influence of such a class. The worst element at Washington in 1861, the one that hated Lincoln most bitterly, and gave him the most trouble,—the one that resisted the new order of things most angrily and obstinately, and put the safety of the city into most serious peril,—was the body of old office-holders, poisoned with length of official life, scoffing at the people as intrusive intermeddlers; men in whom something like a fixed tenure of office had killed all sympathy with the democratic tendency of our system.
Some might fear that our government could not be carried on without this patronage.
Hamilton is quoted as saying, "Purge the British Government of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government."
The British Government has been pretty well purged, and its popular branch comes now very near to equality of representation. Yet, spite of Hamilton's prophecy, the machine still works, and works better and better for every successive measure of such purification and reform.
So our government, relieved of the weight of this debasing patronage, would disappoint the sullen forebodings of Tory misgiving, and rise to nobler action.
