The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-05-03

Mr.. Eaton's Path of Glory i'm the Febru-
airy AtIantic-Our Edmund Burke.
VIII,

"The crude state of public opinion" says our
compact and complete statesman, Mr.. Eaton,
"as to true the true methods of relief"-relief
from what? Under what species of Civil Ser
vice oppression is the country groaning? Is il
the Treasury Department that has thrust the
silver dollar into our reluctant hands? Does
the widespread depression Of business
come from our not having legislated the
forty clerks of the Navy Department into Of
flee by competitive examination? Or is it be-
cause, as Mr.. Eaton says, "Demagogues
sounded the bngle charge upon it (the new
reform) and secretly rallied their forces to
crush it"-which was certainly very poor STRAIT
egg and indicates exceedingly crude state
Of military opinion on the part of the dema-
gogues Indeed question if the demagues did
anything Of the sort 1t looks far more like the
Reform Commissioners tactics. There is Ger
tainly not . demagogue of my personal &C.
quaintance who would not know better than
to sound bugle charge upon foe whom he
was planning to attack with secrecy There is
much sorrow in the world, but the amount Of it
which has been ascribed to the defects in our
Service is very minute. Mr. Eaton must be
far more specific before public opinion can be
much less crude.
"The crude state of public opinion and its un.
reasonable hope"-whose unreasonable hope?
The crude states unreasonable hope? or public
opinions unreasonable hope? or the crude
state-of-publc-o opinions hope? This is point
of Importance, because the hope is declared to
be s'that all the strongholds of the spolsmen
may be captured and all their ingenious ways of
..aa, ho nj - nd
should really like to know who is so innocent
and confiding as to cherish it! l am sure that
unless Mr. Dorman B. Eaton discovers him to
us the search will be frutless. But all this,
says Mr.. Eaton, makes "the duty of the hour
none the less. though the work of reform far
more different" Different from what? More
different than what? Mr.. Eaton leaves his
comparison standing on one foot, with the
most embarrassing indifference, and goes on to
say that "the evils to be removed prevail in the
Civil Service of the States and the municipali-
ties, as well as in Federal offices. They are at
our doors everywhereI' Here, it will be OBJ
served, that his appetite for corruption grows
by what it feeds on. He is so in love with re-
form that he lays about him on all sides for
material He is a very Wantley Dragon of
publication.
0Houses and churches
Are to him geese and turkeys"
"Whisky-ring peculation and custom-house
corruption" he gobbes up as handsomely as
Mr. Hayes reported the politicians to have
gobbled up the Liberals in Cincinnati in 1872,
when he thought that if Mr.. Smith wanted to
be Paymaster he certainly ought to be. 1t is
no Alexander with whom we are dealing now,
tamely sitting down and weeping for more
worlds to conquer. Mr.. Eaton goes and con-
quers them! The Federal Service which he
was commissioned to reform not being broad
enough for his grasp, he stretches himself out
over the States and the municipalities, crying
on every curbstone: "The heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. Let
us organize debate"
Here 1 need not say that as an Orthodox
Congregationalist cordially agree with him.
which the theologians call total depravity and
quarrel over, and which all men recognize and
all wise men guard against with eternal vigi-
lance. The evils which prevail in the Civil
Service of the Nation are exactly the evils
which prevail in the civil service of the States
and Of the. municipalities, in the butchers
shops and the bakers shops in the wood yards
and the milk pals, in the pulpits and the news
paper offices-as Mr.. Eaton says, at our doors
everywhere. IT, by ''civil SERVICE" Mr.. Eaton
man, then Mr.. Eaton is greatly right in main
tanning that s'to raise the Civil Service of the
United States as high as it may be raised is the
great labor and duty of generation. Indeed,
to raise that service so high, and keep it there
is one of the permanent problems of our pol
itics." But Mr.. Eaton ought to understand
that to do this is not to become Civil Service
Reformer, but missionary -at-large. No civil
service board and no competitive examination
will ever make the butcher give full weight or
- IL IN ia lry hn
grace Of God in the human heart aad the
weight of the law outside invoked by the angry
customer. And that grace is just as deep in
the heart of the Treasury clerk as of the plumb
er's apprentice, and the weight of that law is
lust as easily brought down upon the head of
The dishonest postmaster as of the midnight
burglar. If MIR. Eaton has any plan by which
sin can be extirpated from the souls of audit
| ors aud controllers, the sooner he presents it
| the better. All the remedy he proposes in the
needed to combine the high sentiment of the
| country upon methods that are reasonable,
and constitutional He does not state what
| those methods are, but the crying need of this
country is discussion" and much discussion
which is certainly most practical presenta-
tion of Mr.. Eaton's idea of true statesman.
| ship'' After distributing his ''evils" impair
TALLY at every body 8 front doorstep, Mr.. Eaton
| introduces again with fervid eloquence his
| original and ingenious scheme OF redemption.
Zine DeODl6 uttu W OISdulAo uOUdto duu oOl
| for their removal" How they ought to "act'
| he does not specify, but nobody can deny that
| nro nle ouoht to 'actv' "They ought not tC
fold their hands and wait for the President
| alone, or the President and Congress, to deliver
| them" This innocent and pastoral people i:
so ant to sit with folded hands among its flock;
and herds, waiting patiently for the Greai
Father at Washington to deliver it from it;
| oppressors that Mr.. EAton's warning is we'll
4 timed, If now, under his stimulus, the people
| do not unfold their hands and set their arms
| akimbo, or do something equally significant
by way of response to Mr.. Eston's appeal Il
them to 'sact," their Civil Service suffering
| will not be the fault of the late Civil Servic'
| Commissioner For although with his usua
elasticity he stretches out his reform list over
whole generation, then into permanent prob
| lem and then into an everlasting antagonism
| he, nevertheless, premises with his wonted pre-
| cision that "a great deal may be done speedily,
leaving us to infer from his little what his great
| deal means.
and comprehensive plan of reforming our Civ
| il Service BY discussion" and "debate" au(
tsact", that plan of Mr.. Burke's werewith Mr.
Eaton consoles himself for the unquestionabl
| zig-zag of his own reform. This is not tn
first time that gentleman has been brought il
| to prop up this Great Cause. Indeed Mr.
| Burke seems to have been the Bee in the Bon
net of all our Reformers. He buzzes not onl
in the informal magazine article and througI
| the REFORM newspaper CulumuS, Uub III III
stately and State Report of the Commission
| Edmund Burke once set England on fire witt
his eloquence upon Economical Reform, and
coterie of politicasters have ever since bee
vainly vexing the world with
sThe scratch
And blue squirt OF lighted matcE.'
and laying the credit of its incombustibilit
and the strong smell of birthstone which w
complain of to "party selfshness!'
"When Burke" says Mr.. Eaton, comforts
bly, 'frst advocated economical reform, aut
when Pitt refused. the rich perquisites walc6
vicious Civil Service system attached to ofhc
they encountered as much rdicule from parti
sans and spoilspen as has ever fallen here up
on an advocate of Civil Service Reform or al
opponent of the salary grab but the detractor
of disinterested statesmanship on both sides Q
the Atlantic, lived to see the higher sentlmen
triumph" Why Mr.. Eaton should have hoiste
| in the salary grab, doth not vet appear. The sa
| ary grab was never great National issue, and
was not the opponents of the salary grab VIII
| encountered ridicue. What ridicnle there wa
fell rather upon the salary grabbers .themselve
If Mr.. Eaton had put the Woman's Right
movement, for instance, in the place he appr,
priated to the salary grab, his propositio
would not have lacked conference. But tn
disinterested, though far from homogeneou
statesman considers nothing human to be TO