The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-15

Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading JournaIs
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
DAY for the Evening Telegraph
THINGS PLAIN TO BE SEEN.

we confess we were OF the nun ber-eXpected
some assistance in the work of reforming the
civil service, has been during the past few
months doing good deal TO aggravate some
of its worst evils. The Sickles appointment
was startling, but Sickles had at least a ''war
record" That of Mr.. Murphy to the collec-
~torship of this port was the first open indica-
ton the public had that the hopes excited in
the earlier days of the administration were
going to be disappointed. Mr.. Murphy's sole
claim to General Grants confidence rested on
the fact that he was an active, energetic, un-
serupulous New York politician of the ''fsst"
type, yersed in all the arts and devices
peculiar to his class. He belongs to
a school which, during the past six or
seven years, has amused and dis
gusted all intelligent people in this
city by its professions OF intense
sympathy with the great ''moral ideas of the
Republican party, and with its horror of trea-
son and corruption, but which fluids no diff
Guilty in furnishing Tammany Hall with plenty
of candidates for its minor offices, and which,
while frowning on Fisk and Tweed in public,
is only too glad to drink their champagne in
private, and laugh with them over the ups
and downs of their common profession. In
deed, Mr.. Murphys love of horses and his
thorough knowledge of the art of using
''ofices" for party purposes are the only rea-
sons so faF as our knowledge goes, which
anybody has ever had the audacity to
put forward for putting him at the
head of the custom house through
which the Government receives by far the
larger portion of its revenue. Since his ap
pointment we have heard no complaints
whatever from the corrupt and disreputable
band who form the Republican committees
in this city of the 'mismanagement' of the
party, and we are not surprised to hear that
the unfortunate clerks, whose salaries are
already insufficient to support their families
decently OF to save them from crime, are at
this writing undergoing an assessment, nomi-
nally to help to save the country from trail
tors, but in reality, as far as this city is con-
cerned, to prevent one gang of peculators
from being ousted by another.
This has been followed more recently by
wholesale dismissals in Missouri of officers
who were SO ill-advised as to side with the
Schurz wing of the Republican party. 1t
would have been perfectly proper and reason
able to have forbidden ali Federal officers to
participate in the contest. AS between two
sections of Republicans about whose fidelity
to the fundamental ideas of the party organi-
zation there is no question, and who have
separated either on questions OF strictly State
interest, with which the administration has
nothing to do, and on which the President
can hardly pretend to have an opinion to
which Missouri men are bound to defer, or
on questions of Federal policy on which the
Republican party in Congress has hitherto
found 10 difficulty in ditfering-the duty of
the administration is simply one of neu-
trality, and neutrality it ought to enj DIN on
all its officials, if it enjoins anything at all.
1t is hardly necessary to say to rational men
that no party was ever yet saved from defeat
or ruin by these devices. If its ideas do not
retain sufficient hold over the people to make
its triumph certain, the dismissal of luke
warm or hostile clerks and postmasters will
not save it; and it is a fact worth remarking
that, ever since the present tenure of Office
was introduced, the vigor with which this
means of insuring victory has been used has
always been in the inverse ratio of the party
strength with the public. Whenever the ad-
ministration begins to apply the whip saw
agely to the poor jades in the public offices,
it is almost sure sign that its reliance on
better things is growing weak. 'Party dis
cipline" in the custom house and the mar
shals' offices and the Treasury was never
Sc strict as in Buchanan's day, when the
enemy was at the gates. In the Cabinet,
there are two firm friends of civil service re-
form-two men who are convinced that,
until the American people insist on it, we
need not look for much else from change
of parties than q change in the nature and
instruments of corruption-we mean Mr.. Fish
and Mr.. Cox. The possibility of making
much change for the better iu his department
outset by MIR. Washburne, who, having been
appointed to the State Department ad
interim, as a compliment, for one short fort
night, seized that opportunity of filling all
the consulates and other offices with his own
creatures and hangers-on-a unprecedented
performance, which might have prepared
everybody, and did prepare most people, fol
the exhibition which he is now making OF
himself in Paris. Mr.. Fish came into office,
therefore, tied hand and foot, and since then
the President, whose appanage the diplo-
matte service is, has apparently labored
s under no restraint. The appointment oi
Sickles and dismissal of Motley are act.
which do not admit of explanation, and fol
which ii would be ludicrous to apologize.
Mr. Cox has Jared better. He has managed
to Introduce into his department. par
ticularly the Patent Office and Census Blu
us reau--by simply putting in force law whicl
his predecessors disregarded, real test o
the intelligence and education of candidates
for Office, by substituting a 6oaG,fd exami
nation for a chat and a smoke, and the resul
is that he has now a set of employees such a
the United States has not seen in its civil ser
vice for many a long day. 1t is needless t
say that this has made him intensely obnoxi
GUS to s'the men inside politics, who ar
a laboring zealously for his removal, and who's
hands his colleague in the Treasur
strengthens very materially by studiously re
pudiating all desire for a change, and giyint
up his great army of subordinates to b
strotated," intimidated, and cheated, as tn
sub managers of the party and the more TN
scrupulous congressman may please, and pre-
tending to look on this seething mass of ras
cality and corruption as necessary inciden
of ''democraoy." From the President at leas
q Mr.. Cox was entitled to look for hearty an
~