilled the wishes of his party, and was bombarded with protests from the public in general, and from dispossessed office-holders. He tried to explain and justify his conduct, arguing that the reappointment of the former discredited office-holders would alarm the Republicans; that Democratic principles demanded that, when the offices fell vacant, equal consideration should be shown to all citizens, no preference being extended to incumbents. His extenuations could not, however, do away with the appearance of sharp practice. It must have been hard for the most discriminating Federalist to believe that the limitation of terms was made simply to hasten the triumph of pure democracy, when he saw that about forty members of the

received offices which they had helped to make vacant, not to mention the number given to relatives of members. As the Massachusetts Spy expressed it: —

The Republican administration of Massachusetts was thoroughly discredited by this affair of the patronage combined with that of the gerrymander, and it seems no exaggeration, as the election was so close, to attribute to these scandals the defeat of Gerry, although he personally erred rather in weakness than by desire. Governor Strong, who succeeded him, had his conduct marked out by public opinion. By one order he removed all the Gerry appointees whose predecessors had been removed, and reinstated the old officers.

After the defeat of Gerry no more is heard of the misuse of the patronage in Massachusetts for many years. The Federalist party gradually disappeared, but its exit was marked by no great proscription. The soil of the state was not kind to the spoils system, a majority of the population disapproved of it and did not intend to allow it. We note, however, that a minority were ready and willing to introduce the practice, and were longing after the plums now out of their reach. If they could not command the state, they might, by allying themselves with a national party, obtain control of the federal patronage; and this is just what happened when Jackson was elected.

In the old South, between the Potomac, the Alleghanies, and the ocean, there is less evidence of discontent and new methods. Of South Carolina, Calhoun said in 1849, “Party organization, party discipline, party proscription, — and their offspring, the spoils principle, have been unknown”; and this seems to have been generally true, although Grayson says that during the nullification contest men were bribed “with money, with promises of office.” In Georgia there is a faint evidence

of a desire for the spoils system in 1829, when George R. Gilmer, a representative of the Troup faction, was elected governor through the assistance of the Clarke faction; and the Clarke leaders wished him to divide the patronage between the two bodies of his supporters. He refused, and for a long time there is no mention of the spoils.

The frontier democracy of the West shared the characteristics of both North and South. During this period the people were divided according to personal sympathy and special issues, and consequently party lines were fluctuating. Hence there was no persistent and studied use of patronage to maintain party organization; but offices were none the less used by the leaders to promote the ends of the moment, while the people demanded that all public servants, appointive as well as elective, should be in sympathy with the majority. The conditions of this section are best illustrated by a study of Illinois, for which the career of Ninian Edwards serves as a convenient nucleus, if for no other reason than because the Chicago Historical Society has preserved and published his wide and candid correspondence. It will, moreover, be profitable to discuss the national civil service in Illinois rather than the trifling and disorganized service of the state itself.

Ninian Edwards was a Kentuckian of wealth and ability, belonging to the class of Western politicians who relied more on the impression caused by gentlemanly bearing and eloquence than on a democratic aping of the manners of their constituents. While he made no pretence of being one of the people, he was a close and successful student of their desires. When he went to Washington in 1818 as senator, he was thrown into close contact with William Wirt, a friend of his boyhood, representative of the best traditions of Republican purity. One could not be long in Washington at that time without being drawn into the presidential campaign,

and Edwards soon became an ardent supporter and close friend of Calhoun. In 1823 he had the pleasure of introducing to his leader his brother-in-law, General Duff Green, a Western editor, who afterwards became connected with Calhoun by the marriage of their children. These bonds of friendship and marriage formed the basis of Edwards's political affiliations.

In 1820 Edwards became interested in the appointments to land offices in Illinois. The other senator from the state was Thomas, a political rival, and a supporter of Crawford's candidacy for the presidency. Edwards did not hope to secure all the new positions for his supporters or friends, but he made a vigorous effort to obtain an equal share of the patronage. December 22, 1820, he wrote to President Monroe advising that at least one appointment be made from eastern Illinois, recommending several available candidates, and condemning one of the men who had been already nominated, but whose nomination had not yet been acted on. In conversation with Crawford, the secretary of the treasury, he was more explicit, suggesting that all the nominations be left to the senators to divide equally between their respective parties. This proposition was considered as an attack on the prerogatives of the president, and was vigorously condemned by William Wirt in a long though friendly letter. Wirt said the president thought it wrong that a president of the United States “should permit himself to be influenced by considerations of local parties in a state, and that he should nominate with reference to the local effect on the respective senators in their states. For my own part,” he adds, “I should consider it a species of bribery.” Wirt in another letter made perhaps the first suggestion of “senatorial courtesy.” “There is, indeed, another course which he may take and I think he ought to take; which is, to nominate no person whom either senator declares unworthy of an office, if he can find a deserving man in the state

