Our Little Life; Essays Consolatory and Domestic with Some Others (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt: ...who knew him exactly what he had pretended to me. For a long time, the good men who form the working staff of this Institution were put into their offices by the will of certain Individuals. These Individuals, having stolen a good many other things, had likewise stolen (in many cases) this power to make such appointments. I do not mean that any living persons were the Thieves: the stealing was actually done by their predecessors and ancestors about three centuries back. The technical name of the system of appointment by individual will, was Patronage. And to say the truth, the system worked uncommonly ill. It worked just so intolerably ill that an intelligent Nation arose and said the system must cease. The Nation had to say that very often, very loudly, and very long: terrible strifes and miseries arose through the Patrons cleaving to their property: but in the end the system ceased. It did not cease nicely. It ceased because a certain political change had come, which made it ruinous to maintain it longer. And some human beings who had done their little best to maintain the system in its most high-handed form, were the first to cry out against it when they knew they durst not keep it up longer. Of course, the system was just as good when they cried it down, as it had been when they cried it up. But such was the nature of these human beings. Patronage, broadly speaking, meant that a man should be stuck into a place, not because he deserved it, not because he was fit for it: but because he had influential friends. In that country, a patron would (in some instances) laugh in your face if you were weak enough to fancy that any consideration of the man's fitness weighed with him at all. He wanted to provide food and raiment (at the expense of other people) for ...