In pursuance of the same policy, a
report proposing restrictions upon the executive patronage was made
in the Senate (1826) by a committee which included Benton and Van
Buren. This was accompanied by six bills, transferring a large share
of the patronage from the president to the congressmen, and
proposing the repeal of the four-year tenure of office act.
[Footnote: Fish, Civil Service, 73; McMaster, United States, V.,
432.] Six thousand copies of this report were printed for
distribution, and the Puritan president, so scrupulous in the matter
of the civil service that he disgusted his own followers, found
himself bitterly attacked throughout the country as a corrupt
manipulator of patronage.
The first fully organized opposition, however, was effected in the
debates over Adams's proposal to send delegates to the Panama
Congress, for here was a topic that permitted combined attack under
many flags. In the spring of 1825 the ministers of Mexico and
Colombia sounded Clay to ascertain whether the United States would
welcome an invitation to a congress [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI.
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