free from such objection, — unless, indeed, the objection itself is destroyed by being discovered to proceed from a personal feeling, or weakened by flowing from the animosity of local faction.”

Edwards disclaimed all intention of weakening the executive power, but continued to urge that appointments be made on a political basis. He was supported in this last position by his other friend, Calhoun, who wrote to him August 20, 1822: “Since the return of the President to the city, I have urged on his attention the subject of making appointments to the offices to which you referred, and brought before him the names which you mentioned. ... I do trust that he begins to feel the necessity of taking a decided stand. I agree with you that it is much easier to put down the opposition, where its existence is once acknowledged, than to prove, to the satisfaction of the people, its existence. Until the President shall uniformly make the distinction between friends and foes, in his appointments, this cannot be done. If he will not see the opposition. . . the country will be incredulous as to its existence.”

This episode either caused or intensified that enmity to Crawford which blighted Edwards's future career. In 1823 he published in the Republican, the Calhoun organ at Washington, over the signature “A. B.,” a series of attacks on Crawford's management of the treasury department. Then he gave weight to these letters by acknowledging the authorship, but too late, as it seemed, for the charges to be investigated before the presidential election of 1824, or till after he himself had left Washington on a foreign mission. Crawford's friends acted with promptness, recalled Edwards to give testimony, and secured a report which found the charges unsubstantiated. Edwards felt compelled to resign his appointment as minister to Mexico, and was visited with a general popular condemnation, which most historians have considered just. He did not, however, lose the friendship of Calhoun, received a mild support

from John Quincy Adams, and was elected governor of Illinois in 1826.

As governor of Illinois, with intimate friends at Washington, he continued his attempt to influence the distribution of the national patronage within the state. September 21, 1826, he wrote to Clay, now secretary of state, that his election as governor had been opposed by the Jackson men, that his success had given him full control of the situation, and that he could dictate the political allegiance of Illinois. “In regard to the Presidential election,” he adds, “I am entirely uncommitted, and it is my candid opinion that I shall remain so. So long as some of the Jackson papers continue to assail me, as they have done, and are now doing, my pride would never suffer me to be led into any kind of coöperation with them. And so long as Mr. Adams' officers are permitted imprudently to use his own declarations, and conduct to my disadvantage in my own State, as is done in the accompanying handbill, though it may not drive me from neutrality, I never will enlist under his banners. Some of his warmest friends however have more cause of complaint against the author of this handbill. And I am persuaded that the time is at hand, when the wisdom of Mr. Jefferson's course in regard to the patronage of the administration must become too obvious to be any longer neglected.”

Governor Edwards must have felt that he had indeed correctly gauged popular sentiment when but a few days after writing this letter he received one in exactly the same tone from a friend in Philadelphia: “Mr. Adams's magnanimity and forbearance, in regard to non-removals from office, excites my astonishment. . . . I marvel that Mr. Clay is not more on the qui vive, in this respect. . . . This policy not only places weapons in the hands of Mr. Adams's foes, but it takes

weapons out of the hands of his friends.” The administration was obdurate, though courteous. The president wrote to Edwards, August 22, 1827: “Your recommendation for the appointment of a sub-agent at Peoria will, in the event of a vacancy in that office, receive the deliberate consideration to which it is entitled, and a disposition altogether friendly to him as recommended by you. And your opinion in regard to any appointment of the General Government, in the state of Illinois, will be always acceptable to me.”

