In 1841 Harrison succeeded Van Buren; there was a change of parties; the Democrats went out, and the Whigs, who had inveighed against the spoils system, took their places. But the expected reform did not come off; it was no longer a question of parties or policies; the electorate itself had been hopelessly degraded by manhood suffrage, and the leaders of both parties were unable, if they wished, to purify politics; they were obliged either to adopt manhood suffrage low methods, or go out of public life. In vain Clay, the great Whig leader, thundered in Congress against the spoils system. “In solemn words of prophecy, he (Clay) painted the effects which the systematic violation of this principle (Government is a trust), inaugurated by Jackson, must inevitably bring about; political contests turned into scrambles for plunder; a system of universal rapacity, substituted for a system of responsibility; favoritism for fitness; a Congress corrupted, the press corrupted, general corruption; until the substance of free government having disappeared, some pretorian band would arise, and with the general concurrence of a distracted people, put an end to useless forms.” (Schurz, _Life of Clay_, p. 335, Vol. I.) Clay’s influence in Congress was enormous, but he was powerless to cure the inherent rottenness of a manhood suffrage constituency. The pressure of the spoilsmen upon the Whig Harrison’s administration equalled or surpassed that upon the Democrat Jackson, and is said to have caused Harrison’s death. It is thus described by Ostrogorski: “When Harrison took up his abode in the White House, the rush became tremendous; the applicants literally pursued the ministers and the president day and night; they besieged the former in their offices or in their homes, and even in the streets; a good many candidates for offices slept in the corridors of the White House to catch the president the next morning as soon as he got up.” (_Democracy and the Party System in the U.S._, p. 36.) Schurz thus describes the operation of the manhood suffrage spoils system as it had developed in ten or twelve years after its introduction in 1829: