The New York herald., 1876-03-08
How Personal Government Has Grown
Up in the Republican Party.


In discussing a question which causes such
profound apprehension and alarm and occa-
sions such doubts as to the stability of our
free popular institutions, we make the re-
publican party prominent only because that
party has been so long in power. There is no
good reason for believing that the democratic
party would have escaped these great dangers
and scandals if it had had the same oppor-
tunities and been exposed to the same temp
tations' The underlying causes of the
hideous corruption which infects official life
are too deeply seated to permit us to fix the
responsibility on any one man or on any
particular party, except on the ground that
this man and this party have happened to
have control of the government during
the period when the upas tree Of cor
ruption has put forth its blossoms
and filled the political atmosphere with
| its poisonous odors. We cannot know
whether the democratic party and demo-
cratic President would not have yielded
to the same evil influences if they had been
subject to the same powerful temptations
We have never had any personal hostility
to President Grant, but we had an early and
clear perception of the political currents on
which he was drifting, and when we
raised the cry of warning and sent it
far and wide through the country it
was moro because we feared the system
than the man. II the circumstances Of the
country and the opportunities of its Chief
Magistrate were the same now rs in the time
of Jackson or Fillmore or Buchanan the
warnings of the HERALD against C@sarism and
third term would have been as wild and
chimerical as our contemporaries deemed
them when they were first uttered. But we
saw what our inconsiderate critics failed to
see, that the country had passed into new
era and that General Grant was exposed
to kind of temptation which had never
beset his predecessors. We must own that
we did not consider him man of super
human virtue. 1t would be absurd to ex-
pect that the ordinary run of our Presidents
will differ from the common type of able,
ambitious men. 1t seemed evident that in
the era which had dawned any selfseeking
politician of the stamp usually elected
to the Presidency could not be ex-
pected to withstand the new assaults
on his virtue and we feared that General
Grant would be borne away by the tide. The
American press and people, who at first
greeted our warnings with chorus of SCOTS,
gradually came round to our view, and for
the last eighteen months the third term ques-
tion has been the staple of political discus
sion in all the organs of public opinion.
Until the indictment of General Babcock
there was no abatement Of the third term
alarm, but the recent astounding exposure of
Secretary Belknap has, perhaps, given q
quietus to the discussion in that particular
form.
Our contemporaries, who were reluctantly
forced to admit the exceeding gravity of the
third term question. never seemed to under
stand the real grounds on which the HERALD
started the discussion. They stuck in the
bark of the question and did not penetrate
to it's pith. They looked upon President
Grant as ON exceptional man, and failed to
take account of the exceptional circum-
stances which were the real source of dan
ger. The constantly accommodating evidence
that General Grant was seeking third NOM
ination was the only thing which changed
their SCOTS to fears, and none of them
evinced any perception of the logic of events
and the deeper philosophy which prompted
the alarm and made it reasonable.
When the HERALD started the cry it saw,
or at least thought it saw, that the altered
condition of the country exposed President
- Il
never beset his predecessors. The seeds of
our present dangers were sown in the begin
ming of Jacksons administration. He was
the first President who introduced the spoils
system by making wholesale removals of his
political opponents and filling their places
with his partisans. The federal patronage
was then so moderate that the evil was
scarcely felt but wise and foreseeing
statesmen pointed out the consequences
to which the spoils system inevitably
tended In 1885 committee of the Senate,
of which Mr.. Calhoun was chairman, made
q vigorous report, forcibly predicting the
consequences of the spoils system. "If we
turn our eyes to the government" said Mr..
Calhoun, I'VE shall find that, with this in
crease of patronage, the entire character and
structure of the government itself is under
going great and fearful change, which, if
not arrested, must, at no distant period,
concentrate oil its powers in single depart
ment." This result might have been
postponed for long period if the
civil war had not intervened to null
tiply the dangerous patronage of the
federal government five or six fold. This
enormous increase was a hotbed in which all
the worst tendencies of the spoils system
were forced into premature growth; it
hastened the results which sagacious states
men predicted at the beginning The
HERALD recognized the depth of their in