The desire of the Jackson men in Washington to favor this political trickster was not restrained by the cool temperament and old-fashioned political ideas of John Quincy Adams. John McLean, the postmaster-general, but a supporter of Jackson, wrote to Edwards, November 1, 1826, “Had your letter been received before I re-appointed ——, I should, as I have always done, have appointed the person you named.” September 1, 1826, Duff Green, who was now established in Washington, wrote: “I hear that Anderson is dead. Let Cook [Edwards's most important political friend in Illinois] write immediately to Mr. Adams and demand as matter of right that he be appointed his successor. Mr. Adams will scarce deny him and if nominated I will rely upon Calhoun and my friends in the Senate to get him through without opposition.” Consequently, when Governor Edwards, after a long hesitation, was forced at length to abandon his neutral position, the policy of the two parties with regard to the patronage was one of the reasons which caused him to take his followers to the Jackson camp.

By the year 1828, then, in every state throughout the North and West the spoils system either was established or there existed an element eager to introduce it. The movement was a growing one, and it was but a question of time and circumstance when the custom would become national. The leaders of the Albany Regency, confident by reason of their success at home, looked for widespread influence through the control of

the national patronage. Less powerful state leaders hoped to make secure their local position; while petty politicians the country over longed to see the federal offices change hands as often as did those of the states — at least until they fell into their hands. The people in general, as was pointed out in the last chapter, disliked the life tenure and the aristocratic manners of the officials of the existing régime; those who enjoyed the national salaries should, they thought, be of the people. In the frontier states particularly, the superb self-confidence born of the pioneer's single-handed victory over nature balked not at the full measure of democracy, but boldly asserted that all men were created equally able to fulfil the duties of government offices.

It was an age of lotteries, and the prospect of a complete change in the administration offered to all prizes more dazzling than had ever before been presented to the public. The positive, virile virtue of loyalty to one's friends ranked higher in the moral code of most Americans of that day than the more complex one of justice to one's enemies. To reward his friends and to punish his enemies was the proper conduct of a victor. The Jackson managers, therefore, were wise in emphasizing the demand for a reform in the conduct of the civil service. They proposed to forbid the appointment of congressmen to office, and to introduce rotation in office; but the first measure of reform, and for many the culminating one, was to be the turning out, as one New Yorker expressed it, of the “damned rascals” who supported Adams, and the substitution of original Jackson men in their places. Thus the attack on the civil service appealed alike to the people and to their leaders, to the democracy of the East and of the West. It was a phase, and a most important one, of the great revolution which brought Andrew Jackson into the presidency; and John Quincy Adams's attempt to preserve the ancient decorum of office but hastened its overthrow.


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannay, Patrick


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hanneman, Adriaen


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/236

 HE rose-red city of Chia-ting lives in my memory as a vision of beauty, the most charming (at a distance) of the many charming (always at a distance) Chinese towns that I have seen. Built on a sandstone ledge at the junction of the Ta Tu and Ya with the Min, its crenellated red walls rise almost directly from the water, which, when in flood, dashes high against the foundations. On the northwest the city rises to nearly three hundred feet above the level, and standing on the wall one looks down upon a sea of living green from which rise temple and pagoda, or west across Chia-ting plain, perhaps the loveliest and most fertile spot in the Chinese Eden, and then farther west still to where on the horizon towers Omei Shan, the Holy of Holies of Buddhist China, often, alas, shrouded in mist from base to summit, for this is a land of clouds and rain and floods.

Looking across the river to the great cliffs opposite the town, one discerns dimly, carved on the face of the rock, the wonder of the region, a colossal Buddha more than three hundred feet in height, sitting serenely with his hands on his knees, and his

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/236


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannes, Edward


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hanney, Thomas


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/237

 feet, or what ought to be his feet, laved by the rushing water of the Ta Fo Rapid. As the tale runs, this was the work of a good monk of the eighth century, who spent his life over the undertaking in the hope that by this pious act he might avert the terrible floods that devastated the region. A mighty task boldly conceived and patiently carried out, but still the rain pours down, and still the rivers rise and drown the land.

Baber tells the dramatic story of one of the greatest of the floods. It occurred in 1786 when the fall of a cliff in the Ta Tu dammed the river completely for a time. Warnings were sent to the villages along the banks, and many fled to the hills, but the people of Chia-ting, trusting to their open plain over which the water could spread itself, scouted the warning, and the cry, "Shui lai-la" ("The water is coming"), became the catchword of the hour. Let Baber tell the rest: "It was holiday in Chia-ting some days after the receipt of the notice, and the light hearted crowds which gathered on such occasions were chiefly attracted by a theatrical representation on the flat by the water-side. One of the actors suddenly stopped in the middle of his rôle, and gazing up the river, screamed out the now familiar by-word, 'Shui lai-la!' This repetition of the stock jest, with well-simulated terror, as it seemed to the merry-makers, drew shouts of laughter; but the echoes of the laugh were drowned

