w,
the friends of Mr. Calhoun and of Mr. Adams united in imputing its
authorship to Mr. Crawford, whose Department included far the largest
share of Executive patronage. The accusation was openly made that
Mr. Crawford intended to use the offices of the Treasury Department to
promote his political fortunes; and the friends of Mr. Calhoun and of
Mr. Adams, seeing that their chiefs had no corresponding number of
offices to dispose of, found their resource in virtuous denunciation of
the selfish schemes projected by Mr. Crawford. But there appears to
have been no substantial ground for the imputation--the official
registers of the United States showing that between the date of the
Act and the year 1824 (when Mr. Crawford's candidacy was expected to
ripen) only such changes were made in the offices of the Treasury
Department as might well have been deemed necessary from causes of age
and infirmity already referred to. Besides, Mr. Crawford during all
this period was in ill-health, with ambition chastened, and strength
constantly waning.

President John Quincy Adams, following Mr. Monroe, maintained the
conservative habit already established as to removals,--depriving very
few officers of their commissions during the four years of his term,
and those only for adequate cause. With the inauguration of General
Jackson in 1829, and the appointment of Mr. Van Buren as Secretary of
State, the practice of the Government was reversed, and the system of
partisan appointments and removals, familiar to the present generation,
was formally adopted. It became an avowed political force in those
States where the patronage of the Government was large. It had no
doubt a special and potential influence in the political affairs of
New York where the system had its chief inspiration, where the
"science" of carrying elections was first devised and has since been
continuously improved. The system of partisan removals was resisted
by Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Webster, and all the opponents of the
Democratic party as then organized; but it steadily grew, and became
the recognized rule under the well-known maxim proclaimed by Mr.
Marcy in the Senate of the United States in 1832: "_To the victors
belong the spoils_." In two years President Jackson had made ten
times as many removals as all his predecessors had made in forty years.

When the Whigs came into power by the election of 1840, President
Harrison discussed the question of patronag