The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-02 00:00:00

The Impeachment Question.

(From the Baltimore Commercial.)
We have, from the first regarded the talk of
impeaching the President as so very a sham as not
to be worth discussing ; and what has just occurred
in the House of Representatives at Washington has
not altered our views of the matter one particle.
But we did not think, after the humbug had
answered its purpose in the late election in piling
up majorities for such men as Butler and Stevens,
that it would ever be sericusly talked of again ;
and if there are still a few at Washington so ver-
dant or having so little to do as to again agitate
the matter, all that does not alter our views of it,
as foolish, impracticable, and even ridiculous.

(From the New York Tribune.)
Mr. Ashley has offered his resolutions, and they
have taken the course indicated in the caucus
on Saturday evening. The excitement which
the announcement of Mr. Ashley's inten-
tion created in Wall-street, last week, did not
so much indicate a fear of the impeach-
ment, or even of the result of it, but that our
finances were so unhealthy, so feverish, and uncer-
tain, that the least derangement created a panic.
The currency is just now in such a morbid, excit-
able condition that any unusual event—as the death
of the Emperor Napoleon, a war between Russia
and Turkey, or an insurrection in England, would
set our markets in an uprorr, and drive ruin through
Wall-street. In addition to Mr. Ashley's resolution,
Mr. Loan, of Missouri, introduced an incoherent
and amusing resolution, which we are told created
some excitement. Mr. Loan is evidently a morbid
person, with the weakne% of getting into print, or
in some way attracting attention, and we shall pro-
bably hear no more of his manifesto. Mr. Ashley!s
resolution was referred to a committee, and will be
considered. There can, of course, be no harm in
this reference.
We do not say that a President should not be im-
peached. We by no means say that Mr. Johnson
should not be impeached. That would be to take
judgment into our own hands. We think this Ad-
ministration has been a calamity, a disgrace, the
cause of many evils to the country. We should
like some redress. But how is it to be had ? In
attempting to remove these evils, may we not fly
to others that we know not of ? May we not put a
precedent upon our statute-books which will give
any Democratic majority of the Senate and House
in future years the right to revolutionise the Go-
vernment iu the interest of slavery. Let us walk
slowly, and survey the ground as we go. Let us
not lay violent hands upon the Executive office until
we find that no other course remains for the honour
of the nation. Perhaps we are wrong ; but it does
not seem to us that the time for the sterner alterna-
tive has come.

(From the New York Tines.)
We have no doubt that many people in this
country, and especially in Europe, greatly ex-
aggerate the effect that would be produced by
such a procedure as the impeachment of a
President. There is no reason, in the nature
of things, why it should seriously excite the
country, and there is no likelihood whatever
that it would have any such alarming results
as have so often been predicted upon it since
it was a subject of discussion. But at the
same time there is no doubt that it would
deeply excite the country, and that, under
present circumstances, it would grieviously in-
jure its best interests in a hundred ways. Its
most immediate effect would, doubtless, be felt
upon the public credit and in our national
finances. We have already had indications
how keenly sensitive our credit is upon this subject,
but the bondholders, and the business classes, and
the general community will prepare themselves for
painful experiences when this point of the reckless-
ness of Congress and the obstinancy of the Presi-
dent can find no other ending than that which is
now threatened. The former charges that these
parties propose to prefer against President Johnson
in their articles of impeachment are no more than
those with which we have become familiar from the
speeches of his assailants. Nearly all of them would
be dismissed at once by any court, and if they ever
come before such a body as the Senate, we have no
doubt of the disposition that will be made of them.
(From the New York Herald.)
The object contemplated in this resolution of Mr.
Ashley, then, is the removal of the President from
office. But why remove him when the charges
preferred against him, or when, at least, the " high
guilty have obe or
misdemeanors
s commoneinor " of which he has been
thing
awith all his pre-
decessors as party leaders, from General Jackson
ean
down to poor Pierce and Buchanan, to say nothing
of the lamented Lincoln ? It seems a little rough
and uncharitable that President Andrew Johnson
should be made the first victim to the wrath of Con-
gress, and particularly when he has ceased to 'be an
obstruction to the legislative policy of Congress,
and when over a two-thirds vote in both houses is
secured against him to the end of his term of office.
In this situation of affairs it appears to us that
if this impreachment of Government be followed
up to its legal conclusion, it will be productive of a
mischievous confusion in our political parties, a
serious Pani3 and deranffement in our financial
affairs, and needless and damaging delays on those
practical measures of legislation demanded to meet
the general interests and wants of the country. We
think it altogether probable, however, that the
Judiciary Committee of the House will be occupied
to the end of the present Congress in their prelimi-
nary investigations, and that with the meeting of
the new Congress in March the intervening chapter
of events may serve to bring a treaty of peace and
co-operation between the two houses and the Pre-
sident.

