Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ of increased revenue and patronage are more than realized. Instead of fifty millions of annual revenue during the lifetime of persons then living, and then deemed a visionary speculation, I saw it rise to sixty millions before I ceased to be a senator; and saw all the objects of patronage expanding and multiplying in the same degree, extending the circle of its influence, and, in many cases, reversing the end of its creation. Government was instituted for the protection of individuals – not for their support. Office was to be given upon qualifications to fill it – not upon the personal wants of the recipient. Proper persons were to be sought out and appointed – (by the President in the higher appointments, and by the heads of the different branches of service in the lower ones); and importunate suppliants were not to beg themselves into an office which belonged to the public, and was only to be administered for the public good. Such was the theory of the government. Practice has reversed it. Now office is sought for support, and for the repair of dilapidated fortunes; applicants obtrude themselves, and prefer "claims" to office. Their personal condition and party services, not qualification, are made the basis of the demand: and the crowds which congregate at Washington, at the change of an administration, supplicants for office, are humiliating to behold, and threaten to change the contests of parties from a contest for principle into a struggle for plunder.

      The bills which were reported were intended to control, and regulate different branches of the public service, and to limit some exercises of executive power. 1. The publication of the government advertisements had been found to be subject to great abuse – large advertisements, and for long periods, having been often found to be given to papers of little circulation, and sometimes of no circulation at all, in places where the advertisement was to operate – the only effect of that favor being to conciliate the support of the paper, or to sustain an efficient one. For remedy, the bill for that purpose provided for the selection, and the limitation of the numbers, of the newspapers which were to publish the federal laws and advertisements, and for the periodical report of their names to Congress. 2. The four years' limitation law was found to operate contrary to its intent, and to have become the facile means of getting rid of faithful disbursing officers, instead of retaining them. The object of the law was to pass the disbursing officers every four years under the supervision of the appointing power, for the inspection of their accounts, in order that defaulters might be detected and dropped, while the faithful should be ascertained and continued. Instead of this wholesome discrimination, the expiration of the four years' term came to be considered as the termination and vacation of all the offices on which it fell, and the creation of vacancies to be filled by new appointments at the option of the President. The bill to remedy this evil gave legal effect to the original intention of the law by confining the vacation of office to actual defaulters. The power of the President to dismiss civil officers was not attempted to be curtailed, but the restraints of responsibility were placed upon its exercise by requiring the cause of dismission to be communicated to Congress in each case. The section of the bill to that effect was in these words: "That in all nominations made by the President to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by an exercise of the President's power to remove from office, the fact of the removal shall be stated to the Senate at the same time that the nomination is made, with a statement of the reasons for which such officer may have been removed." This was intended to operate as a restraint upon removals without cause, and to make legal and general what the Senate itself, and the members of the committee individually, had constantly refused to do in isolated cases. It was the recognition of a principle essential to the proper exercise of the appointing power, and entirely consonant to Mr. Jefferson's idea of removals; but never admitted by any administration, nor enforced by the Senate against any one – always waiting the legal enactment. The opinion of nine such senators as composed the committee who proposed to legalize this principle, all of them democratic, and most of them aged and experienced, should stand for a persuasive reason why this principle should be legalized. 3. The appointment of military cadets was distributed according to the Congressional representation, and which has been adopted in practice, and perhaps become the patronage of the member from a district instead of the President. 5. The selection of midshipmen was placed on the same footing, and has been followed by the same practical consequence. 6. To secure the independence of the army and navy officers, the bill proposed to do, what never has been done by law, – define the tenure by which they held their commissions, and substitute "good behavior" for the clause which now runs "during the pleasure of the President." The clause in the existing commission was copied from those then in use, derived from the British government; and, in making army and navy officers subject to dismission at the will of the President, departs from the principle of our republican institutions, and lessens the independence of the officers.

      CHAPTER XXX.

      EXCLUSION OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FROM CIVIL OFFICE APPOINTMENTS

      An inquiry into the expediency of amending the constitution so as to prevent the appointment of any member of Congress to any federal office of trust or profit, during the period for which he was elected, was moved at the session 1825-26, by Mr. Senator Thomas W. Cobb, of Georgia; and his motion was committed to the consideration of the same select committee to which had been referred the inquiries into the expediency of reducing executive patronage, and amending the constitution in relation to the election of President and Vice-President. The motion as submitted only applied to the term for which the senator or representative was elected – only carried the exclusion to the end of his constitutional term; but the committee were of opinion that such appointments were injurious to the independence of Congress and to the purity of legislation; and believed that the limitation on the eligibility of members should be more comprehensive than the one proposed, and should extend to the President's term under whom the member served as well as to his own – so as to cut off the possibility for a member to receive an appointment from the President to whom he might have lent a subservient vote: and the committee directed their chairman (Mr. Benton) to report accordingly. This was done; and a report was made, chiefly founded upon the proceedings of the federal convention which framed the constitution, and the proceedings of the conventions of the States which adopted it – showing that the total exclusion of members of Congress from all federal appointments was actually adopted in the convention on a full vote, and struck out in the absence of some members; and afterwards modified so as to leave an inadequate, and easily evaded clause in the constitution in place of the full remedy which had been at first provided. It also showed that conventions of several of the States, and some of the earlier Congresses, endeavored to obtain amendments to the constitution to cut off members of Congress entirely from executive patronage. Some extracts from that report are here given to show the sense of the early friends of the constitution on this important point. Thus:

      "That, having had recourse to the history of the times in which the constitution was formed, the committee find that the proposition now referred to them, had engaged the deliberations of the federal convention which framed the constitution, and of several of the State conventions which ratified it.

      "In an early stage of the session of the federal convention, it was resolved, as follows:

      "'Article 6, section 9. The members of each House (of Congress) shall be ineligible to, and incapable of holding, any office under the authority of the United States, during the time for which they shall respectively be elected; and the members of the Senate shall be ineligible to, and incapable of holding any such office for one year afterwards.'

      "It further appears from the journal, that this clause, in the first draft of the constitution, was adopted with great unanimity; and that afterwards, in the concluding days of the session, it was altered, and its intention defeated, by a majority of a single vote, in the absence of one of the States by which it had been supported.

      "Following the constitution into the State conventions which ratified it, and the committee find, that, in the New-York convention, it was recommended, as follows:

      "'That no senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any office under the authority of the United States.

      "By the Virginia convention, as follows:

      "'That СКАЧАТЬ