National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1881-02-22

DraSS ana run GNSm Dy Sto<tHl he MOulu
fall on his knees and thank the Lord for
the political millennium.
The schoolmaster is abroad. Tired of
photography and the blackboard, he wants
to run the Government. He is serrowfully
apprehensive that the legislative Solons
and the executive subordinates lack suf-
fcient knowledge of the forms of speech
and the theory of the hypothenuse. He
deplores the absence of men like himself
from the high places Of the earth, and
attributes to this vicious public taste
what he is pleased to consider as the inn
pending overthrow of our political insti-
tutions.
That describes on e peculiarity of the
civil-service reformer; but he has an
other and worse one. An army of one
hundred thousand persons administer
our Government. The civil-seryice
reformers think those persons should
have no opinions, and should be
stripped of all influence. When
they swear into Office he would
make them swear off politics. He would
make them hired Swiss, Janizaries, or
funkeys He would make of American
Office holding not an accident in life, but
a trade. They would belong to it,
and it would belong to them. They
would be born in it, drilled to it;
live in it, die in it; and it would
descend to their posterity to the remotest
generations. They would be merely liza
BILE to the political bow-string when they
dared to enter a caucus or convention
or say that their soul was their own. In
fact, they should have no souls, but rise
higher and higher in this beatific
scheme, until they were incapable of
doing anything but obeying orders. The
representative men of the different States
should be shorn of all advisory power as
to who should fill these positions. A
central bureaucracy should be created,
into whose tender mercies appointments
and promotions should be vested. Those
who are responsible to nobody would be
invested with autocratic power. The
poor office-holder would be at the mercy
of the heads of rooms or divisions, and
men at once irresponsible and unknown
would usurp an authority unknown to
the Government and its precedents. Tn
der such a regime, with its temptations
the poor subordinate official would be in,
such predicam ent that it might well be
said: "The latter end of that man was
worse than the first"
Opposed to that and standing in bold
relief against it, is the American idea of
government. A man tues uoJ forfeit his
rights as an American citizen, nor is he
relieved of his duties as such by becom-
ing an officer. The man who has no opin-
ions on the great questions before the
American people; who does not belong to
one Of the great parties by whom it must
be governed who does not love its prin-
ciples, give the necessary time to attend
to its primaries and conventions-do
not give from his heart and his purse
to defend what he believes to be neces-
sary to perpetuate our free institutions
is not fit to hold any office of profit or
trust under the American Government.
The civil-service reformer has still an
other and worse phase OF character. lie
belongs to a select and rery small mi
nority of his party. He demands that
he shall dictate to ten men who do not
think like him on all questions as to the
policy or pa tronage of his party. Failing
to do this, he threatens to bolt. This is
the most contemplate phase of that anti
American thing minority rule. Men
whose political principles firmly cement
them to their party must sacrifice their
wishes and their Judgment to few whose
party ties fit so loosely that they are ready
at any moment to vote the Democratic
ticket or throw away their votes if they
cannot domineer. And these men call
themselves civil-service reformers. For
four years they have had their oppor-
tunity, and have only demonstrated the
visionary character of their schemes and
their own incapacity.