The power of removal, under the influence of a false political philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty, fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison, honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction. Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding _pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our history, are none the less great. [3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able discussions of "Executive Patronage." I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States Senate: Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and every person in office is an agent and servant of the people. Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the Government or the country.