Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/344

286 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS bringing Jackson forward as a candidate for the presidency in 1821. Green and Hill were editors of partisan newspapers. Kendall was a man of considerable ability and many good qualities, but a "machine politician" of the worst sort. He was on many occasions the ruling spirit of the adminis tration, and the cause of some of its most serious mistakes. Jackson s career as president cannot be fully understood without taking into account the agency of Kendall; yet it is not always easy to assign the character and extent of the influence which he exerted. A yet more notable innovation was Jackson s treatment of the civil service. The earlier presi dents had proceeded upon the theory that public office is a public trust, and not a reward for partisan services. They conducted the business of government upon business principles, and as long as a postmaster showed himself efficient in dis tributing the mail they did not turn him out of office because of his vote. Between April 30, 1789, and March 4, 1829, the total number of removals from office was seventy- four, and out of this num ber five were defaulters. Between March 4, 1829, and March 22, 1830, the number of changes made in the civil service was about 2,000. This was the inauguration upon a national scale of the so-called "spoils system." The phrase originated with Wil liam L. Marcy, of New York, who in a speech in