Politics & Power Quote by Martin Van Buren

A president talking like a bookkeeper with a cudgel: Van Buren frames corruption not as a moral lapse but as a basic violation of the state’s wiring. The sentence is built to make prosecution sound inevitable. “It seems proper, at all events” affects modesty while quietly foreclosing debate; he’s not thundering, he’s “being reasonable.” Then he tightens the screws: “early enactment,” “similar to that of other countries.” That’s a two-part maneuver common to governing rhetoric. Urgency first (do it now), legitimacy second (everyone serious already does this), leaving opponents to look either lax or parochial.

The specificity matters. He’s not railing against “waste” in the abstract; he’s targeting “the application of public money…to private uses” by an “officer of Government.” That’s an internal discipline message aimed at the bureaucracy as much as the public: the state must be able to police its own agents. Calling it a “felony” is a declaration that the theft isn’t merely financial, it’s constitutional in spirit - an offense against public trust that deserves criminal status, not a slap on the wrist or quiet resignation.

“Severe and ignominious punishment” adds a social dimension. Ignominy is reputational death, the opposite of the genteel impunity that often protected well-connected men in the early republic. In the Jacksonian-era fight over patronage, spoils, and legitimacy, Van Buren is staking a claim that democratic government can be tough on its own, not just on its enemies.