The passion for office among members of Congress is very great

“The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.” Thus spoke James K. Polk, the eleventh President of the United States — a man of duty, discipline, and somber realism. His words, heavy with both disappointment and warning, are not the cry of an idealist, but the lament of a leader who had seen the hidden workings of power. He looked upon the halls of Congress and saw not the pure pursuit of service, but the creeping rise of ambition — that passion for office, which, when left ungoverned, corrodes the very soul of democracy. In these few lines, Polk reveals a timeless truth: that when public service becomes a means to self-advancement, the republic itself begins to rot from within.

The origin of this quote lies in the 1840s, a turbulent decade in the young American Republic. Polk, a man of austere integrity, had ascended to the presidency at a time when expansion and ambition swept across the nation. He had promised to serve but one term — and he kept that promise — yet during his years in office, he watched with growing unease as members of Congress hungered not for honor, but for power. Many legislators, he observed, had turned government into a ladder of personal opportunity. They passed bills that multiplied offices and commissions, not for the good of the country, but to occupy them themselves or reward their allies. Thus, the noble machinery of government was bent by the weight of self-interest, and the president, bound to execute laws shaped by vanity, found his task obstructed at every turn.

To Polk, this “passion for office” was more than a political nuisance — it was a moral disease. In his eyes, public office was a sacred trust, a burden of service, not a prize to be seized. But in the ambition of his contemporaries, he saw the spirit of corruption and entitlement, born from the human weakness that loves honor more than duty. It was this weakness that made men legislate for themselves and clothe greed in the garments of law. When lawmakers fashion roles they intend to fill, they cease to be servants of the people and become merchants of influence. In such moments, the operations of government, as Polk said, become “embarrassed” — not in the sense of shame alone, but in paralysis. For when every man seeks his own advancement, who is left to seek the common good?

History offers countless reflections of Polk’s warning. In the late Roman Republic, the same hunger for office — the same fever of ambition — consumed the Senate and destroyed the virtue that had once made Rome strong. Offices were multiplied, positions sold, and magistrates competed not in service but in spectacle. The republic, once guided by honor and restraint, was drowned beneath the waves of its own corruption. Out of this decay rose emperors who promised order at the cost of freedom. And so it has ever been: when public trust is traded for personal gain, liberty itself begins to die — not by conquest, but by corrosion from within.

Yet Polk’s words are not only a warning of doom; they are a call to reform. He reminds every generation that power must be treated as stewardship, not as possession. A republic thrives only when its rulers are reluctant to rule — when men and women seek office not for glory, but for service; not for wealth, but for justice. The true statesman is not he who multiplies his influence, but he who limits it, who resists the intoxication of authority and remembers always that he governs by consent, not conquest. For in democracy, the highest virtue is not ambition, but humility — the quiet recognition that the office belongs to the people, not the person who holds it.

Consider the example of George Washington, who, after leading a revolution and presiding over the birth of a nation, willingly laid down his power and returned to private life. His greatness was not in seizing authority, but in relinquishing it. Washington’s restraint became the measure of American virtue — proof that the republic could endure because its leaders would not enslave it to their vanity. How distant, Polk lamented, had his own era strayed from that example! He feared that the spirit of Washington — the spirit of disinterested duty — was giving way to a new creed of self-advancement disguised as patriotism.

So let this truth be remembered by those who live in the shadow of power: public office is not a reward, but a responsibility. The people must watch their leaders with vigilance, and the leaders must watch themselves with humility. The temptation of office will never vanish — it is as old as man’s hunger for recognition — but its dominion can be restrained by character, by conscience, and by the constant renewal of civic virtue. For the government belongs to no one man, nor even to one generation; it is a sacred trust handed down through time, to be preserved, not plundered.

Therefore, O listener, if ever you hold authority, wear it lightly, as a cloak of service, not a crown of power. Seek not to create honors for yourself, but to create justice for others. Remember Polk’s warning: that the government falters not when it lacks wealth or armies, but when it loses honesty. The true strength of a nation lies not in its offices, but in the integrity of those who fill them. For when honest toil rules the halls of power, and ambition bows to duty, then the republic, though tested by time, shall never fall.