The Jacksonians finally accepted the reality that most officeholders in America could no longer be leisured aristocrats serving out of a sense of honor and an obligation of rank. Instead, as experience since the Revolution had shown, officeholders in democratic America were likely to be “interested” men who could not be trusted to behave virtuously without bureaucratic checks and regulations. By today’s standards Jacksonian government was minuscule, but its character was modern. It established many of the principles underlying our present democratic bureaucracy. It helped to make democracy
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