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/237


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannibal, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hannington, James


text:
Page:Gertrude Stein (1909) Three Lives.djvu/11

 Mathilda, and went on about it when you went away and then she was so good and worked all right until the middle of the summer, when I got sick, and then she went away and left me all alone and took a place out in the country, where they gave her some more money. She didn't say a word, Miss Mathilda, she just went off and left me there alone when I was sick after that awful hot summer that we had, and after all we done for her when she had no place to go, and all summer I gave her better things to eat than I had for myself. Miss Mathilda, there isn't one of them has any sense of what's the right way for a girl to do, not one of them."

Old Katy was never heard from any more.

No under servant was decided upon now for several months. Many came and many went, and none of them would do. At last Anna heard of Sallie. Sallie was the oldest girl in a family of eleven and Sallie was just sixteen years old. From Sallie down they came always littler and littler in her family, and all of them were always out at work excepting only the few littlest of them all.

Sallie was a pretty blonde and smiling german girl, and stupid and a little silly. The littler they came in her family the brighter they all were. The brightest of them all was a little girl of ten. She did a good day's work washing dishes for a man and wife in a saloon, and she earned a fair day's wage, and then there was one littler still. She only worked for half the day. She did the house work for a bachelor doctor. She did it all, all of the housework and received each week her eight cents for her wage. Anna was always indignant when she told that story.

"I think he ought to give her ten cents Miss Mathilda any way. Eight cents is so mean when she does all his work and she is such a bright little thing too, not stupid like our Sallie.  Sallie would never learn to do a thing if I didn't scold her all the time, but Sallie is a good girl, and I take care and she will do all right."

Sallie was a good, obedient german child. She never answered Anna back, no more did Peter, old Baby and little Rags and so though always Anna's voice was


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/238

 in the roar of a deluge. I was told how the gleeful faces turned to horror as the flood swept on like a moving wall, and overwhelmed twelve thousand souls."

While in Chia-ting I crossed the river one day to see the great Buddha from near by, but it is very difficult to get a good view of the image. The river runs at the foot of the cliff at such a rate that it was all the boatmen could do to keep us off the rocks, and looking down from above, the overhanging shrubs and grasses almost hide it from sight. There is an interesting monastery on the summit of the hill, called the "Monastery of the Voice of the Waters." Here I spent a delightful hour wandering through the neglected garden and looking over the treasures of the place, a rather remarkable collection of drawings and inscriptions engraved on slate, the work of distinguished visitors of past times, some dating back even to the Sung period. There were landscapes extremely well done, others were merely a flower or branch of a blooming shrub, but all bore some classic quotation in ornamental Chinese character. I bought of the priest for a dollar a bundle of really fine rubbings of these engravings. At another monastery a gallery full of images of the "Lo-han," the worthiest of Buddha's disciples, was being tidied up. The variety of pose and expression in these fifty-odd life-size images was extraordinary, and some of them were wonderfully

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/238


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/239

 good, but the workmen handled them without respect as they cleaned and painted. It is a Chinese proverb that says, "The image-maker does not worship the gods; he knows what they are made of."

There is one drawback to the delights of Chia-ting, and that is the climate. To live and work in the damp heat that prevails much of the time must test the strength, and I imagine the Europeans stationed here find it so. Chia-ting boasts two strong Protestant missions, American Baptist and Canadian Methodist, well equipped with schools and a hospital, and they are hard at work making Chia-ting over, body and soul. At the time of my visit they were engaged in a strenuous contest with the representatives of the British American Tobacco Company, and both sides were placarding the town with posters setting forth the evils or the benefits of cigarette-smoking.

Chia-ting is the great point of departure for Mount Omei, thirty miles away, and I stayed only long enough to rearrange my kit and hire coolies for the trip. Again I had a chance to see the strength that the Chinese have through organization. Each quarter of Chia-ting has its coolie hong, and woe betide you if you fall out with your own; you will have difficulty in getting served elsewhere. Fortunately my host was on good terms with his proper hong, and after a good-humored, long-drawn-out discussion I secured the men I wanted.

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/239


text:
Page:Gertrude Stein (1909) Three Lives.djvu/12

 sharply raised in strong rebuke and worn expostulation, they were a happy family all there together in the kitchen.

