The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-23
sPxR1T OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compilede Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

From the NJ Y. Tribune.
With very little preliminary fuss and de-
bate the British Government has carried
into effect radical reform in the system of
appointments to Office, similar in its general
features to the great change advocated in this
country by Mr.. Jenckes. An examination of
candidates for certain civil offices has long
been practiced in England; but hereafter, by
an order of the Queen in Council, this rule
is to be greatly extended, so as to apply to
all appointments except under the Foreign
Office and q very few others expressly men
toned. Anybody who wants Government
place may present himself for examination
upon his physical fitness, his moral and intel
lectual character, his general education, and
his special knowledge of the duties he desires
to fulfil The candidate who appears by the
report of the examiners to be best qualified
will receive the appointment on probation
of six months, during which he will be still
further tested; and at the end of that time,
if the results of the trial are satisfactory, he
wfl be permanently assigned to duty, subject
only to removal by the chief of the depart
ment to which he is attached.
Here is a sweeping change by which poll
tics as trade ought to be revoiutionized if
not entirely abolished. 1t is not so many
years since British statesman would have
thought the Constitution subverted and the
country on the brink of ruin if the party
which had the good luck to come in could
not displaoe the appointees of the party
which had the bad luck to go out, and fill
the comfortable desks of Government with
their own most useful supporters. How her
Majestys Government was to be carried on,
sir, unless the younger sons and poor rela-
tions of the great governing families could
be provided for; how the indispensable
adhesion of the Duke of This and my Lord
That was to be secured without a judi
cious distribution of places among the
friends and dependants for whom those
pillars of the State felt bound to provide,
were problems which the Sir Leicester
Dedlocks of the Whig quite as we'll as the
Tory party felt themselves utterly unable to
solve. How was man to get into Parliament
if he could not reward those who were most
active in putting him there? How were
ministers to command ma jority in the
House if they had no patronage wberewith to
pay for votes? Mr.. Gladstone has cut the
Gordian knot of these difficulties at one blow.
He has destroyed the Irish Church Establish
ment. He has about destroyed the Irish
Land system. He has extended the suffrage
and half promised the ballot Now he has
destroyed patronage. And still the British
empire stands! The Foreign Office, to be
sure, is left, last refuge for aristocratic
good-for- or-nothings, dumping ground, so to
speak, for the nobility, bearing sign to the
effect that Rubbish may be shot here" and
there are certain offices also filled directly by
the crown to which the competitive system
does not apply; but these exceptions are too
few to affect the general result, and may per-
haps hereafter be brought under the general
rule.
1t is very true that formal examination is
not always the best gauge of ability. man
of nervous or excitable temperament is apt to
blunder through confusion, and man with
more than his fair share of assurance is placed
at an unj Just advantage. Still, if the examina-
tion is properly conducted it will hardly fail
to detect either fool or a man of exceptional
ability, and In any case the new mode of
choice must be great improvement upon the
present. in which fitness is not considered at
all. A sensible competitive examination, fol-
lowed by the practical test of six months
probation, ought to insure the Government
able, diligent, and well-conducted servants
The chief of a department will always have
the power to discharge those who, after all
the previous tests, are still found incompe-
tent or idle; and as his own comfort will
depend upon a good administration of his
Office, he may be trusted to exercise that
power whenever it becomes necessary. On
the other hand he has not the power of ap-
pointment, and therefore will seldom be
tempted to remove without cause in order to
make room for his own friends. Thus, as
man by the process of natural selection is
supposed to have been developed from the
monkey, SO the breed of office-holders may
be indefinitely improved by similar opera
tion of what Mr.. Darwin calls the ''struggle
for existence and survival of the fittest."
We are not sanguine of the immediate
adoption of any such reform in the United
States-principally for the reason that we are
so very much in want of it. The incompe-
tency of Government officials is a compare
lively trifing evil in this country, but the
patronage system has become such tremen-
dous weapon of corruption that few politi
clans are willing to give it up, and few party
leaders have the courage to pledge hearty
support to the movement for reforming it out
of existence While Office is bartered anC
sold as it is now, and votes are given not fol
political principles but for a petty custom
house clerkship, it is only by rare and fortu
nate accident that we can get the best mer
into positions of trust and power, or secure
majority in Congress with the nerve
and discrimination to apply the remedy
to this threatening disorder o.
our political system. Congressmer
have come to look upon ofice-brokerage a!
one of the chief of their legitimate duties
Candidates have learned to buy their elec
tions, not indeed by the petty bribery of in
dividual voters, but by an explicit or implied
promise of Office to influential wire-pullers
stump-speakers, and local politicians-il
other words, by buying extensive vote-deal
ers at wholesale. And it is an evidence o
the injurious effect of this corrupt system
upon the whole tone of public life that S
many of our respectable statesmen do nc
see or will not acknowledge that the briber
of patronage, whether for personal aims o
''the good of the party" is a dangerou
assault upon the fundamental theory of th