Circa1865

Like Jefferson, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was well-aware of the corrupting and polarizing effect that political parties, patronage and news publications exerted on the American public. He observed that their object was “under form of law to take from others and appropriate to themselves more than would otherwise be so taken and appropriated.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.org

Calhoun on the Evils of Government Patronage

“Were a premium offered for the best means of extending to the utmost the power of patronage, to destroy the love of country, and to substitute a spirit of subserviency and man-worship; to encourage vice and discourage virtue, and, in a word, to prepare for the subversion of liberty and the establishment of despotism, no scheme more perfect could be devised; and such must be the tendency of the practice, with whatever intention adopted, or to whatever extent pursued.

If to this difficulty . . . there be added others of a formidable character . . . .on the part of government, in large communities , to seize on and corrupt all the organs of public opinion, and thus to delude and impose on the people; the greater tendency in such communities to the formation of parties on local and separate interests . . . some conception may be formed of the vast superiority which that organized and central party, consisting of office-holders and office-seekers, with their dependents, forming one compact, disciplined corps, wielded by a single individual, without conflict of opinion within . . . and aiming at the single object of re-taming and perpetuating power in their own ranks, must have, in such country as ours, over the people, a superiority so decisive that it may safely be asserted that, whenever the patronage and influence of the government are sufficiently strong to form such a party, liberty, without a speedy reform, must inevitably be lost.

Every lover of this country, and of its institutions, be his party what it may, must see and deplore the rapid growth of patronage, with all its attendant evils, and the certain catastrophe which awaits its further progress, if not timely arrested.

Among [the patronage interests], the first and most powerful is that active, vigilant and well-trained corps which lives on the government, or expects to live on it, which prospers most when the revenue is the greatest, the treasury the fullest, and expenditures the most profuse, and, of course, is ever the firm and faithful supporter of whatever system shall extract the most from the pockets of the rest of the community, to be emptied into theirs.”

(The Life of John C. Calhoun, Gustavus M. Pinckney, Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1903, pp. 106-110)