CHAPTER XVII.

REQUISITES FOR OFFICE.

None fit for certain offices under fifty years of age-Should hold office for four years only, except clerks, &c.-Qualifications-Causes of incompetency for offices-Huckstering politicians-Thomas Jefferson's letter -Veto power.

ALL elections by electoral colleges and legislative bodies, and all appointments by presidents, governors, collectors, &c., except military and naval officers, ambassadors, consuls, clerks, servants, and laborers, and to fill vacancies till the next election, should be forever abolished.

All officers, except those last named, should be elected by a general ticket, and by the direct vote of a plurality of the ballots cast by all the white male, free, native, lawful voters within the township, city, county, State, &c., for which the office is intended, including the executive, legislature, and judi ciary of the general, State, and territorial governments.

This would not inequitably interfere with a general representation in the choice of national officers, by their election by the people of the district for which they are intended.

The district judges, collectors, and port-master would be selected by a portion, instead of the whole people of the United States, as is now the theory.

There is, however, more show than substance in this; and the apparent inconsistency would be entirely reconciled by its reciprocal character and results; for, while the citizens of Boston, or Massachusetts, being but an integral part of the whole people, elect a judge, collector, or port-master, this supposed incongruity would be counterbalanced by the exercise of like power by the citizens of every other district; the services of these agents would be executed for the special accommodation of those by whom they were elected.

Their selection or nomination would be from amongst, and by those whom they immediately serve, and their commissions would come from the whole people.

The President, and Vice-President, and secretaries of the departments of the United States, and the governors and executive officers of the States, the senators and representatives in Congress, and all judicial and legislative officers, should be native born, fifty years old, hold their offices but four years, and be afterwards ineligible for the same office.

The chief executive officers of every government should be of similar birth and age, and derive their appointment from the same plurality of suffrage, and hold it for the same term, and with like ineligibility, and serve out their term of office together, so as to secure their harmony and usefulness.

Where a district has more than one judge, or legislator, the half, or the one-third of them, according to their number, should succeed each other every two years.

Politics and office are used as business and trade. Persons in power seldom act on the merits of a case; the truth and right but seldom govern; private influences prevail; a friend to reward, an enemy to punish, if not a corrupt inducement to incite, is ever in the way of impartial and independent action with incumbents superficially qualified, with loose morals, carelessly selected, and holding place to secure its continuance, or as a stepstone for another post. There is now none of the ancient dignity of government.

The solemnities of authority are treated with derision, and there is an entire relaxation in the discipline and decorums of society.

One reason for this perhaps is that children are not thoroughly educated and prepared for their trades and callings, and are not made workmen and masters, with well grounded and resolute habits of industry and morality.

They pass their minority in idleness, and are suffered to go into the world but half fitted for its responsibilities.

Hence the swarms of lazy and presumptuous adventurers who precipitate themselves, unqualified, into the professions; the bankrupts from every half-tried pursuit at public meetings seeking office; the presidents, secretaries, and directors of banks, insurance offices, brokers and stock-jobbers, who have failed in business, because they have not had stability to prepare themselves for, and patient resolution to follow up, the pursuit or trade with which they began life.

No man should be employed by the people who has shown himself unfit to manage his own affairs; a lawyer, a doctor, or

any one whose learning, industry, and brains are inadequate to command a respectable and honorable patronage, is unfit to be a judge, or to hold any office.

A storekeeper, a mechanic, or any other man, who has not had industry, skill, and prudence to succeed in his own business has not enough to be a corporation director, an officer in the custom house, a member of the legislature, or to hold any other office; and yet the most important offices are too often given to such men.

If a man will not behave himself so as to command the confidence and patronage of his fellow-citizens, and thereby be enabled to make a respectable living in his private trade or pursuit, he is unfit to undertake the business of the public. There is no instance in which such men have not made bad officers. They do nothing themselves, throw it upon lads for clerks; no system or order is preserved, and everything is neglected.

The same rules which require suitable preparation for a trade or profession apply with greater reason and force to an appropriate education for public duty. Mere party faith, importunity, and personal popularity should have no weight in selections for office; the first and fundamental inquiry should be as to his integrity and his entire fitness for all the duties and details of the office.

Nothing can more effectually bring the man, and his office, and the law, into contempt, than an ignorant, incompetent, or dishonest incumbent.

Lazy and ignorant mechanics push themselves into the offices of justices of the peace, county officers, judicial, legislative, and other stations, without any suitable qualification.

