288 ANDREW JACKSON 



Such people would have gone hungry a great while 

 before he would have fed them from the public crib. 

 It was strongly urged upon him once that he should 

 make room in the custom-house for some persons, 

 who, as it was alleged, in helping to elect him Presi- 

 dent, had virtually saved the country. " Indeed," re- 

 plied Jefferson, " I have heard that the city of Rome 

 was once saved by geese ; but I never heard that these 

 geese were made revenue officers." During the forty 

 years between April 30, 1789, and March 4, 1829, the 

 total number of removals from office was seventy-four, 

 and out of this number five were defaulters. During 

 the first year of Jackson's administration the number of 

 changes made in the civil service was about two thou- 

 sand. Such was the sudden and abrupt inauguration 

 upon a national scale of the so-called " spoils system." 

 The phrase originated with W. L. Marcy, of New York, 

 who in a speech in the Senate in 1831 declared that 

 " to the victors belong the spoils." The man who said 

 this of course did not realize that he was making one of 

 the most infamous remarks recorded in history. There 

 was, however, much aptness in his phrase, inasmuch as 

 it was a confession that the business of American pol- 

 itics was about to be conducted upon principles fit 

 only for the warfare of barbarians. The senator from 

 New York had been reared in a poisonous atmosphere. 

 The "spoils system" was first gradually brought to 

 perfection in the state politics of New York and Penn- 

 sylvania, and it was inevitable that it should sooner or 

 later be introduced into the sphere of national politics. 

 There can hardly be a doubt that if Jackson had never 

 been President, similar results would have followed at 

 about the same time. If Adams had been reelected, the 



