712 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
these methods, hut more often the idea of rotation was satis¬ 
fied by simply putting a limit to the term of office, instead of 
leaving the tenure to the pleasure of the appointing officer. 
That this simple limitation of term was in large measure due 
to the popular belief in rotation is shown in the author’s 
“Civil Service and the Patronage,” pp. 83-86. 
Where the simple date is given, the change indicated was 
constitutional; where the date is proceded by L, the change 
was effected by ordinary legislation. Each line, from left to 
right, is made complete by ditto marks, and where they are 
not given the provision of earlier date lapsed or was repealed. 
Offices have been grouped in some cases where functions were 
similar and titles only differed. All such cases are indicated 
by the addition of etc. 
The table shows the early rise of the idea and its steady de¬ 
velopment up to 1835, when it became absorbed by the domi¬ 
nating practice of using the offices as ammunition in party 
warfare. It shows also that while in some states it existed as 
a tenet of theoretical democracy, as for instance in South 
Carolina,, which was the most comprehensive and steady-going 
disciple of rotation in legislation and yet did not debase its 
civil service to political uses; in others, as Pennsylvania and 
Hew York, rotation in legislation served as the handmaid of 
the growing spoils system, by allowing political changes with¬ 
out an alarming resort to actual removal. 
