The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-04-29
NOT SERIOUSLY HURT.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

George William Curtis Delivers an
Address at Baltimore.
BALTIMORE, April 29.-Lehmann hall was
well filed tonight with an elegant audience
gathered to hear George William Curtis de-
liver his appointed lecture, opening the an
nual meeting of the national committee of
the association for the reform of the civil
| service. Charles j. Bonaparte presided.
THE LECTURE
The following are extracts from the
lecture:
Armed with the arbitrary power Of patronage
party overbears the free expression OF the pop
ular will and iutrenches itself 10 Illicit power.
| 1t makes the whole civil service a drilled and
| disciplined army, whose living depends upon
| carrying elections at any cost for the party
| which controls it. Patronage has but to capture
| the local primary meeting and IL commands
the whole party organization. Every member
| OF the party mu submit or renounce his party
| allegiance, and with it the qualification of his
| political ambition, and such is the malgn force
| of party spirit that in what seems to him des-
| perate alternative he often supports men whom
| he distrusts and methods watch he despises
| lest his party should be defeated. He taxes,
! practically, the position that party loyalty re-
QuireS him to support one party with bad mt as
| ures and unfit candidates rather than risk the
| success of another party with good measures
| and suitable men
This devotion of party, not to the ends for
| which it exists, but to the spoilS that accom-
| pany success at the polls, has become so abso-
Lutte that it has produced an evil greater than
| any which party proposes to remedy. In order
| to secure and maintain party power cor
| ruption has been introduced which involves not
| only the whole system OF our politics, but the
| character OF the people. 1t is a corruption so
| general and so familiar that amendment 70
| the constitution is proposed 10 congress-, which
contemplates toe election Of senators of the
state instead of the legislature,
and the argument gravely urged for
the amendment id that it is harder to corrupt
! the whole people than to buy a legislature.
Familiar incidents of the last pr sidential cam
paign, the collection of an immense sum of
! money by party managers to be spent without
| audit or accounting of any kind and the gen
eral public conviction that it was simple cor
ruption fund not only spent for Illicit purposes,
| but by which high Office was bought, and the
| equally general conviction that II the other
| party could have procured the same sum OF
| money it would have been the same thing,
show now widespread the evil has become.
| A New York morning paper of the highest
! character recently published the remark of
| conspicuous politician. whose name was given.
that two-fifths of the democratic voters of the
| state are represented in conventions by dele
SSsGtsd by the Na heads 7orf Of the
Kings county" that is to say in
the cities of New York and Brooklyn. An even
ing paper Of the same day, speaking Of the
| republican nomination for the governorship in
Rhode Island said: lit is notorious in the state
| that every republican candidate must pay for
| this honor, and the price has heretofore ranged
has frequently happened that a sec
ond assessment has BEEN necessary
when the election by the peopleihas failed and
| the choice has fallen upon the legislature"
| These statements are not disputed. They are
! read lanRuidy by many rea ierS as illustra-
tions of the rottenneSS of politics. They read
| with alarm by many Others as signs of faint
that will rot the whole system if not extirpated.
The wrong is not peculiar to any party, for its
source is the party spirit which Washington
| toresaw. The pot indeed solemnly rebukes the
| kettle, but when traders in mules denounce
traders in blocks of five for political corruption,
we instructiyey recall the legendary Roman
augurs and the stage direction in Robert the
Devil, Internal laughter"
Party which is properly simply the organiza-
ton of citze IS who agree in their views of pub
Tic poncy to secure the enactment or their views
in law, has become what is well called ma
chine, which controls the political action OF
millions OF citizens who vote for candidates
that the machine Selects and for measures
which the machine dictates or approves Ser
Witty to p roy takes the place of individual in
dependence OF action. 50 completely does 1t
consume political manhood that ike men sud
denly hurried from their warm beds into the
night air, shivering and chattering in the cold,
even intelligent citizens who have protested
against their arty machine as fraudulent and
false, and an organized misrepresentation on of
the party conviction and will, declare that If
their protest against the power OF fraud and
corruption does not avail. and the party
commands them toyIeld. they will bow the head
and bend the knee IN loyalty to fraud and cor
ruption The deSpotism Of the machine is so
absolute and the triumph of the party so su-
persedes the reason and purpose Of party, that
we have now reached point in our political
development, when upon the M ST vital aud
pressing public questions parties do not even
/ know their own opinions, and factions of the
same party wranZle tercely to determine by a
majority what the party thinks and proposes.
| Meanwhile so completely has the conception Of
party, as merely a convenient but clumsy
| agency to promote certain public objects, dis
! appeared, that one of the chief journals in the
| country recently remarked, with entire gravity,
that it found no fault with conscientious indie
pendence in parties which was like annourc.
ing with lofty torbearance that SIS philosophIc
moralist, it found no fault with truth telling or
honest dealing.
The spois system is a moral pestilence bred
! Of Ignorance, carelessness and knavery. which
! invites corruption as filth invites disease A
| community which holds that public Office is q
| private benefit for which the recipient ought to
| pay, or that citizens of all parties in free
| government may be justly taxed for the work
| ers of party, would hardly frown upon the
! proposition that the beneficiary of a law may
| properly pay for its passage. do not say
that the cases are exactly parallel, but the
moral laxity and blindness in the one case
would extend naturally and readily to the
other. So long it is held that the public
money may be spent by party for its own
| benefit, which means that in a country where
! party dominance should depend upon honest
| preference of its policy, the dominant party
may properly pay S60,O0O,000 from the
| public treasury for votes, so long 1t will be
as impossible TO stem the corruption which
Threatens us on every side as TO stay the resist
less plunge Of Niagara.