At the
farther end of the Avenue was another department so vast in its extent
and so varied in its functions that few of the really great practical
workers of the land would have accepted its responsibility for ten times
its salary, but which the most perfect constitution in the world handed
over to men who were obliged to make it a stepping stone to future
preferment. There was another department, more suggestive of its
financial functions from the occasional extravagances or economies
exhibited in its payrolls,--successive Congresses having taken other
matters out of its hands,--presided over by an official who bore the
title and responsibility of the Custodian and Disburser of the Nation's
Purse, and received a salary that a bank-President would have
sniffed at. For it was part of this Constitutional Inconsistency and
Administrative Absurdity that in the matter of honor, justice, fidelity
to trust, and even business integrity, the official was always expected
to be the superior of the Government he represented.
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