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hear of a more cynical confession? And the man who made this confession has for many years been the almost omnipotent leader of the Republican party in the State of New York, who ruled the Legislature according to his political interests, whose favor or disfavor made Republican politicians rise or fall, and who controlled the most important part of the Federal appointments in that State, even under the present administration. He is said to be now succumbing to a new State-boss stronger than he.
We must at least thank him for having furnished us
a most instructive object-lesson as to the effect the spoils
system, the patronage-trade, is apt to exercise upon the
leadership and the moral spirit of political parties—for the
Hon. Thomas C. Platt is by no means the only potentate
of his kind. There are others in other States fully as
powerful and fully as vicious. There will be such in every
State if the demoralizing influences which are bred and stimulated,
among other causes, by the spoils system, are much
longer permitted to corrupt and degrade political parties.
The general, or even as extensive, use of the public offices
and employments as party spoil cannot fail to make our
party-contests, which should be only struggles for the
prevalence of different principles and policies, in great-
measure scrambles for public plunder; it is almost certain
in the long run to make the most selfish and
unscrupulous element in the party organization, which is
usually the most alert and active, the most influential
one, and then that leader of the party who succeeds in
becoming the general distributor of the spoil, will, as
paymaster, easily develop into the boss with a well-organized
machine of spoils-fed henchmen behind him. The party
leader will then be, not what he should be, a leader of
opinion, but a mere captain of organization; the organization
will be held together by what is picturesquely called
“the cohesive power of public plunder,” and it will be
controlled by the ever alert element of the habitual spoils
hunters. This means the utter demoralization of party
activity, making the party unfit to be an agency of good
democratic government—in fact, making it a danger to
democratic institutions.
