have them now—would you trust a bank conducted upon such principles with your deposits, and would you like to travel on such a railroad?
The Jeffersonian Administration would, therefore, as a matter of common-sense, never think of applying to the far more important Government business a rule which would be scouted as criminally absurd when applied to the business of a railroad or a bank. It would go further, and consider as an improper removal the non-reappointment of a meritorious officer to whose place the existing four-year-term law applies, and it would do all in its power to bring about the repeal of that mischievous law. It would remember that this law was in its very inception a fraud practised upon the people. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe, instigated its enactment under the pretence that it would give him better control over officers handling the public money, a pretence the futility of which became soon apparent. His real purpose was to strengthen his hold upon the officeholders and to make them further, as a political machine, his chances for the Presidency. The bill was passed without debate and Monroe signed it in a hurry without consideration. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter of November 29, 1820, addressed to James Madison, called it “the mischievous law vacating every four years nearly all the executive offices of the Government.” And thus he described, with admirable foresight, its effects:
It saps the Constitutional and salutary functions of the President, and introduces a principle of intrigue and corruption which will soon leaven the mass, not only of Senators but of citizens. . . . It will keep in constant excitement all the hungry cormorants for office, render them, as well as those in place, sycophants to their Senators; engage these in eternal intrigue to turn out one and put in another, in cabals to swap
