Morning journal and courier., 1881-10-12
Wednesday Morning, Oct. 12, 1881.
5IvIL SERVICE REFORM IN CoNNEc-

! CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN CONNEC. | TICUT.
 Yesterday we printed an invitation for
 Civil Service Reform Convention to be held
 in this city October 25th for the purpose o1
 taking such action as may be deemed expedi
 ent in reference to the formation of a State Civil Service Reform Association. This in vitation is signed by ex-Governor Hubbard
 President Porter, General Hawley and thirty or forty other prominent men of this State
 and of both political parties. It is a matter for congratulation that the cause of Civil Service Reform stands so well in this State as this invitation and the names attached to it show. Every great moral movement has three stages First, the period l when it is the subject of ridicule as the the ory of few crack: brained enthusiasts sec l ond, the period of bitter ennity and hostiH- l ty; and third, that when it's bitterest enc mics profess always to have been in its favor. There are indications that the third period iI the Civil Service Reform movement has a1- most been reached and that it will soon be as difficult to find any prominent man who will dispute the proposition that the em-
 
 political influences, that they should be re- movable only for cause and appointed solely with reference to character and capacity, as it would be now to find supporter of slave ry or an opponent of laws against bribery. Although it has been much the practice to underestimate the strength of the Civil Ser vice movement, and to ridicule it as support ed only by "a few College professors, Ger mans and inidels,'' Gas one of our prominent public men expressed it) there has probably been no time within the last five years when the majority of the people would not have given their assent to the pror osition above stated.
 The maintenance of political standing army of hundred thousand men or more, bound to follow implicitly the will of the ad- ministration and of the leaders of the domi- nant party, both by the ties of gratitude, by the expectation of reward and by the fear of pecuniary loss has no warrant or excuse in the nature of our institutions. No serious attempt has ever been made to support it by reasoning or to refute the main propositions of the Civil Service refermers. Ridicule and denunciation of the reformers as theorists and impractical men, or political Pharisees, have been the chief weapons of the opposi- tion.
 Mere intellectual acceptance of proposi- tion is but feeble incentive to action. To touch the springs of political action tine hearts and feelings of the people, not their in- tellects, must be touched. Such a motive has been furnished in the profound grief and horror excited by the murder of President Garfield. It is not and never should be for gotten that that detestable crime was the act of a disappointed office seeker, pushing, whether insanely or otherwise, to it's logical belong the spells , that the offices are for the reward of party services, not a trust for the benefit of the whole people that the di- version of these offices in any way from the control of the dominant clique of the sue. cessful party is an act of political treason, an interference with property rights which can- not be endured.
 The time seems ripe for 8 movement which shall destroy the vicious system that was brought so startlingly before the people l by Guiteau's explanation of his crime. The | best monument to the great statesman who l has fallen will not be any structure of mar 1 ble, however costly, but some act incorpora- ted into the living institutions of the country | which shall render powerless the vile and | dangerous principle which interfered with his administration and exerted it's evil force on the mind of his assassin. It is eminently fitting that as his life was associated with the Civil Service movement, so his death should the success of those ideas to which he has given the noblest and best ex- pression.
 In the signers of the call we recognize not dreamers or political theorists, but solid, hard-headed men. What we need from them now is not any abstract declaration in reference to the justice or propriety of re- form. Of that we have had enough. We want something that shall satisfy the con- nunity that they are actually devoted to Civ l Service Reform not as a theory, but as a practical principle of political life, whose uccess they intend to secure by their politi- al action.