Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1881-04-15
Civil Service Reform.

In the current number of the Penn Month
~ Hon. DOrnan Il. Eaton has an admirable
paper on Civil Service Reform, showing the
origin, the theory, the operation and the re-
suits of the spolls system, as illustrated par
ticularly in the management of the New
York Custom House, from the accession OF
President Jackson TO the present time. Ac-
cording to Mr.. Eaton, Aaron Burr was the
great original inventor of the machine
and the foundation-layer of the ''spoils sys
tenn" and he quotes from Parton's Life the
''Burrian Code" as follows:
Politics Is game, the prizes of which are
offices and contracts.
Fidelity to party is the sole virtue of the
politician. lie only is politician who would
vote unhesitatingly for the Dewitt the Devil
were regularly nominated. One sin only IS
Misunderstanding
No man must be allowed to suffer on
...CUunt o1 his lldciIty 10 ms pirty-no
matter how Odious TO the people he may
make himself.
When there is a conflict between the party
in the whole Union and the party i'll the
State, or between the party in the State and
the party in the country, man must adhere
to the behests of the majority OF his own
local organization. That is to say. a Fri
vate must obey the orders of his own lnl-
mediate captain, though that captain may
be in mutiny against his colonel.
Editors are to be unscrupulOusly used, but
never implicitly trusted.
The end and aim of the professional poll
tician is to keep great men down and put
little men up. Little men, owing all to the
wire -puller, will be governed by him. Great
men, having ideas and convictions, are peril
Gus, even as tools.
Burr was crushed by his own machine,
but these his maxims arc perennial and we
daily see them put in practice, the expert
ence of half century having been able to
improve on them but slightly. The adop-
tion of the Burr system, as n settled rule OF
party action an | policy, is aseribed to MIR.
Van Buren. When Senator in 1891, he had,
in his limited sphere, put Burr's system into
practice at Washington, but it was not made
supreme in national affairs until he became
General Jackson's Secretary of State in
1929; and it was perfected in its methods
under him as Vicc-President and President
from 1882 to 1910. Mr.. Eaton then graphi-
cally sets forth the manner in which success
sive collectors of customs at the chief seaport
of the country employed the power of their
office to reward or punish party zeal or trea-
son and devotes chapters to the attempts at
civil service reform of Presidents Grant and
Hayes.
What is needed and what is sure TO come
for the people will assuredly not submit for
ever to the injustice and manifold inquity of
the present system-is, in our opinion,
the adoption of some plain and
practical rules such, for instance
as President Hayes has suggested in his
mcssascs-which shall regulate appoint
ments and tenure of office, secure the de-
partments from Congressional dictation and
relieve Congressman of the pressure and re-
sponsibiity of the appointing power, which
now practically rests with them. President
Garfield, in an atlantic article, four years
ago, said one-Mird of the working hours of
Senators and Representatives is hardly sufli-
cient to meet the demands made upon them
in reference to appointments to Office and
that the present system ''invades the indie
pendencc of the executive, and makes him
less responsible for his appointments. and
degrades the civil service itself" Such
rules as we have referred to would Obviate
all these just objections to the present sys-
tenn, and place our civil lservice upon sensi-
have no doubt the great majority of intelli-
gent people urc ready.