The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-05
SPIRIT or THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPICs-CoMP1LED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH.
Grant and the Civil Service.

Jenckes Civil Service bill begins to find unex-
pected favor in the eyes of politicians at Wash
ineton, and We have little doubt that the
number of its supporters will, now that 1t Is
plain that Grant does not intend to work
nnder tue old system, grow every day, and
that the measure will, early in the FOrty-frst
Congress, become law. Not that we should
have despaired Of success even If Grant had
not been elected, and his place during the
coming four years were to be filled by one
of the regular party hacks. 1t would have
taken more time to bring about the desired
result but the result would still have been
certain; the outrageous misconduct and in
competency of the present tribe OF otfice-
holders would have made the necessity of
the reform plain to the public even
without the aid of set expositions from its
friends or the active support of the new
President. But without the aid Of the Presi-
dent the task of educating" the regular poll
tioians ''up'' to the change would, we admit,
have been difficult They themselves enjoy,
nightly, educating" the people "up' to the
level of their own crazes, but they are ex-
tremely chary about receiving ideas that seem
likely to lessen their Importance to the State.
There is probably nothing in the whole po-
litical field more provoking, and at the same
time more amusing, than the air of drunken
doubt and disapproval with which 'the men
inside politics" as they call themselves, look
down from the stump on all reformatory labors
out of which no Capital is to be made. Any
change which seems likely to lessen the num-
ber of things they can promise-and there
fore their weight with their follOwers-or
the support of which involves the denial
OF something to somebody, or the utter.
ance of unpleasant speeches about the ma
chinery of their own party, they en-
deavor to treat as visionary, and laugh
over it as long as they dare. But the
minute they fnd that it is to be, that there are
influences working for it against which they
cannot make head, their conversion becomes
so rapid that the difficulty is to baptiz9 them
fast enough. Had they succeeded in putting
one of their own number in the Presidential
chair, they would, owing to the enormous
amount and value OF the patronage now in
the hands of the Government have offered
resistance to any change which nothing but an
overwhelming outburst OF popular indigna-
tion could have overcome, and We should
probably have witnessed four years of cor
ruption in every possible form, which would
compare with the corruption of the last eight
years as the finished work of a man compares
with the tentative efforts of boy.
It must be remembered that "the whisky
thieves" which now seems to be the generic
name of the vast and growing class who de-
vote themselves to plundering the Govern
ment as to G profession, have been, until now,
comparatively unskilled in their work. 1t
took some years to discover the various de-
vices by which the Government could be
cheated officials bribed, evidence destroyed
or covered up, and to draw into the business
the leading rogues of the country and the
vast body of capital which is now literally in
vested in the robbery, just as it has taken ten
years for the rogues of this city to find out
the use for their purposes that might be made
of an elective judiciary. 1t is no exaggeration
to say-as those who know most about it
assure us most earnestly-that there is no
ftinterest" in the United States so strong, so
Ill s.,1 aI,
money and so much skill and ingenuity at its
command at this moment, as the body of per-
sons who are engaged in defrauding the public
treasury. Their creatures swarm in every de-
partment of the public service, except the
army and navy, and do their bidding without
hesitation. Their "lobby" is SO powerful that
they find no difficulty in arresting and delay
ing any piece of legislation that seems likely
to diminish their profits. Nay, they are strong
enough, as we have recently seen, to stay
proceedings in the courts, close the lips of the
public prosecutor in the very midst of a pro-
cess, and hurry him away to become himself
culprit elsewhere. Moreover, there
is no chance whatever OF bring
ing the party machinery into play against
them, because they take care we need hardly
say, to commit no breach of the party canons.
They are all, or nearly all, "sound on the
main question:" in fact, In the matter of
orthodoxy, they usually outdo everybody
else, and are as lntolerant OF heresy as the
grand inquisitor himself. With one of them
selves in the Presidential chair, or with any
man in it who was thoroughly broken to the
party yoke, they would have proved for the
present invincible and they would, on the
opening of the new term have gone to work
with all the advantages Of eight years train.
ing and experience.
Grant comes, therefore, into the civil SER
vice OF the country as he came into command
in-chef of the army, after three years o.
laundering and disaster, literally as savior;
and in the former as in the latter case, he
comes to meet crisis for which his career and
training seem to have especially prepared
him. had he reached his present elevation
as most of his more recent predecessors have
reached it, after having "flled every office il
the gift of the people, from village alderman,
etc., or after having begun his political edu
cation in the ward caucuses and worked III
into State or national prominence through the
hidden and crooked ways in which 80 many
so-called statesmen lay the foundation of thei
fame and earn their reputation for wisdom, HI
would have learned as most of them hav'
learned, to look on party usages, the mos
debasing as we'll es the most useful, as part o
the organic law Of American society. HI
would have learned to regard the best places il
the public service as the 'inalienable right o
those who do the work of the canvass, AM
the party managers as the heaven-bOrn dis
pensers of the public patronage, and resist
ance to their will or disregard of their advic
as at best sort of mild lunacy, if not down
right treaohery. Luckily he has learned hi
duty to the country in school in whic
4rrtk ood oouraoa ara still the hiOhast virtuas