(Front the Washington Republican.)

A member of the United States House of Repre-
sentatives, who, a few years since, was charged with
corruptly using his office as a member of the Com-
mittee on Territories, arose in his place and
presented " articles of impreachment" against An-
drew Johnson, President of the United States, for
corruptly using his office. It appears by our report
that the Committee on the Judiciary is " authorised"
to investigate the subject ! Why did not this Ter-
ritorial-Surveyor-General-Ashley, who offered this
bill of indictment against Mr. Johnson, provide that
the committee should be instructed, a term usually
employed by honest man, engaged in a work of
Christian patriotism, and not use the weak, un-
meaning word " authorised," which, to a congres-
sional committee, is just what they may choose to
interpret it ? Let us have no mockery! If Con-
gress means to enter upon the grave work of im-
peachment let the trial proceed with some degree of
respectability and dignity, and then the people will
understand that their Representatives arc in earnest.

If Congress does not mean impeachment, but is en-
gaged in a work of buncombe, announce the fact,
and no longer paralyse the whole business of the
country. Andrew Johnson is ready for trial.

The Civil Service Bill.
-4.-

It is to be hoped that the holidays have been used
by members of Congress and by their constituents
for the consideration of some practical measures of
legislation. The Civil Service Bill of Mr. Jenckes,
of Rhode Island, submitted at the last session and
renewed at this, is a matter that specially deserves
earnest study and careful discussion. Here we have
a bill that meets the evil which is at the bottom of
our political Pandora's box. Any statute that
does away with the auction of offices that accom-
panies every election ought to be welcomed.
Members of Congress and heads of departments
and any man that deserves to be President—
every President except an " accidental"—must feel
that we have arrived at that point in the business
of Government which requires skill and knowledge
and attention. Mr. Jenckes's bill proposes obtain-
ing these qualities by prescribing an examination
for every officer who may, after its passage, be ap-
pointed to a civil office under Government, and for
every promotion, with certain exceptions. The most
obvious benefits are these—that a large number of
utterly incompetent persons would cease any longer
to be applicants for office, while, on the other hand,
a large number of persons who are really fitted for
places that are now secured only by scandalous
means would be able to submit them honourably
and decorously to the required examination. Office
would cease to be a badge of ignorance
in everything but political trickery, and would be-
come a mark of a certain standard of excellence.
Thus politicians, who are honest in their desire to
serve their country, and the number of these is
larger than the country gets credit for, would not
be embarrassed by the pressure and application of
incompetent supporters for office; a request for their
examination by the proposed board of examiners
being answer enough to men whose only service is
in stuffing ballot-boxes or colonising voters. The
good old-fashioned faith in a special Providence
that cared for these United States has been some-
what rudely shaken by our experiences of the last
few years. The enormous taxation imposed in con-
sequence of the rebellion has been borne bravely
by the country ; bat the manner in which that
taxation has been levied, the utter incompetence
of a large proportion of the army of tax-gathers in
the revenue service, the destruction of some branches
of industry by the mischances of legislation, the
apparent hopelessness (under the present system) of
an) thing like a decent return f tom the excise duties,
the frequent clashing of internal and tariff duties
—these are the sources of well-grounded complaints.
Members of Congress, revenue commissioners, and
some officers of the Government even, have con-
fessed the faults of the present state of affairs, and
hope to do better. But legislation must be imper-
fect so long as it gropes in the dark, and light can
be had only from experience, and experience is the
one thing which our officials are never allowed to get.
How many generations of men have sat in the revenue
department of the Government, and how many of the
changes made in it have been made on any other
than purely political, partisan grounds ? Suppose
that at the outset of the new system of taxation
officers had been appointed to administer it upon
merit, as tested in an examination ; that those
officers had been retained up to this time ; and that
promotions among them had been made on merit,
