“For the first time in contemporary accounts much was made of the vile corruption of politics, the charge being with the growth of a class of professional politicians and the great increase of wealth that money was used improperly, both for bribing of voters and for accomplishing the miscarriage of justice.” (_Development of United States_, p. 209.) Under the united influence of manhood suffrage and its offspring the spoils system, corruption, rascality and official incapacity increased enormously as time went on. The historian Rhodes writing of the decade from 1850 to 1860 says that “plentiful evidence of the popular opinion that dishonesty prevailed may be found in the literature of the time.” And that, “the executive and legislative departments of the national government were undoubtedly as much tainted with corruption between 1850-60 as they are at the present time.” (1904.) Senator Benton of Missouri writing in 1850 said: “Now office is sought for support and for the repair of dilapidated fortunes; applicants obtrude themselves, and prefer claims to office. Their personal condition and party services, not qualification, are made the basis of the demand; and the crowds which congregate at Washington, at the change of an administration, supplicants for office are humiliating to behold, and threaten to change the contest of parties from a contest for principle into a struggle for plunder.” (_Thirty Years in Congress_, Vol. I, p. 81.) And further: (p. 163). “I deprecate the effect of such sweeping removals at each revolution of parties and believe it is having a deplorable effect both upon the purity of elections and the distribution of office, and taking both out of the hands of the people and throwing the management of one and the enjoyment of the other into most unfit hands. I consider it as working a deleterious change in the government.” About this time public officials were assessed for political contributions; afterwards the offices were put on sale. “Under Buchanan (1857-1861) was established the practice of taxing federal office holders. The politicians after the war carried it to perfection. There were five categories of assessments on salaries; federal, state, municipal, ward and district.” (Ostrogorski; _Democracy_, p. 68.)