Anna was a mother now to Sallie, a good incessant german mother who watched and scolded hard to keep the girl from any evil step. Sallie's temptations and transgressions were much like those of naughty Peter and jolly little Rags, and Anna took the same way to keep all three from doing what was bad.

Sallie's chief badness besides forgetting all thee time and never washing her hands clean to serve at table, was the butcher boy.

He was an unattractive youth enough, that butcher boy. Suspicion began to close in around Sallie that she spent the evenings when Anna was away, in company with this bad boy.

"Sallie is such a pretty girl, Miss Mathilda," Anna said, "and she is so dumb and silly, and she puts on that red waist, and she crinkles up her hair with irons so I have to laugh, and then I tell her if she only washed her hands clean it would be better than all that fixing all the time, but you can't do a thing with the young girls nowadays Miss Mathilda. Sallie is a good girl but I got to watch her all the time."

Suspicion closed in around Sallie more and more, that she spent Anna's evenings out with this boy sitting in the kitchen. One early morning Anna's voice was sharply raised.

"Sallie this ain't the same banana that I brought home yesterday, for Miss Mathilda, for her breakfast, and you was out early in the street this morning, what was you doing there?"

"Nothing, Miss Annie, I just went out to see, that's all and that's the same banana, 'deed it is Miss Annie."

"Sallie, how can you say so and after all I do for you, and Miss Mathilda is so good to you. I never brought home no bananas yesterday with specks on it like that. I know better, it was that boy was here last night and ate it while I was away, and you was out to get


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/240

 It was raining when we started from Chia-ting and it kept on all day. Nevertheless, as soon as I was outside the West Gate of the city I exchanged my closed chair for one specially devised for the mountain climb, simply a bamboo chair furnished with a swinging board for a foot-rest. It gave of course no protection against sun or rain, but there was nothing to cut off the view. The closed chair affected by the Chinese seemed to me intolerable, a stuffy box half closed in front, and with mere loopholes on the sides. But fifteen years ago no European woman could ride in anything else without danger of being mobbed.

All the first day we were crossing the beautiful Chia-ting plain, seamed and watered by many rivers and streams. The path wound in and out among splendid fields of maize and fine fruit orchards, and the comfortable looking villages were densely shaded with oak and mulberry trees. It ought to be a prosperous district, for not only is it rich in natural resources, but the throngs of pilgrims that pass through here on their way to the Sacred Mountain must bring a lot of money into the towns.

At the start we kept above the Ta Tu, but later we crossed the Ya, now a strong-flowing tranquil river, and farther along still at the little town of Süchi ("Joyous Stream"), famous for its silk, we came to the Omei, which has its sources on the lower slopes of the Great Mountain. After this the country was

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/240


text:
Page:Gertrude Stein (1909) Three Lives.djvu/13

 another this morning. I don't want no lying Sallie."

Sallie was stout in her defence but then she gave it up and she said it was the boy who snatched it as he ran away at the sound of Anna's key opening the outside door. "But I will never let him in again, Miss Annie, 'deed I won't," said Sallie.

And now it was all peaceful for some weeks and then Sallie with fatuous simplicity began on certain evenings to resume her bright red waist, her bits of jewels and her crinkly hair.

One pleasant evening in the early spring, Miss Mathilda was standing on the steps beside the open door, feeling cheerful in the pleasant, gentle night. Anna came down the street, returning from her evening out. "Don't shut the door, please, Miss Mathilda," Anna said in a low voice, "I don't want Sallie to know I'm home."

Anna went softly through the house and reached the kitchen door. At the sound of her hand upon the knob there was a wild scramble and a bang, and then Sallie sitting there alone when Anna came into the room, but, alas, the butcher boy forgot his overcoat in his escape.

You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life.

Anna had her troubles, too, with Miss Mathilda. "And I slave and slave to save the money and you go out and spend it all on foolishness," the good Anna would complain when her mistress, a large and careless woman, would come home with a bit of porcelain, a new etching and sometimes even an oil painting on her arm.

"But Anna," argued Miss Mathilda, "if you didn't save this money, don't you see I could not buy these things," and then Anna would soften and look pleased until she learned the price, and then wringing her hands, "Oh, Miss Mathilda, Miss Mathilda," she would cry, "and you gave all that money out for that, when you need a dress to go out in so bad." "Well, perhaps I will get one for myself next year, Anna," Miss Mathilda would cheerfully concede. "If we live till then Miss Mathilda, I see that you do," Anna would then answer darkly.

