otherwise than as a reward of political services. One of these, a year or so ago, bluntly expressed his innermost thought on the subject by saying that the effect of such civil-service reform as the Pendleton bill aimed at was to leave nothing for political ambition but—we must be pardoned if we quote the words exactly as given by the energetic editor—"a damned barren ideality." Another editor, not less energetic or able, sums up his objections to the present civil-service reform movement by calling it "pot-book reform," holding it apparently beneath the dignity of a spoilsman to know anything about pot-hooks, or any other elements of a decent education. Enough that he should have known how to drum up a score of votes on election-day.
We see the results of the system, further, in the extreme inefficiency of legislation upon matters of national as opposed to matters of local consequence. An appropriation bill can always be put through. There are never wanting hands to roll that particular chariot along. Everybody seems to understand voting money. Everybody, with few exceptions, is ready to echo the cant phrases, the bogus formulas, about the importance of having the national Government represented in remote localities by costly public buildings, and extravagant mail services. Wherever a contract can be scented, it is easy to excite interest; but, when it is a simple matter affecting the national credit, the improvement of extradition treaties, the acquitting of a debt, the regulation of the consular service, the investigation of frauds on the republic, the case is very different; then it seems as if nobody could do anything, and matters are laid over from year to year. Anything more abortive or Inane than a discussion on the tariff nobody could imagine. The advantage generally rests with the men who want high taxation, for the simple reason that they know what they want, and show an admirable consistency of purpose in laying burdens on the country at large for the benefit of themselves and their friends. The name this kind of thing goes by, strange to say, is not "plunder," but "protection." Until, however, those who believe in free trade have the courage to say so, the plunderers, who never lack for audacity, will have the best of it.
What the demands of the spoils system are upon the energies of cabinet ministers and others who ought to be attending to important duties, for which they are paid by the public, need hardly be dwelt upon. Those who have most experience in such matters will not contradict us if we say that three fourths of the time, and a larger proportion still of the energy of the heads of departments, are taken up, in one way or another, with questions of patronage, and that only the residue goes to considering how the public business can best be done. The office seekers were a greater terror to Abraham Lincoln than the Southern armies, and, if the whole truth were known, it would be found that many a man has been hounded by them into his grave. Guiteau was but an extreme example of the audacity and shamelessness of the tribe. All the intermediate grades are kept full, and probably men are now known to the heads of the executive, not less impudent than Guiteau, though, happily, lacking his murderous fanaticism.
That relief should be sought from the terrors and horrors of the spoils system, in what is known as civil-service reform, is not surprising; and yet some of the arguments of those who oppose such reform are not without weight. They say that it is not desirable to form an official class; that it is not desirable to introduce into this country the stereotyped methods and the deadly routine of European officialism. They say that, where bureaucracy has thoroughly established itself, the office--
