Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1886-11-17
LETTER FROM JIMMY.
MR. BLAINE REPLIES TO A CIRCULAR
QUESTIONING HIS POSITION ON REFORM
The Circular, Is a PrsvarlcafOn- Never Rspu-
dated Reform in the Civil Seryice-Hs
Was Speaking Of the Old Country,
You Know, Not This Country.

AUGUSTA, Me-. November 16.-The
following letter will be publeshed here
tomorrow:
AUGUSTA, Me, Nov. Is, 1886.
To The Editor ofthe KenRebec Journal:
81 thank you for calling my attention to
a circular issued by the sO-called lnde-
pendent committee during the recent can
vass in Massachusetts, touching my posi-
ton on the question Of Civil Service Re
FORM. Absence from home for several
weeks has prevented my seeing it sooner.
The circular embOdies
A SINGULAR PERyERsIoN
of what said and still more singular
peryersion of what quoted in my speech
on the 18th of October at Huntingdon,
Pa. How the errors or Misrepresentation
originated it is not for me to say. My
speech in Pennsylvania was accurately re-
ported for the Philadelphia Press by
skilled stenographers, and | personally
saw the report in no other paper. l send
you herewith the speech of October 19, as
it appeared in the Press, and respectfully
ask you to republish it in your columns
side by side with the circular issued by the
Massachusetts, Independent Committee.
81 thank you further for submitting to
me public letter OfOctober 26, from Mr..
Martin Brimmer, of Boston, in which am
accused ofrepudiating the reform of the
Civil Service with a sneer. Perhaps Mr..
Brimmer inconsiderately based his re-
marks upon the circular of the Indepen-
dent Committee, and has thus been led
into publishing a statement which does
me great injustice, If my suppositiOn be
correct, Mr.. Brimmer will, as gentleman,
withdraw his language. 1t is scarcely
necessary to say that have
NEVER REPUDIATED REFORM
in the Civil Service, nor abated my inter
est therein. Nor have ever regarded the
sueer as a forcble mode of argument.
Were tempted to resort to it, l should
direct it, not against the reform of the
Civil Service, but against the hypocrisy OF
those who wish the condition of that ser
vice to be enforced against their political
opponents but not against their political
friends.
The point which sought TO establish in
my speech at Huntington was entirely
confused and Obscured in the Independent
circular In effect | said that
THE ENGLISH CIVIL SERVICE,
which was held up rs model for our own
Government by those who left the Repub-
lican party two years ago, is now under
investigation and apparent condemnation
by the English themselves; that the
British Ministry have instituted a com
mission to examine into the alleged abuses
and that Mr.. George w. Smalley, appar-
emily agreeing hitherto with the American
admirers of the English Service now de-
clares the belief in England to be that the
Civil Service is worse in all departments
of the Government than it was forty years
ago
"Mr Smalley gives somewhat detailed
recital Of the defects and abuses alleged to
exist in the English Service-deteetS and
abuses which were
NEVER ATTRIBUTED TO OUR OWN
Civil Service, even by its most mercileSs
censor My argument implied and was
intended to imply that the Republican
party had been wise in not adopting the
English system with its life tenure and its
large pension list and all the attendant
evils which have at last demanded investi-
CATION by ministerial commission. Nor
would Justice and fair courtesy have been
done to my speech, even if my remarks on
the Civil Service, torn from their logical
connection, had been correctly quoted by
the Independent Committee. Those re-
marks were but part Of an argument in
which endeavored TO illustrate
HOW TRULY AMERICAN
i'm its best sense, were the whole policy
and history ofthe Republican party, and
how under the lead Of the so-called Inde-
pendents, the Democratic party both in
its revenue system, and its Civil Service
rules, was to be cOnformed to British
policies Just ut the very time when the
British themSelvsSare finding fatal weak
ness in those policies. In short, though |
did not say so in words, meant to convey
my belief that the worst leaders and
guides for a continental republic, are those
who persist in seeing the perfection Of
human government in
AN INsULAR MONARCHY
whose conditions are in oil respects radi-
cally different from those OF our own
broad land.
"The Massachusetts, Independents should
learn that American inspiration ends
where imitation of England begins.