Anna had great pride in the knowledge and possessions


text: Template:MotM header

title: Template:MotM header


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/241

 more broken, but everywhere there was the same careful cultivation, and on all sides we heard the plashsplash [sic] of falling water and the soft whirr of the great Persian wheels busily at work bringing water to the thirsty land; and occasionally we saw men working with the foot a smaller wheel by which the next higher levels were irrigated.

Chen Chia Ch'ang, a small market-town a few miles east of Omei-hsien, made a charming picture, its walls shining white against the dark background of the mountain as we approached it across the green rice-fields. Entering its broad, crowded street we found a theatrical performance going on in an open hall opposite the temple. While my coolies were drinking tea I joined the crowd in front of the stage, which was raised several feet above the street. The play, which was in honour of the village idol, was beyond my comprehension, but the pantomime of the actors was very good. This sort of thing is dearly liked by the Chinese. The players are usually maintained by the village, and a good deal of the unpopularity of the Christian converts arises, I am told, from their unwillingness to contribute because of the so-called idolatrous character of the performance.

The town of Omei where we spent the night seems to exist chiefly for the sake of the thousands of pilgrims who make a last halt here before they begin the ascent of the mountain. Mindful of the many

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/241


text:
Template:MotM header/doc

Header to be used at the top of every Maintenance of the Month process page. Provides consistent links between all pages in the project.

title: Template:MotM header/doc


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/242

 Tibetans who pass through here in the spring, I made a raid upon the shops, but in vain; all that I found was two good pieces of Chinese bronze. The owner and I could not agree on a price, so I left him to think it over until I came by again, and then he was away and his wife did not dare unlock his cases, although I offered her what he had asked. The rain poured down, but a crowd gathered to offer sympathy and suggestions, while my men and I argued with her. Would she not fare worse if her husband found she had missed a sale than if she disobeyed orders? All to no purpose, so I went away emptyhanded. That evening it rained brass pots, but alas, nothing that I wanted.

Usually in these small places the woman seems a very active member of the establishment, and I am told that a man often wishes to consult his wife before making a large deal. The Chinese woman, perhaps, lacks the charm of the Japanese or Indian, but in spite of her many handicaps she impresses the outsider with her native good sense and forcefulness, and I should expect that even more than the other two she would play a great part in the development of her people when her chance came.

It was again raining when we started the next morning; indeed, it seemed a long time since I had felt really dry, but the grey day harmonized perfectly with the soft English beauty of the country that lies

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/242


text:
Page:Gertrude Stein (1909) Three Lives.djvu/14

 of her cherished Miss Mathilda, but she did not like her careless way of wearing always her old clothes. "You can't go out to dinner in that dress, Miss Mathilda," she would say, standing firmly before the outside door, "You got to go and put on your new dress you always look so nice in." "But Anna, there isn't time." "Yes there is, I go up and help you fix it, please Miss Mathilda you can't go out to dinner in that dress and next year if we live till then, I make you get a new hat, too. It's a shame Miss Mathilda to go out like that."

The poor mistress sighed and had to yield. It suited her cheerful, lazy temper to be always without care but sometimes it was a burden to endure, for so often she had it all to do again unless she made a rapid dash out of the door before Anna had a chance to see.

Life was very easy always for this large and lazy Miss Mathilda, with the good Anna to watch and care for her and all her clothes and goods. But, alas, this world of ours is after all much what it should be and cheerful Miss Mathilda had her troubles too with Anna.

It was pleasant that everything for one was done, but annoying often that what one wanted most just then, one could not have when one had foolishly demanded and not suggested one's desire. And then Miss Mathilda loved to go out on joyous, country tramps when, stretching free and far with cheerful comrades, over rolling hills and corn fields, glorious in the setting sun, and dogwood white and shining underneath the moon and clear stars over head, and brilliant air and tingling blood, it was hard to have to think of Anna's anger at the late return, though Miss Mathilda had begged that there might be no hot supper cooked that night. And then when all the happy crew of Miss Mathilda and her friends, tired with fullness of good health and burning winds and glowing sunshine in the eyes, stiffened and justly worn and wholly ripe for pleasant food and gentle content, were all come together to the little house it was hard for all that tired crew who loved the good things Anna made to eat, to come to the closed door and wonder there if it was Anna's evening in or out, and then the others must wait shivering on their tired feet, while Miss Mathilda softened Anna's heart, or if Anna was well out, boldly ordered youthful Sallie to feed all the hungry lot.


