Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-12-18
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
 The announcement comes from Wash ington that President Cleveland will send to congress a supplemental message re lating to civil service reform and the necessity of pushing the Chinese abor- tion. Such a message will be hum bug, mere waste of words, and can have no other result than to make a laughing stock of the president.
 President Cleveland was probably honest in his efforts to promote reform in the civil service. He was little green to the presidential office four years ago, and he had very little conception of the tremendous pressure that would be brought to bear on him to break down the letter and the spirit of the civil ser vice laws. In his appointments, whether through his ineXperience or the impo- sitions of designing advisers, he elected some of the most mo- torious spoilsmen that ever plighted faith to the doctrine of Andrew Jackson. W t IO uOU uSItl u So o1 SOh- necticut to see instances of this. Some of the pernicious political activity that federal officials have displayed in this state would have wrung admiring ap- proval from the sympathetic dust of Old Hickory himself. The utter contempt shown for the president by these officials was no less disheartening to civil service reformers than it was disgusting to staunch democrats who were alienated from President Cleveland by the un- savOry political character of the men he had raised to office in the state. Whether or not the president winked at the char acter of these men, or whether he played the hypocrite in regard to their political methods, there arose 3 well defined feel ing that he had changed the popular de- mand of 1884 to turn the fascals out to a treacherous purpose to .'bring the rascals in" If ever the fed eral service in Connecticut was manned by set of political scamps it has been during the administration of President Cleveland. and the sooner the whole gang are set adrift bag and baggage and body and brooches the better will it be for the democratic party aud its pros poets of future success at the polls.
 Jacksons doctrine of the spells being the property of the victors is undoubted- ly accepted by the majority of voters in both parties. But either party must sui fer, in the estimation of its own mem- bers as we'll as the opposition, by honor ing men whose chief claim to advance ment is the amount of political rascality which they are capable of accomplish ing. President Cleveland can do his own party and the country generally no better service than to hold with sealed lips his views of civil ser vice reform. Any talk from him on the subject now, after the lessons of the recent campaign, would be regarded as mere rant and arrant humbug. In a few short months there will be repub- lican administration at Washington, and he should leave with it the civil service skeleton. He has no right to make the democratic party a laughing stock in the
 
 eyes of the country by any empty plati- tudes on this mastodonic humbug. The republican party is a spells party, and when the democracy again gets in power it will not try to masquerade as civil service party while a set of office-hold- ing rascals discredit its professions in the eyes of the community. Few if any democrats will hold office under General Harrison, and fewer republicans should hold office under the next president the democrats. have the good fortune to elect. But democratic officials must be of better calibre and more creditable political character than the race of rascals that took the place of those who were turned out to make room for them.
 President Cleveland should put that civil service message in his waste basket