For the mission to England,
he first selected Clinton, and after his refusal he persuaded Rufus
King to take the post. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 523.] Since
King's acceptance of the senatorship at the hands of the Van Buren
element in New York, he had been less a representative of the
Federalists than in his earlier days; but the appointment met in
some measure the obligations which Adams owed to supporters in that
party.
Far from organizing party machinery and using the federal office-
holders as a political engine, he rigidly refused to introduce
rotation in office at the expiration of the term of the incumbent--a
principle which "would make the Government a perpetual and
unintermitting scramble for office." [Footnote: Ibid., 521.] He
determined to renominate every person against whom there was no
complaint which would have warranted his removal. By this choice he
not only retained many outworn and superfluous officers and thus
fostered a bureaucratic feeling, [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 76-
78.
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