From one typical abuse I pass to another. From a dropsical Nepotism
swollen to elephantiasis, which nobody can defend, I pass to
Gift-Taking, which with our President has assumed an unprecedented
form. Sometimes public men even in our country have taken gifts,
but it is not known that any President before has repaid the patron
with office. For a public man to take gifts is reprehensible; for
a President to select Cabinet councillors and other officers among
those from whom he has taken gifts is an anomaly in republican annals.
Observe, Sir, that I speak of it gently, unwilling to exhibit the
indignation which such a Presidential pretension is calculated to
arouse. The country will judge it, and blot it out as an example.
There have been throughout history corrupt characters in official
station; but, whether in ancient or modern times, the testimony is
constant against the taking of gifts, and nowhere with more force than
in our Scriptures, where it is said: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment,
thou shalt not respect persons, _neither take a gift_; for a gift doth
blind the eyes of the wise.”[101] Here is the inhibition, and also the
reason, which slight observation shows to be true. Does not a gift
blind the eyes of the wise? The influence of gifts is represented by
Plutarch in the life of a Spartan king:--
“For he thought those ways of entrapping men by gifts and presents,
which other kings use, dishonest and inartificial; and it seemed to
him to be the most noble method and most suitable to a king to win
the affections of those that came near him by personal intercourse
and agreeable conversation, since between a friend and a mercenary
the only distinction is, that we gain the one by one’s character
and conversation, the other by one’s money.”[102]
What is done under the influence of a gift is mercenary; but whether
from ruler to subject or from subject to ruler, the gift is equally
pernicious. An ancient patriot “feared the Greeks bearing gifts,”[103]
and these words have become a proverb; but there are Greeks bearing
gifts elsewhere than at Troy. A public man can traffic with such only
at his peril. At their appearance the prayer should be said, “Lead us
not into temptation.”
The best examples testify. Thus, in the autobiography of Lord Brougham,
posthumously published, it appears that at a great meeting in Glasgow
five hundred pounds were subscribed as a gift to him for his public
service, to be put into such form as he might think best. He hesitated.
“This required,” he records, “much consideration, as such gifts were
liable to be abused.” Not content with his own judgment, he assembled
some friends to discuss it,--“Lord Holland, Lord Erskine, Romilly, and
Baring,”--and he wrote to Earl Grey, afterward Prime-Minister, who
replied:--
“Both Grenville and I accepted from the Catholics of Glasgow a
piece of plate--of no great value indeed--_after we were turned
out_ in 1807.… If you still feel scruples, I can only add that
it is impossible to err on the side of delicacy with respect to
matters of this nature.”
It ended in his declining to accept anything more than the small top of
a gold inkstand.[104]
In our country Washington keeps his lofty heights, setting himself
against gift-taking as against nepotism. In 1785, while in private
life, two years after he ceased to be commander-in-chief of our armies
and four years before he became President, he could not be induced to
accept a certain amount of canal stock offered him by the State of
Virginia, as appears in an official communication:--
“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Assembly
yesterday, without a dissenting voice, complimented you with fifty
shares in the Potomac Company and one hundred in the James River
Company.”[105]
Fully to appreciate the reply of Washington, it must be borne in mind,
that, according to Washington Irving, his biographer, “some degree of
economy was necessary, for his financial concerns had suffered during
the war, and the products of his estate had fallen off.”[106] But he
was not tempted. Thus he wrote:--
“How would this matter be viewed by the eye of the world, and what
would be the opinion of it, when it comes to be related that George
Washington has received twenty thousand dollars and five thousand
pounds sterling of the public money as an interest therein?…
Under whatever pretence, and however customarily these gratuitous
gifts are made in other countries, should I not thenceforward be
considered as a dependant?”[107]