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/243

 between Omei-hsien and the foot of the mountain, wooded lanes and glens, little brooks rippling between flowery banks, fine stone bridges spanning the swift green Omei, red temples overhung by splendid banyan trees, and over all the dark mysterious mountain, lifting its crown ten thousand feet above our heads. Did ever pilgrim tread a more beautiful path to the Delectable Mountains? And there were so many pilgrims, men and women, all clad in their best, and with the joy of a holiday shining in their faces. There were few children, but some quite old people, and many were women hobbling pluckily along on their tiny feet; the majority, however, were young men, chosen perhaps as the most able to perform the duty for the whole family. They seemed mostly of a comfortable farmer class; the very poor cannot afford the journey; and as for the rich—does wealth ever go on a pilgrimage nowadays? All carried on the back a yellow bag (yellow is Buddha's colour) containing bundles of tapers to burn before the shrines, and in their girdles were strings of cash to pay their way; priests and beggars alike must be appeased.

After an hour or so we left behind the cultivation of the valley, and entered the wild gorge of the Omei, and after this our path led upwards through fine forests of ash and oak and pine. The road grew steeper and steeper, often just a rough staircase of several hundred steps, over which we slipped and

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/243


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/387

 clean and sanitary and safe in spite of ourselves are simply non-existent. No one inspects the Chinese garbage pail except the pig, or sniffs about for defective drains, or insists upon a man's keeping the roadway in front of his house in order, or compels him to have his children vaccinated. The tyranny of the majority may exist in China, but it is not exercised through the Government. The Chinese as he is today has been fashioned and shaped by long-inherited custom, and the dead hand rests heavily upon him, but he is not a government product, nor is he likely to be just yet.

And the Chinese is democratic in very much the same way that the American is. If there has been an aristocracy at all, it has been essentially one of race, the conqueror and the conquered, and hereditary distinctions have played a very small part in the past outside Peking and the Manchu circle. An official career is, in theory, and in good measure in practice, open to the man who is fit, no matter what his antecedents; and the poor boy has quite as good a chance to make himself fit for all save the highest posts as in America. Nor is there always much to choose between the American and Chinese standard of fitness. To regard success as commander in a small war as qualifying a man for the civil headship of a great industrial state does not seem much more reasonable than to make skill in writing a literary essay the test

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/387


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/244

 scrambled. Rain dripped from the branches, brooks dashed down the mountain-side. We had left behind the great heat of the plain, but within the walls of the forest the air was warm and heavy. But nothing could damp the ardour of the pilgrim horde. A few were in chairs; I had long since jumped out of mine, although as Liu complained, "Why does the Ku Niang hire one if she will not use it?" He dearly loved his ease, but had scruples about riding if I walked, or perhaps his bearers had. Some of the wayfarers, old men and women, were carried pick-a-back on a board seat fastened to the coolie's shoulders. It looked horribly insecure and I much preferred trusting to my own feet, but after all I never saw an accident, while I fell many times coming down the mountain.

The beginnings of Mount Omei's story go back to the days before writing was, and of myth and legend there is a great store, and naturally enough. This marvel of beauty and grandeur rising stark from the plain must have filled the man of the lowlands with awe and fear, and his fancy would readily people these inaccessible heights and gloomy forests with the marvels of primitive imagination. On the north the mountain rises by gentle wooded slopes to a height of nearly ten thousand feet above the plain, while on the south the summit ends in a tremendous precipice almost a mile up and down as though slashed off by the sword of a Titan.

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/244


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/388

 for a high military post. And one thing more, the Chinese, in so many things essentially democratic, abases himself before the power of riches as much as the American, and far more than any other Asiatic.

