The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-08-22
WEDNESDAY, MORNING, AUGUST %.


DING to succeed, and that the paper will have
change its tune in asking the sitting member
obtain the government advertising Tor 1t! 1t
as like American political talk as two peas
n pod!
The Reformers seem to have been looking at
England very much as we have all and ALWAYS
been looking at the planet Jupiter. The fine
theories, the rigid laws, the virtuous phrases
wherewith Merrle England Surrounds her civil
service and her honored Parliament, consti-
tute to our remote, transatlantic reform vision
white and shining atmosphere which it has
mistaken for the civil service. But when that
luminous atmosphere is by some chance rifted.
we discern through the rents the same little,
grssping, selfish, black old world that we live
on ourselves; and with all its grasp and greed
it is pretty good sort of little old world, too.
Might be better, but might be good deal
worse, and is honestly trying to grow better.
The casual, indirect testimony of a novelist
on the ground is stronger evidence than the
most profound moral consciousness or the most
accurate logical conclusion of scholars three
Thousand miles this side of it, And if by
these glimpses any man can discern higher
tone of political life or appointments than in
our own country, l should be glad to turn my
telescope in his direction.
But we need not coDtiue ourselves to the nov
elists. The newspapers have just informed us
that Lord Beaconsfeld has appointed TO the
position of Controller in the stationery office
Mr. Pgott, of whose family he was a friend
that this appointment contravenes the require
ments of the select committee that the incum-
bent should have a technical acquaintance with
the duty of the Office, as Mr.. Pgott was not
acquainted with it's duties, and that the House
of Commons passed what was virtually vote
Of censure on him to the effect that the
recent appointment is calculated to diminish
the influence and usefulness of the select
committees of the House, and discourage the
zeal of the officers of the public departments
The London Times says: "The results of last
nights vote cannot be serious The Ministry
xxrs1 ha-n nn<Ia ID .sAs L.
alittle more careful in their appointments.
Lord Beaccnfield will read in the vote warn
ing that the spirit OF the age must not be dis
regarded in the dispensation of patronage"
And the American Reformer, with his usual
agility in extracting sunshine from cucumbers.
holds this up as a proof of the truth of his
view of the English Civil Service, viz: that it
has no such thing as patronage, but that place
there is acquired solely. by competitive
examination. He might Just as inteligently
brandish poor old Fitzhugh as proof Of the
fawless purity of our own Civil Service. Every
point of this little item of news indicates tnat
English human nature moves in precisely the
same political grooves with American human
nature, and is balanced aud held in check by
precisely the same motives, in precisely the
same manner. Prof. Fiske sits down serenely
in the classic shades of Cornell and, writes:
THE results of the Reform in England are,
Members of Parliament has been entirely
done away with. and Government employees
are now outside of partisan influence and
no doubt speaks the trnth according to his
lights; but the House, according to the Lon
don Times, gives the Premier smart little
love-pat and says: Dizzy, my boy, be little
more careful how you distribute your patron
age!-which is very good advice both to
English and American Cabinets. But will
Prof. Fiske tell us, if there is no patronage in
England, what has Lord Beaconsfeld to be
careful about, and what has he been censured
for, and where is the competitive examination
that did not discover Mr.. Pigotts ignorance?
Lord Beaconfeld afterwards exculpated
himself but the whole explanation shows how
closely the two governments resemble each
other. Mr.. Grey formerly held that place-a
man OF literary prominence, under whom
extravaganza went on without check"l The
select committee advised that the place be
filled by some one who had a practical
knowledge of stationery, and Lord Beacons-
field turned upon his heel and put in man
who knew nothing about stationery; who had
been Junior clerk in the War Office, and had
to be jumped over the heads of sixty-eight
clerks in his own department. And Lord
Beaconsfeld denies that there was any applica-
ton from the candidate or any interference
of friends, precisely as Mr.. Evarts might, and
exactly as if those things we're not long ago
rendered impossible by Reform; and he ridlcules
the select committee to their faces and seems
now in a fair way to make the whole House of
Commons sit down to q repast of its own
words.
