Here I leave for the present this enormous unrepublican pretension, waiting to hear if it can again find an apologist. Is there a single Senator who will not dismiss it to judgment?
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.”