What would be thought of an alderman who committed a defendant to prison for contempt, because he offered to enter an appeal from his judgment?-or of one who avowed that he always heard the parties patiently through, and then entered judgment according to law; that is, according to his rule of law, which was the form of a judgment entry for plaintiff, given him by his attorney when he took his commission, and in which there was no blank to fill up but the amount, in which he said he could not err, for he always made the plaintiff name the sum, and thus he was clear of all responsibility, leaving the parties to their remedy by an appeal?

Or what opinion of the intelligence of the magistracy would

come from a trial, sentence, and commitment, by a justice, of a thief to the state prison for two years?

And yet all these blunders have been made by three several magistrates, all of whom were honest, amiable, and respectable. One was a shoemaker, another was a baker, and the last was a tailor; and each held respectable rank in his trade, but was wholly ignorant of the duties of his office.

They appeared to be very much mortified when told that they had done wrong; but they showed the law, as they called it, for their judgments; and the explanation could not be beaten into their heads.

Such men might do for constables or watchmen.

Uneducated, and very young men, mere politicians, intrigue themselves on to the bench, where they blunder, flounder, and expose themselves, to the grievous annoyance and reproach of the country.

Legislatures are annually filled with ignorant and verdant blockheads, who bring scandal on the State, and retard its prosperity.

The pugnacious resolution and impudent pertinacity with which these miserable drones urge themselves into office are incredible.

They visit rum-holes, and sit on fire-plugs, smoke, and drink, and drive about with the lowest dregs, get up crusades, petty combinations, and false reports about competitors, sneer at those who are fit, call them proud and aristocratic, deal out all sorts of promises for rewards, and thus, by dint of shameless tricks and intrigues, get themselves a party nomination by delegates chosen at places, and amidst violence and crowds, where decent men cannot go, and where, if they do go, they are hustled away, or cheated out of their delegation.

Stage-drivers, grog-sellers, low, lazy mechanics, jockeys, and blacklegs, boldly canvass for and get offices, the duties of which they never pretend to know or execute.

An ignorant shoemaker, hatter, carpenter, mason, and cigarmaker, scarcely able to write their names, and wholly unfit, are fraudulently pushed into the offices of sheriff, register of wills, recorder of deeds, clerk of a court, member of the legislature, and even into Congress.

The uneducated sons of a shoemaker, a tailor, butcher, and a drayman, with their trades half learned, join debating and Thespian clubs, spout, and rave about at minor theatres, poli

tical meetings-work, that is, half work at their trades, while they go through a fraudulent preliminary study of law with, and obtain a certificate from, some hired pettifogger; are put back for ignorance; then beg, and urge, and implore, and whine, and blubber about, till from pity they are licensed; lick the feet, and do the dirty jobs for faction-men; and get on to the bench, where they form collusions, and turn all their power and influence to axe-grinding, read the news, whistle, sing, buy lottery-policies, and hold sidebar cabals, during the trial of cases, which they never listen to, understand, or decide; put down, and persecute every intelligent man of firmness and honor in their way; keep about them a swarm of unprincipled, ignorant, and extortionate cubs, spies, pimps, and masters, to do their infamous bidding; grant tavern-licenses to the abandoned keepers of brothels, gambling, and dance-houses, huts, and dens on the wharves, and in holes and alleys, in open violation of law, and against the remonstrances of thousands of respectable people.

Thus, to secure gangs for ward-elections, to make forced returns of delegates, forced nominations, forced and fraudulent elections of miscreants, and caitiffs, convert to their own use the funds and power of the county and State, have roads opened, and damages assessed by their own juries, graveyards, and front lots sold on speculation; and boldly and openly defy, oppress, and plunder the community.

These are a few of the literal disastrous and pernicious consequences which have come from putting into office men without education or morals; base-born, low-bred, ignorant, and impudent adventurers, and whose only object is to accommodate their private and sordid passions.

Public affairs should not be confided to ignorant men, of loose, idle, and extravagant habits, of questionable skill and doubtful judgment.

That office emoluments are so low as to prevent men of merit from taking them, is untrue. The competitors are crafty and importunate, the people are too careless and credulous, and thus too many ignorant and mere fourth-rate men in mind are selected.

Including the Judges of the Common Pleas, the customhouse, the post-office, and all the city and county offices in Philadelphia, there is not now, perhaps, a man of them all who ever made, or was fit to make, by his profession, or his in