the
Worcester district would have gladly continued me in the
public service for ten years longer, if I had been so minded.
I presided over the District Convention that nominated my
successor. Before the convention was called to order the
delegates crowded around me and urged me to reconsider my
refusal to stand for another term, and declared they would
gladly nominate me again. But I persisted in my refusal.
I supposed then that my political career was ended. My home
and my profession and my library had an infinite attraction
for me. I had become thoroughly sick of Washington and politics
and public life.

But the Republican Party in Massachusetts was having a death
struggle with General Butler. That very able, adroit and
ambitious man was attempting to organize the political forces
of the State into a Butler party, and to make them the instrument
of his ambitions. He had in some mysterious way got the ear
of General Grant and the control of the political patronage
of the State, so far as the United States offices were concerned.
I had denounced him and his methods with all my might in a
letter I had written to the people of Massachusetts, from
which I have already made extracts. I had incurred his bitter
personal enmity, and was regarded with perhaps one exception,
that of my older brother Judge Hoar, as his most unrelenting
opponent.

The people of Massachusetts were never an office-seeking
people. There is no State in the Union whose representatives
at the seat of Government have less trouble in that way, or
that gives less trouble to the Executive Departments or to
the President. I have had that assurance from nearly every
President since I have been in public life. And the people
of Massachusetts have never concerned themselves very much
as to who should hold the Executive offices, small or large,
so that they were honestly and faithfully served, and that
the man appointed was of good character and standing. The
reform which took the civil service out of politics always
found great favor in Massachusetts. But since General Butler,
in some way never fully explained to the public, got the ear
of the appointing power he seemed to be filling all the Departments
at Washington with his adherents, especially the important
places in the Treasury. The public indignation was deeply
aroused. Men dreaded to read the morning papers lest they
should see the announcement of the removal from the public
servic