The state could not undertake to secure a good living to all good democrats, but, when properly administered, it could prevent any appropriation by a few people of the public pay-roll.
In the long run the effect of the spoils system was, of course, just the opposite of that anticipated by the early Jacksonian Democrats.

It merely substituted one kind of office-holding privilege for another.

It helped to build up a group of professional politicians who became in their turn an office-holding clique--the only difference being that one man in his political life held, not one, but many offices.

Yet the Jacksonian Democrat undoubtedly believed, when he introduced the system into the Federal civil service, that he was carrying out a desirable reform along strictly democratic lines.

He was betrayed into such an error by the narrowness of his own experience and of his intellectual outlook.