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And it furnished, as Turner adds in summary, the "national hero, the flower of frontier training and ideals." While the mere fact of office-holding does not indicate the place or source of power, it is noteworthy that the Presidents since the war to the election of Wilson Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley, Harrison, and Taft all came from this valley.
He had taken another step in his unexampled career of office-holding by accepting from President Van Buren the office of register of public lands at Springfield, the growing town in Sangamon County which the legislature had just made the capital of the State, and where, within a few years, Shields, McClernand, Lincoln, and other rising young men were gathered.
It must be fair, then, and for the purposes of this article not premature, to point out that the measure which is especially known as "civil-service reform," and which has been occasionally recognized in the party platforms along with other generalities, is one whose essence is the creation of a permanent office-holding class. Substantially, this is what it amounts to.
Besides, the men of the frontier were simple-hearted and unambitious, desiring nothing so much as to be "left alone," and willing to make a compact of forbearance with the whole world excepting only the Indians. They had never been accustomed to the restraints of municipal regulations, they were innocent of the unhealthy pleasures of office-holding, or the degrading impulses of office-seeking.
An office-holding oligarchy thus grew up, with traditions and prestige, and known, as in Upper Canada, by the name of the 'Family Compact. Nowhere did this system seem so strong as in Nova Scotia; nowhere did its leaders show so much ability or a higher sense of honour; nowhere did they endeavour to govern the province in so liberal a spirit.
Is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left to the foreign element? That the native American should prefer any other work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press, with loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office for a brief term? But finally Peter rose.
That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens.
Such is "politics" or "politicising." "Politics" as a source of livelihood takes many forms, some less legitimate than others. The most usual source of office-holding is the humble work of the clerk, handyman or messenger, responsible for carrying out the nagging routine of government. Beyond this common labor of public service are public servants skilled in their several professions.
Moreover, he had held back his whole chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had secured valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities from that really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act of summary vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has branded him in history as Cruel O'Reilly.
The fate of the Government was involved; its general record was brought up for review; party ambitions and passions were stirred to the utmost. Fifteen years, of office-holding had meant the accumulation of many scandals, a slackening in administrative efficiency, and the cooling by official compromise of the ardent faith of the Liberalism of the earlier day.
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