The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1861-03-25
BALTIMORE.
MONDAY, MARCH %, 1861.

'''NSN-N
truth, Just now, in our own political affairs.
From the beginning of the secession movement
until the present time, one leading and almost
exclusive solution of its causes has been found,
throughout the North and among Northern SYM
patbizers here and elsewhere in the alleged desire
of Southern politicians to monopolize place and
plumber Driven, by the success of the Republi-
can party, and the increasing preponderance of
Northern majorites, from all share in the control
of the existing Federal Government, they have
determined, it is said, to build up Confederacy
of their own, where the honors and emouments
of office shall belong to them and their adherents
altogether. To motives and purposes so wholly
base, and not TO any of the Constitutional causes
publicly proclaimed, it is boldly and broadly as
serted, and from the force of assertion has grown
to be extensively believed, that the Confederacy
which now stands face to face with the UNITED
STATES, is mainly indebted for its origin. There
are many good people, even here in Maryland,
who have adopted the conclusion of which we
speak, as a matter of absolute faith, and who can
see nothing in the revolution to which they apply
it, but a wicked scheme of selfish and designing
men, who have sacrificed the UNION transmitted
us by our fathers, upon the altar of their personal
ambition and cupidity. We do not propose at
this time to consider the wantonness and folly of
such wholesale imputations, in view Of the whole
circumstances by which the Southern movement
has been FASTENED aud consolidated. We desire
merely to present single phase of the subject,
with the contrasts which belong TO it.
In the Congress assembled at Montgomery,
TO tba Tho to
States of America" were to be found, unques.
tionably, not only the leading and representative
minds of the seeded States, but the very individ-
uas, of all Others, to whom the corrupt and am
bilious purposes alluded to have been most con-
spicuously ascribed, and by whom, if by any, they
would have been most certainly entertained and
carried out. Assembled together, as their enemies
will have it, in order to lay out field Of future
dominion and profit for themselves and their
adherentS-they were under every conceivable
temptation to establish the popularity of the
government they were inauguratng and interest
every professional politician and hungry office
seeker in its establishment, by multiplying places
for distribution and widening and smoothing the
avenues to the public crib. The efficacy Of such
a system they must have known, ifthey had learn
ed anything from the operations of the govern
ment they had left and they had been the knaves
and demagogues they charged with being,
their political scheme would have lacked not one
of those corrupting attractions, by which the sys-
tenn they were abandoning appeals so strongly to
the vilest and most selfish of human impulses
Upon examining the Constitution which they have
promulged the most reckless of their assailants is
bound to confess that their course has been
directly to the contrary. There is not a defect
By which the Constitution of the UNITED STATES
has left door open to plumber, which has not
been sought out and remedied 10 the extent of
human foresight and ingenuity. Those vast lazar-
houses of corruption the Hobbies of Congress, have
been cleansed and closed. Extra allowances; in
terna improvements; post-office extravagances;
Congressional bounties; johbing tariffs; unlimited
appropriations; have all been put an end to- But
more than all and above all, and challenging the
appreciation of every sensible and honest man in
the land, is the humiliation of oice.hunting and
its hydra-headed denominations, by the express
constitutional provision that all civil officers ex-
cept heads Of department and members of the
diplomatic body, shall hold their places
during good behavior This one amendment if
it stood altogether alone, would be sufficient, of
ITSELF to establish, beyond peradventure, not only
the patriotism and wisdom Of those who framed
it, but their genuine and manly devotion to the
highest and truest principles of republican gov
eminent. IF there be one thing which, more
than all others, has poisoned the very springs OF
political integrity, through our whole State and
Federal organization, it is the disgracetul system
of removals and appointments at every change of
the appointing power. Nothing has tended more,
or can tend one-half so much, TO drive decent men
from public place, and demoralize and degrade
those who seek or enjoy it. If the antagonistical
sections of the country could be reconciled to-day,
and the slavery question be removed forever from
the political and even the controversial arena, we
do not hesitate TO say, that the 'spoils system
alone, if it were TO continue, would be n
rock upon which the Federal Government
must, sooner or later, inevitably split, in
ignominious and hopeless shipwreck. From the
hour that it was practically inaugurated
by General JACKSON, it has gone on increas.
ing in extent and debasing influence, until it has
perverted the government, from its noble constitu-
tonal functions, into vast machine for official
jobbing AID plumber. Political combinations
which, twenty, nay ten, years ago, would have
shocked US by their depravity, now grown so
familiar, under its operation, that we treat them
as matters of course. Every day we see
and tolerate, il political affairs, what, in
private life, would be revolving to the
least sensitive integrity. Instead of dividing,
as of old, upon questions of public policy or
genuine constitutional opinion, our parties are now
little more than rival combinations for the dstri-
button of the public patronage. The very salaries
and contracts of the government are pawned be-
forehand, to purchase the devotion of those who
are to handle and divide them. There is not
department of the Federal Administration into
which the iniquiiy does not find IFS way. 1t no
inmates Presidents and constructs platforms-it
concerts political alliances and foments and per-
petuates sectional dscords. 1t has power TO do
any thing evil, for it has already sunGered the Re-
public. If the President of the UNITED STATES
had no power to remove the army of federal Office
holders and fill their places with his adherents
who believes that Mr.. LINCOLN would ever have
been President? If nobody in the Northern States
had expected Il place under Mr.. LINCOLN, or his
successors, does any one suppose that the organi-
cation of the Republican party would have been
regarded so essential, that it must be kept up at
the expense of the UNION? No one, surely, is
weak enough to believe that the Republican party
is really held together by conscience and horror
of sin, or that it would ever have been formed,
but for the purpose of concentrating a Northern
organization and getting the plumber of the gov
eminent into Northern hands. Is not, in fact,
all party organization among us, as gen.
eral rule, mere continuance and arrange
ment to get place and power-not, either, for
high objects, such as worthy ambition might
confess, but for purposes the most mercenary and
sordid? II has come to this, in fine, that no sens-
BILE man is willing to trust professional politician
and yet professional politicians, great or small,
control the destinies and hopes of the nation.
These evils and such as these-involving not
only the decency, but the very existence of our
institutions, under the Constitution of the UNITED
STATEs-the men assembled at Montgomery-d de-
cried and denounced as having broken up the UNION
only for its spoils-have cut up, with one
nlow' at the very root. They have made their
record for history-let US see how the other
record compares with it.
Every report from Washington, whether 1t come
from friend or foe, describes the rush of hungry
once seekers there, as unprecedented in the annals
of what Gen. SCoTT might call our nrationo1
saturnalia." Before the White House and The
Departments, the beleaguering thousands have
taken their places as an army at siege. A Repub-
lican Journal excuses the decrease of four Thousand