their own necks? He keenly feels that here his moral independence as a legislator is at stake—that moral independence which, if he is to do his duty to his country, can never be surrendered. But can he afford to maintain it at the risk of losing all the dearly-bought results of the management of the patronage in his district, and even of turning his own handiwork against himself? No; unless there be in him some of the stuff of which martyrs are made, the moral independence of the legislator will die as a sacrifice at the shrine of that patronage. And to many legislators making that sacrifice, it will hardly occur that it bears all the features of a bargain essentially corrupt.
Here I will stop, although the catalogue of perplexities, embarrassments, seductions, debasements and abandonments of their true duty, which the spoils system imposes upon members of Congress, is by no means exhausted. But it is enough. Will you say that the picture I have drawn is, after all, only a creation of fancy? I call it a picture of the possibilities brought forth by the spoils system; but only too much of it is a picture of reality. Indeed, I have known Senators and members of the House of Representatives who with good conscience and just pride could affirm that they never made a direct or indirect promise of office to bring about their nomination or election; that they never recommended any person for appointment whom they did not honestly believe well qualified for the place to be filled, and that they never depended upon the
