Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-02-06

| IN lod l, as most OF our readers will remem-
Der, Mr. Dorman b. Eaton of New York was
made chairman of the commission which was
appointed under an act of Congress, approved
| by President Grant on March 4th of that
| year, to devise methods for the reform of the
civil Service. Soon after President Hayes
entered upon his Office, he requested Mr..
Eaton personally to investigate the operation
of the reformed system in England and to
| prepare report upon the results of his OBJ
servation. This important trust Mr.. Eaton
accepted and, having performed its duties
with characteristic zeal and assiduty, he has
given the country the result of his labors in
substantial volume of 40 pages, under the
title Civil Service in Great Britain a His
tory of Abuses and Reforms, and their Bear
ing upon American Politics."
In his opening chapter Mr.. Eaton glances
briefly, but incisively, at the conditions un-
der which our American political system had
its birth, and the causes which have operated
to prevent needed reforms. Although cheat
ed from recent battle fields, and filed with
righteous indignation at the injustice of the
mother country" the fathers yet brought to
the work of forming a government tempers
so calm and unprejudiced that they consid-
cred English precedents in the same judicial
spirit that they did those of other countries.
They accepted good material wherever they
found it, and from no quarter did they gath
err so much as from England. Notwithstand-
ing this calm, unbiased and far-sighted iudg-
ment it is not strange that the authors of our
constitution, with their experience and sur
roundings, did not foresee and guard against
corruption bred in the daily work of admin
istration, partisan tyranny and debasement
growing out of contentious for office, patron
age and power;" and that generation" Mr..
Eaton very happily says, must be counted
wise and patriotic which provides remedy
for the evils which it knows" No nation
had at that time protected itself against the
evils of corrupt patronage and favoritism, but
in the century which has passed great changes
have come, both to the old country and the
new, and the United States is to-day the only
one of the great and leading nations that has
not set itself definitely to reform abuses in
its methods of administration. In Great
Britain these reforms form the most remark
able chapter in that nations history during
the century. She has made her methods of
Civil Service the most perfect which exist,
and by means of which she rules her vast de- |
tendencies with purity and efficiency of ad- |
ministration which the world has never seen |
equalled. The real purpose of Mr. Eaton's |
book, then, is to enquire whether these re- |
forms are only possible under government |
like Great Britain's, or whether they are
equally applicable to republic like our own. |
Following this introduction, Mr. Eaton de- |
votes several chapters to history of the |
British civil service down to 1853, tracing the |
origin of the idea of official responsibility |
back to Magma Charta, showing how the |
spoils system found its palmiest day, under |
the reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tu- |
doris, and how Cromwell gave the system its |
first blow, not, however, breaking it up as a |
whole, but only in part. The gross corruption |
which prevailed down to the time of George |
~, when the demand for reform began to as |
sumo a distinct shape, is described, and from |
this point the history is traced of the reform |
efforts which, becoming decisive in the peri |
cd between 1915 and 1865, finally eliminated |
in the latter year in an order insttuting COM
ptNltANt cAhuiluhlOubs Iuc nominating DOW |
err was, however, still left in the hands of |
members of Parliament, and it was not till |
1870 that the competition was thrown open
to all persons of requisite standing in char
acter, morals and physical ability.
In a series of interesting chapters Mr. Ea-
ton gives an account of the working of the
new system in its various stages since 1855
and continues the history down to 1876, pre-
senting a variety of details which illustrate
the success of its operation. During the IF
teen years of limited competition, the official
In onopolsts who selected the candidates al
lowed an average of only 5000 persons a year
to come forward for examination; but under
the open competition since 1870 more than
49, 600 have each year freely presented them
selves Prior to August, 1877, the whole
number of those who had sought to enter the
public service through examinations had
reached the vast aggregate of 172 127. Com
ing from, perhaps, as many homes and from
nearly every district and village of the king
dom, where the fate of those examined had