Official Patronage
(Speech in the Senate, 1835.)
Their object is to get and hold office; and their leading political maxim... is that, “to the victors belong the spoils of victory!”8... Can any one, who will duly reflect on these things, venture to say that all is sound, and that our Government is not undergoing a great and fatal change? Let us not deceive ourselves, the very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party; and that system of political morals which regards offices in a different light, as public prizes to be won by combatants most skilled in all the arts and corruption of political tactics, and to be used and enjoyed as their proper spoils—strikes a fatal blow at the very vitals of free institutions.
Notes
8 William L. Marcy of New York, in the Senate, 1831.