we are F6IeTT6O 10 MI. muDQella, VINO salQ
to New York audience, 81 stand before you,
the representative of the largest constituency
in England, and L have not the power to
control the appointment of the lowest excise
officer"
My acquaintance with Mr.. Mundella is of
the slightest but my impression is that he was
steadily in the opposition, and that his lack of
control was as properly matter of boast as If
Mr.. Fernando Wood should have plumed him
self before an English audience at any time
during the last sixteen years on his inability
to control an appointment. But more than
that, there is not Senator or member of the
House in the United States who must not also
unite in the same confession. No Congress-
man, any more than Mr.. Mundella has power
to control the appointment of the lowest excise
officer. He may use his influence, and so
may Mr.. Mundella, but the control is not in his
hands. The two systems are absolutely alike
in this respect
think that no accusation makes any
political patronage SO bad. 80 immoral, SO
inexcusable and indefensible. as the sale of
ecclesiastical patronage in England. In the
late discussion upon it in Parliament 1t was
defended upon no grounds but of practical
expediency. 1t was denounced as almost
Infamous, as a shameful breach of sacred
trust, as discreditabe as the sale of a vote for
the election Of q member of Parliament.
The British Foreign Office is now nursing a
scandal as great as any that ever disgraced our
annsls, and its longtime custom of forcing its
Consuls and agents to depend upon 60
bstweens for advancement or even leave of
absence is a system admirably calculated to
breed scandal-and not whit nearer ideal
purity than our own foreign service. We will
not rejoice in our neighbors sins; but a little
scrutiny of this sort might relieve Mr.. Carl
Schurz from the embarrassment of excessive
blushing for the peculiar enormity of our
national transgressions
1t seems to me that some of our Reformers
have q childish feeling that England has had
civil Service Reform, and SO we must have
one. But what was England reformed fro m /?
Until 1910 Government clerks were simnv
private clerks to the minister. Their pay came
ont os his fees, and his fees were from anybody
who had business with his department. The
sale of places in his department was also
recognized source of revenue to the Minister.
who had no salary, but lived literally on public
plupder. Mr.. Pitts example brought this prac-
tice into ill-cdor, and by 1910 the Fee fund had
so fallen of that there was not enough to pay
the clerks, and they were remanded by law to
the Civil Listof the Sovereign, and afterwar DIS
to the Parliamentary fund appropriated for the
purpose. This was indeed, reform, removing
the clerks from being the servants of a man,
first to being servants of the King, and then of
the nation. But no such state OF things ever
existed In this country. Our officers have been
the servants of the nation from the beginning,
paid by salaries and not by fees With great
sum. England obtained freedom, but we were
free born. The patronage of the English
Ministry was something which happily we
glibly as if 1t grew on every bush but the one
example of old-fashioned English "patron age"
came to the surface winter before last, and set
the whole country tingling with shame and
anger-and JUSTLY The English Ministry of old
time bought and sold without shame. Seats
in Parliament had a market value, and the
constituencies were assessed at fixed prices
Ministers put on extra clerks for the mere pur
pose OF increasing the patronage, and extra
clerks became as permanent as est abshed
clerks Noble families, country manses, petty
tradesmen all quartered their incapables on the
national exehequer, and made their electoral
support contingent upon the promise of place.
Even the oyster-dredgers exacted it from their
nominees to Parliament
We began very nearly where England left off.
No such system of barter and barnacle was
ever fastened upon us. The Crimean War
reused England to the discovery that her sys-
tenn was defective, and she has ever since been
trying to remedy the defect with degree Of
success which sincere effort always brings
But our civil war brought no startling reveia-
tions to us. Our Civil Service was as well adj.
,ministered as our Military Service. We started
out ON Radical Reform in 1776, and 1T would
be very strange if we had not profited BY it in
more ways than one. English patronage was