Now, since the Chinese expects little of the government, he has learned to rely upon himself and his fellows. Like the Englishman and the American, and unlike the Frenchman and the German, he takes the initiative. The Government is weak, the individual or group of individuals strong; the Government does little, so the other side does much. All over the East,—in Burma, Indo-China, the Malay States, the Philippines, wherever he can force an entrance,—you find the Chinese merchant and the Chinese coolie, and it is no state-managed enterprise that takes them there. Just as the British workmen emigrate, or the British merchants seek out new markets, so the Chinese make their way without leading or assistance. And they succeed; throughout all that territory that lies between the China Sea and the Bay of Bengal, whether under British or French rule, unless actually barred out, the Chinese is entrenching himself and prospering. Heavy poll-taxes alone keep him from controlling trade and the labour market in IndoChina; in the Malay States he is ousting the native and running the British merchant and banker hard; in Burma he is getting more and more control of trade, and has even succeeded in convincing the

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/388


text:
Page:Gertrude Stein (1909) Three Lives.djvu/15

 Such things were sometimes hard to bear and often grievously did Miss Mathilda feel herself a rebel with the cheerful Lizzies, the melancholy Mollies, the rough old Katies and the stupid Sallies.

Miss Mathilda had other troubles too, with the good Anna. Miss Mathilda had to save her Anna from the many friends, who in the kindly fashion of the poor, used up her savings and then gave her promises in place of payments.

The good Anna had many curious friends that she had found in the twenty years that she had lived in Bridgepoint, and Miss Mathilda would often have to save her from them all.


text:
Wikisource:Maintenance of the Month/Suggestions

 * See also: To do and To do (admins)

Ideas, criticism and discussion should be entered in the General Discussion page; full suggestions should be added to the table below. The Wikisource community can use this list to select future subjects for Maintenance of the Month. Alternatively, Wikisource users can independently attempt to resolve any of the problems or upgrades listed below.

Key

 * Area provides a brief title to a task while Description goes into more detail.
 * Volunteer(s) lists any Wikisourcers currently working on a specific task. Feel free to add or remove your username at any time.  This is not necessarily linked with the current MotM.
 * Priority ranks how important the maintenance/upgrade is (or would be) to the running of the Wikisource project.
 * Difficulty ranks how complicated it would be to attempt or implement a specific form of maintenance, reform or upgrade, assuming everyone from novices to experienced users were to take part.


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/389

 Burmese woman that he makes a better sort of husband than her charming but indolent countryman.

To turn to smaller matters. I am sure I had once known, but I had certainly quite forgotten, that the Chinese, like ourselves and unlike other people of the East, sit on chairs in preference to sitting on their heels. For it gave me a little comfortable shock of surprise when I saw my coolies at dinner sitting on benches around the table, "just like folks," instead of squatting on the ground after the fashion of my Indian servants. It is a small thing, but it marks the Chinese off from all other Asiatics, and brings him a little nearer the West; and I do not wonder at the touch of pride in the answer of the Chinese student at a New England college when some one remarked on seeing her sitting on the ground, college-girl fashion, with a number of her classmates, that it probably came easier to her to do that, as she was used to it, "Oh, no; I think you must be confusing us with the Japanese. We Chinese learned to sit on chairs two thousand years ago."

But not only do the Chinese sit on chairs like ourselves, but they "dine," just as the West does. Not merely are they ready to spend freely on the pleasures of the table, but they make of dinner a social function, longer and more elaborate, and sometimes even more deadly dull than grand dinners at home. The un-Europeanized Indian, rich or poor, is abstemious;

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/389


text:
Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/390

 he eats simply to satisfy hunger, and dining is with him no more a social occasion than taking a bath at home,—much less, indeed, than his own bathing, which seems to be often both a religious and a social act. He would not think of entertaining his friends at a dinner party. But my coolies at the wayside inns spent jovial hours over their meals, and the gay Manchu or Chinese diners that I watched at the Peking hotel might have been Americans at the Waldorf-Astoria, barring a few details. And it seemed very Western, only it was quite Chinese, for the chief of the Kalgan Foreign Office to express his regrets that my stay was too short for him to arrange a dinner party for me.

So much has been said of the differences that exist in China, of the wide separation between North and South and West, that I had expected to find repeated there the conditions of India. But externally nothing of the sort was observable. To begin with, almost all Chinese have black hair, almost all wear blue clothes, and almost all eat rice. And the obvious differences between the natives of Chihli and the natives of Kwangtung, for example, are no greater than you would note in passing from Maine to Mississippi; while in Yunnan and Szechuan, just as in the Western States of America, you seem to be among people from "back East," only slightly modified by different conditions of climate and life.

title: Page:A Wayfarer in China.djvu/390