The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1878-03-09
NATIONAL POLITICS

Are in great confusion. L remember a picture in
Punch, where four gentlemen after dining and
drinking together quite freely, are placed in o hired
cab by the good host, who kindly says to the driver,
put left hand corner in such a place; put right
hand corner SO; put left back seat in such a house.
But when the cab arrives at the first house, the poor
driver finds the four occupants, Timber and flexible
from drink, all mixed up together, and lying loosely
on the floor of the cab, a mass of legs and arms in
utter confusion appearing on the seats and through
the window, and he exclaims " them fellers has a
gone and mixed themselves up, so as I don't know
which is which - Such is the political situation
to-day. Since Mr.. Hayes announced his civil service
policy, the Republican leaders stand aloof. The
Senators have political debts to pay and so have the
Representatives. The men who put them in office
are demanding the quid pro quo, the rewards in the
shape of post offices. But Mr.. Hayes don't encour-
age this sort of trading. There is one maxim deeply
craven on the politicians heart,-' Stand by your
friends;'' and another,-"I If you help me, l agree
to help you" If q local politician helps a distin-
guished citizen to the upper story of a senatorship,
the elevated parsonage is bound to put out his hand
and help the local statesman into the lower story of
a post Office. Mr.. Hayes has set himself against this
trade and barter, so the trading fraternity are con-
WINGED that the country is going to the dogs. The
eloquent Senator Conkling has made a bitter attack
on the administration for not keeping his friends in
the offices of collector and naval officer of the port
of New York. The men Mr.. Hayes proposed to put
in, we're friends of Mr.. Evarts, Secretary of State.
Both Mr.. Conkling and Mr.. Evarts have the " presi-
ShS Oh II OA0Ahs 6AN ~ A0' ~ O1oJ' IL
Mr.. Evarts can turn Mr.. Conkling's friends out of
Office, and put his own men in, he will then have the
machine in his hands for the next presidential cleo
ton. These distinguished men have locked horns,
and we shall seea lively scrimmage. Not a few sus-
pect that Mr.. Hayes is being made a tool of by Mr..
Evarts. Some Of Mr.. Hayes appointments are very
queer, and men who were rather slow to endorse him
after election, but finally did do SO, now fear that
they may have been hasty. The enemies of his policy
are shrewd, compact, trained, vigilant, and surround
him. The friends of his policy are scattered, we'll
meaning. respectable people, who read of his reforms
and. after saying g God bless him." go to business,
and leave him alone in Washington to fight the bears.
When We, the people, wish civil service reform,
we shall have it. But we are not ready for it. For
we send, every year, representatives to Congress.
who hate, laugh at, and Illustrate such reform, while
at the same time we coolly ask the President to en-
force it. If any one proposes to dress himself in
white raiment in view of a new political millennium,
he may as well understand that the washer woman's
occupation is not gone, and his whole raiment, with
much political dirty linen, will go into the wash for
some years to come. w. n. A.