Marked among the spectacles which followed, and kindred in character
with the appropriation of the Cabinet as individual property, was
the appropriation of the offices of the country, to which I refer in
this place even at the expense of repetition. Obscure and undeserving
relations, marriage connections, personal retainers, army associates,
friends of unknown fame and notable only as personal friends or friends
of his relations, evidently absorbed the Presidential mind during
those months of obdurate reticence when a generous people supposed
the Cabinet to be the all-absorbing thought. Judging by the facts, it
would seem as if the chief and most spontaneous thought was how to
exploit the appointing power to his own personal behoof. At this period
the New York Custom-House presented itself to the imagination, and a
letter was written consigning a military dependant to the generosity of
the Collector. You know the rest. Dr. Johnson, acting as executor in
selling the distillery of Mr. Thrale, said: “We are not here to sell a
parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond
the dreams of avarice.”[118] If the President did not use the sounding
phrase of the great English moralist, it is evident that his military
dependant felt in that letter all the “potentiality” advertised in the
earlier case, and acted accordingly.
It is not necessary to say that in these things there was departure
from the requirements of law, whether in the appointment of his Cabinet
or of personal favorites, even in return for personal benefactions,
although it was plainly unrepublican, offensive, and indefensible. But
this same usurping spirit, born of an untutored egotism, brooking no
restraint, showed itself in another class of transactions, to which I
have already referred, where Law and Constitution were little regarded.