as tested by their services. What a world of dif-
ference there would be in our knowledge of the right
and the wrong way of imposing and levying, taxes,
and what a fund-of advice there would be to guide
Congress in legislation, the courts in interpretation,
and the Government in administration. As it is,
we are in a worse sea and in a more dangerous
and shifting storm of uncertainties than we
were at the outset of this great experiment.
The success of " civil service" examinations has been
pretty thoroughly tested abroad, and the good re-
sults can easily be transplanted into our own sys-
tem, while the bad effects (and it can grow them,
too) are as easily avoided. The plan, too, is not so
old a one in any part of Europe as to make us de-
spair, with our forcing-house atmosphere, of soon
domesticating it here. In Germany, the close of the
great French wars saw a condition of affairs that
was a thousand times worse than anything that we
have to complain of. The " hereditary" race of
office-holders, the curse of venality, the almost
public sale of offices, the total exclusion of the citi-
zens from any participation in office, and the close
communion of the noble families to whom office was
the only livelihood—these were evils worse than
any that we have to encounter. Now, Ger-
many—or, perhaps, to speak more correctly,
Prussian Germany—is, as far as its administration
of laws is concerned, the best governed country in
the world. If proof were wanted of the fact, look
at the ease with which the recent war was waged,
the ease with which business has returned to its na-
tural channels, and the rapidity with which its sys-
tem was extended over the outlying statelets now
swallowed up in Prussia. The evils of Bean-den-
thuin—of office as a special business apart from the
ordinary duties of citizenship--are not likely to have
many fears for us. It is almost beyond possibility
that the mercurial activity of the American mind
will ever content itself with office as the last best
resort for a livelihood, or that the outside world
will suffer the men who make office their
business to arrogate to themselves any special
claim or privilege. The man in America who can
content himself to settle down at the outset of his
life to a public office, and look forward patiently
to spending his existence in the slow promotion and
slender rewards of life in the public service, is, and
always will be, the exception ; but the more nume-
rous such exceptions to the rule, the better for the
public. The arguments that were advanced in
Germany, in France, and in England, each in turn
as this reform in the civil service was discussed and
finally adopted, aro the same that address them-
selves to us to-day. Why should West Point and
Annapolis be prescribed to officers or those
who desire to become such in the army
or navy. What greater importance is there
in the duties assigned to a captain of a company of
infantry over those entrusted to a collector of in-
ternal revenue, the chief of a bureau in the Trea-
sury, or an auditor in the War Department? and
why should these be appointed on the recommenda-
tion of Mr. A. who represents Hall, or Mr. B.
who comes from Utah, while the captain of Co. A. of
the 99th Infantry must pass a rigid examination?
The " political sciences" are no longer hidden or
uncertain mysteries. A fair knowledge of the
science of taxation is the indispensable necessity of a
good revenue assessor ; no excise officer can do his
duty without some scientific acquaintance with
alcoholic preparations. The same rule applies to a
thousand other cases. That rule can be made a
law by the passage of Mr. Jenckes's bill ; its pro-
visions are clear, straightforward, and to the point.
To effect its adoption by Congress, there ought to
be at once prompt action and agitation by mer-
chants, manufacturers, tradesmen, capitalists, rail-
road and other corporations—by all, in short, who
feel where the shoe pinches, who know the mischief
of our present system of appointing to and remov-
ing from office. This bill to reform the civil ser-
vice comes home to every individual of these classes.
If, by individual or combined action, they can by
letter, petition, association, or in any other way, in
turn bring home to Congress their anxiety to have
this law enacted, we may be sure that Congressmen
and the Executive will not be backward in forward-
ing the real interests of the country, while they are
ridding themselves of a growing pest, that of office-
seeking, with its intolerable annoyances and inevit-
able mischiefs.-7 he Nation.

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Much watchfulness must be exercised as winter advances,
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