Ministers and administrators see them
approaching, and have to bear all the annoyance and trouble of
attempting to ward them off.
The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of
administration is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care
that the persons who have to decide them shall be the proper
persons. Even this they cannot advantageously do by nominating the
individuals. There is no act which more imperatively requires to be
performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the
nomination to employments. The experience of every person conversant
with public affairs bears out the assertion, that there is scarcely
any act respecting which the conscience of an average man is less
sensitive; scarcely any case in which less consideration is paid to
qualifications, partly because men do not know, and partly because
they do not care for, the difference in qualifications between one
person and another. When a minister makes what is meant to be an
honest appointment, that is when he does not actually job it for his
personal connections or his party, an ignorant person might suppose
that he would try to give it to the person best qualified. No such
thing. An ordinary minister thinks himself a miracle of virtue if he
gives it to a person of merit, or who has a claim on the public on any
account, though the claim or the merit may be of the most opposite
description to that required.
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