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CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
"Progress in the science of government has been slow and painful, but it has been gradually for the better from the dawn of civilization to the present hour. Down through many dynasties of absolute or limited monarchies and of aristocracies, the reign of one or the rule of the few, have we come at last to representative democracy, the approximate sovereignty of the people. Absolutism is dying out and republicanism is dawning in the Old World. In this country progress has been rapid if not regular in the same direction; but its continuance is threatened by the development of vicious methods of party control."
Press and pulpit, statesman and politician demand some change. Election frauds, cipher despatches, corruption, bribery, startle the nation. The civil service as now managed forms a grand national lottery in which the prizes are public offices. "To the victor belong the spoils," is now the leading principle in American politics. For the first forty years after the adoption of the constitution but seventy-four removals from office were made; one hundred thousand men are now turned out and put in whenever a change is made in the national executive. Office-seeking is now a business followed with as great attention to personal profit and advancement as any other, not excepting journalism or the ministry. President Lincoln just after his election wrote, "I am now receiving one sixth of the nation which wants to live at the expense of the other five-sixths.
Mr. Windom, secretary of treasury, said : "In the last one hundred days, a few thousand men in search of office have taken nineteenths of the time of the President and his Cabinet. This time is due to the fifty millions of people, rather than to office-seekers."
These are but typical instances. It may
be conceded that the imperfections of our civil service as it stands has been sometimes overstated, yet no one can fail to see that the present system (?) is, and in the nature of things must be very defective. The theory of the constitution is to separate legislative and executive authority; all legislative power granted being vested in Congress, and the executive being vested in the President.
But the spoils system tends to entirely destroy this distinction. It weakens the Executive, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Senators and members of the House of Representatives must be constantly placing themselves under obligations to the President in order to obtain appointments for their constituents, while the President in his turn must often make unworthy appointments in order to obtain legislative support. In this way matters of legislation and of appointments have been drawn into demoralizing relations. The people are deprived of the best and highest services of those in position of honor and trust, and a candidate's qualifications are now made to depend not upon ability and integrity, but upon the chance of his procuring political patronage.
This political patronage and power has a most injurious effect upon the future success of him who wields it. This is true not only in the case of party leaders but also in regard to men of a lower grade of ability Every appointment makes one friend and numerous enemies.
Gladstone is quoted as exulting in the fact that he held within his patronage only the appointment of his own private secretary.
Aided by party power and patronage persons frequently obtain positions for which they are entirely unfitted and which they would have been powerless to obtain had