posts; and
how could such a permanent appropriation be justified? The pioneer
Democrat believed that he was as competent to do the work as any member
of an office-holding clique, so that when he came into power, he
corrected what seemed to him to be a genuine abuse in the traditional
way of distributing the American political patrimony. He could not
understand that training, special ability, or long experience
constituted any special claim upon a public office, or upon any other
particular opportunity or salary. One democrat was as good as another,
and deserved his share of the rewards of public service. The state could
not undertake to secure a good living to all good democrats, but, when
properly administered, it could prevent any appropriation by a few
people of the public pay-roll.

In the long run the effect of the spoils system was, of course, just the
opposite of that anticipated by the early Jacksonian Democrats. It
merely substituted one kind of office-holding privilege for another. It
helped to build up a group of professional politicians who became in
their turn an office-holding clique--the only difference being that one
man in his political life held, not one, but many offices. Yet the
Jacksonian Democrat undoubtedly believed, when he introduced the system
into the Federal civil service, that he was carrying out a desirable
reform along strictly democratic lines. He was betrayed into such an
error by the narrowness of his own experience and of his intellectual
outlook. His experience had been chiefly that of frontier life, in which
the utmost freedom of economic and social movement was necessary; and he
attempted to apply the results of this limited experience to the
government of a complicated social organism whose different parts had
very different needs. The direct results of the attempt were very
mischievous. He fastened upon the American public service a system of
appointment which turned political office into the reward of partisan
service, which made it unnecessary for the public officials to be
competent and impossible for them to be properly experienced, and which
contributed finally to the creation of a class of office-holding
politicians. But the introduction of the spoils system had a meaning
superior to its results. It was, after all, an attempt to realize an
ideal, and the ideal was based on a genuine experience. The "Virginian
Oligarchy," although it was the work of Jefferson and his followe