“Not only were the officers of the government permitted to become active workers in party politics, but they were made to understand that active partisanship was one--perhaps the principal one--of their duties. Political assessments upon office holders with all the inseparable scandals became at once a part of the system. The spoils politician in office grasped almost everywhere the reins of local leadership in the party.... The spoils system bore a crop of corruption such as had never been known before. Swartwout, the collector of customs at New York, one of General Jackson’s favorites, was discovered to be a defaulter to the amount of nearly $1,250,000, and the District Attorney of the U. S. at New York to the amount of $72,000. Almost all land officers were defaulters.... Officials seemed to help themselves to the public money, not only without shame, but in many cases apparently without any fear of punishment.” (_Life of Clay_, Vol. II, pp. 183, 184.) This from Roosevelt referring to 1838: “The Jacksonian Democracy was already completely ruled by a machine, of which the most important cogs were the countless office-holders, whom the spoils system had already converted into a band of well-drilled political mercenaries. A political machine can only be brought to a state of high perfection in a party containing very many ignorant and uneducated voters; and the Jacksonian Democracy held in its ranks the mass of the ignorance of the country.” (_Life of Benton_, p. 185.)