Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-08-17
NUMBER g.
Gail Hamilton on the Presidents Order.

ed to the federal office should feel himsel
obliged to wear the livery and do the politi
: r'l drudr"-v "f ''c administration appoint
my hlln. No position can be more humiliat
ing than this. unless it be the attitude ol
absolute inaction and neutrality which thi:
order prescribes for the office-holder. Why
is 1t not Just as offensive, degrading and hu-
initiating to tell man he holds office on con-
dition that he abstain from politics, as that
he holds it on condition that be take an active
and noisy part in politics? Large business
firms are sometimes accused of attempting
to influence the political action of their en-
ployes, but l never heard such attempts
pointed out for emulation !; it is always for a
shame. The Democratic head of a manu-
factory who should undertake to tell his men
what meetings they should or should not
attend out Of business hours would be held
up to Republican execration.
do not see why the President has any
thing more to do with the manner in which
ofice-holders spend their time outside of
business hours than the head of any other
business firm. The President, like any
other master, has the legal power to dismiss
a man for any cause whatever: but has he
the moral right to dismiss him for anything
but neglect Of his official duty? especially
for doing what every American citizen has
been taught to consider one of his first pat
riotic duties? Ifpolitics are to be divorced
from the Civil Service, what has the Presi-
dent to do with a mans political work, pro-
yided he does thoroughly the civil service
he has hired to do? For years it has been
dinned into our ears that every good citizen
should attend primaries and see to it that
only good men are put in nomination. Does
the ofhce-holder cease to be citizen? Has
he no duties to perform in the way of select
ing good men and rejecting bad men? Has
he no interest in the integrity and ability of
any office but his own?
Indeed, the case is far stronger than
I have put it. The President, unlike the head
of a business firm, is,with every other Office
holder down to the foot of the ladder, him.
self servant. A man who absolutely owns
a factory has the right to prescribe the
terms on which men may work in it but
the President has no such right with officers
OF the Federal government, who are but his
fellow-servants. The law, which is above
President and department clerks alike,-the
law which is the voice of the people in Or
| ganic, concrete form,-is alone able to do
this
utterly deny that the President has any
right to prescribe or prohibit, outside the
requirements of law. lie is to execute, not
to make the law. One of the grandest and
best of the old revolutionary declarations in
/ New England was that the colonists made
their resistance "to the end that we may
have a government of laws, and not gov
ernment of men," | maintain that the
order of President Hayes is directly in the
teeth of the letter, and still more Of the
spirit of that declaration.
Give US good appointments for all offices,
and Civil Service Reform is in fair way
to become an accomplished fact. But if
this great power OF removal is to hang on
any arbitrary thread whatever, if it is to
be held over the heads of offce-holders
with the threat from the White House
that it shall fall on any one who exercises
right and performs duty common to all
American citizens, it seems to me an abuse
which puts the President into the position
OF an absolute monarch, and clothes him
with the power of laying upon persons
holding office, conditions not required BY
law, in conflict with their rights as citi-
zens, derogatory to their independence as
men.
do not at all understand on what princi-
pie assessments are forbidden to be made up
on Office holders. On the one hand they are
represented by Mr.. Carl Schurz as san
army of political mercenaries living on pub
lie plunder" on the other they are put, by
this order, into the list of minors, paupers,
idiots and women who are not able to de-
fend their own rights, but must be protected
by their superiors. Neither can be quite
agreeable to the office-holder. but both to-
gether are impossible. If raising money for
a political campaign be proper thing, do
not see why office-holders should not be
asked to contribute as well as people who
are not ofice-holdeIs.
If raising money for political campaign
be an improper thing, do not see why all
those who knowingly spend and use money
so raised are not pdrticeps crlniniS. | have
again and again heard it stated as a fact so
current that no one thought Of denying it,
that Mr.. Schurz habitually, as regular
business, charged, and charged very highly,
for his political speeches.
Where did Mr.. Schurz think this money
came from? Was it any worse for the Re-
publican State Committee to ask a Custom
House officer to pay five dollars toward car
rying the Pennsylvania election. than it was
for Mr.. Schurz to ask the Republican State
Committee 81 800 to put into his own
pocket?
| attribute no dishonor to Mr.. Schurz.
do not say that he had not perfect right to
demand any sum whatever for his speeches
but if Mr.. William ii. kemble's assertion
is true that he paid Mr.. Schurz $500 a
night for his speech, Mr.. Schurz is certainly
estopped from characterizing federal office
holders, no richer than himself, as political
mercenaries, because they work for money,
and not for love alone No one would quar-
rel with any man for any honest way in
which he may earn his bread and butter,
but so long as Mr.. Schurz puts into
his pocket thousands of dollars, part
of which he cannot fail to know
of oflice-holders, while the Secretary of State
of the late corrupt administration drew out
of his pocket hundreds of dollars to save
the poorer clerks of his department from
making contributions, it would be becoming
in Mr.. Schurz, when next he addresses the
Chamber of Commerce and therural lyceums,
to make the comparison between his own
unseltish patriotism and the selfish greed OF
his predecessors in office and his comrades
in arms little less sharp
Undoubtedly there are oppression and IN
Justice in connection with the levying of
political contributions upon oiiice-hoders
but do not see why asking political con-
tributions from oihce-holders is any worse
than asking ecclesiastical contributions. Pat
riotiSm and religion are free as air but
brass bands and torch-light professions and
Sunday-school picnics and quartette ehOirs
take good deal of money. No law en-
forces subscription to- the one or to tine
other.
My idea of Civil Service would be to
have every ofice-holder know and feel that
his place depends not on his doing or leav-
ing undone political work paying or leay-
inS unpaid political taxes but of his faith
ful discharge of official duty. Regarding
political work or political assessments, he
should be as absolutely free as he is regard
ing ecclesiastical work. | would no sooner
have him forbidden to moderate n cOnyen
tion than to deacon church. And would
have such men in office that their presence
in convention should be benefit to poll
ties and guarantee of fairness and purity,
and then they should be left to do exactly
what they choose and what the people choose
to have them, as is the inalienable right Of
every American citizen. To coneede this
seems to me the simple due to treemen to
exact more affixes the badge of servitude.
Mr.. Webster once said there was nothing,
to him, so silly as Masonry. except anti
Masonry. 1t seems to me there is nothing
50 bad as to make political service the con-
dition Of holding Office except political non
service.
do not attribute to the President any
intention to encroach upon individual liberty.
Never theless this order is step in that
direction, rather than in the direction of
Civil Service Reform. True reform neces-
sarily lies in the mode of appointment, in
the character of the appointee, and in the
degree of continuity of office none OF which