With a whole people interested in political discussion no conceivable abuse of patronage could balk them of their will, and the spoils system would disappear because the factitious importance of office-holders and office-seekers, favored by the defects of our present form of administration, could no longer obscure the vastly greater question of the public weal. This change in the popular attitude toward politics would be sufficient of itself to seal the doom of the spoils system; but if other influences were needed they would be found in the new relations of the ministry to the legislature and the people, since a cabinet bound to take the initiative in great lines of policy and required to give an account of itself to a hostile minority in Congress would have little time and less stomach for the nice apportionment of political rewards to partizan deserts. Finally, should we adopt the principle of a ministry dependent upon the support of a majority in the Lower House, the possibility of two changes of administration within a single year would make the spoils system, as we now have it, unendurable and unworkable. Indeed, it may be questioned whether a rigid application of the spoils system by the administration coming into office in March 1889 would not place the evils of that system in a peculiarly glaring light, when it is remembered that a very large number of those who would be asked to make places for party workers unversed in the routine of public office have exercised their official functions for barely four years, and but recently acquired the skill so necessary to the efficient transaction of business.