in the Civil Service. The subject was of very little interest. A few
newspapers which were thought to be visionary occasionally discussed
it, but the press of both parties smiled with profound indifference.
Mr. Jenckes had pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his
proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from
which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him.
The English reform, which was by far the most significant political
event in that country since the parliamentary reform bill of 1832,
was virtually unknown to us. To the general public it was necessary
to explain what the Civil Service was, how it was recruited, what the
abuses were, and how and why they were to be remedied. Old professional
politicians, who look upon reform as Dr. Johnson defined patriotism, as
the last refuge of a scoundrel, either laughed at what they called the
politics of idiocy and the moon, or sneered bitterly that reformers were
cheap hypocrites who wanted other people's places and lamented other
people's sins.
This general public indifference was not surprising. The great reaction
of feeling which followed the war, the relaxation of the long-strained
anxiety of the nation for its own existence, the exhaustion of the vast
expenditure of life and money, and the satisfaction with the general
success, had left little disposition to do anything but secure in the
national polity the legitimate results of the great contest. To the
country, reform was a proposition to reform evils of administration
of which it knew little, and which, at most, seemed to it petty
and impertinent in the midst of great affairs. To Congress, it was
apparently a proposal to deprive members of the patronage which to many
of them was the real gratification of their position, the only way in
which they felt their distinction and power. To such members reform was
a plot to deprive the bear of his honey, the dog of his bone, and they
stared and growled incredulously.
This was a dozen years ago. To-day the demand for reform is imperative.
The drop has become a deluge. Leading journals of both parties eagerly
proclaim its urgent necessity. From New England to California public
opinion is organizing itself in reform associations. In the great
custom-house and the great post-office of the country--those in the city
of New York--reform has been actually begun upon definite principles
and with remarkable success, and the good example has been followed
elsewhere with the same results. A bill carefully prepared and providing
for gradual and thorough reform has been introduced with an admirable
report in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Pendleton, the Democratic
Senator from Ohio, declares that the Spoils System which has debauched
the Civil Service of fifty millions of people must be destroyed. Mr.
Dawes, the Republican Senator from Massachusetts, summons all good
citizens to unite to suppress this gigantic evil which threatens
the republic. Conspicuous reformers sit in the Cabinet; and in this
sorrowful moment, at least, the national heart and mind and conscience,
stricken and bowed by a calamity whose pathos penetrates every
house-hold in Christendom, cries to these warning words, "Amen! Amen!"
Like the slight sound amid the frozen silence of the Alps that loosens
and brings down the avalanche, the solitary pistol-shot of the 2d of
July has suddenly startled this vast accumulation of public opinion
into conviction, and on every side thunders the rush and roar of its
overwhelming descent, which will sweep away the host of evils bred of
this monstrous abuse.
This is an extraordinary change for twelve years, but it shows the
vigorous political health, the alert common-sense, and the essential
patriotism of the country, which are the earnest of the success of
any wise reform. The war which naturally produced the lassitude and
indifference to the subject which were evident twelve years ago had
made reform, indeed, a vital necessity, but the necessity was not then
perceived. The dangers that attend a vast system of administration based
to its least detail upon personal patronage were not first exposed by
Mr. Jenckes in 1867, but before that time they had been mainly discussed
as possibilities and inferences. Yet the history of the old New York
council of appointment had illustrated in that State the party fury and
corruption which patronage necessarily breeds, and Governor McKean in
Pennsylvania, at the close of the last century, had made "a clean sweep"
of the places within his power. The spoils spirit struggled desperately
to obtain possession of the national administration from the day of
Jefferson's inauguration to that of Jackson's, when it succeeded.
Its first great but undesigned triumph was the decision of the First
Congress in 1789, vesting the sole power of removal in the President,
a decision which placed almost every position in the Civil Service
unconditionally at his pleasure. This decision was determined by
the weight of Madison's authority. But Webster, nearly fifty years
afterwards, opposing his authority to that of Madison, while admitting
the decision to have been final, declared it to have been wrong. The
year 1820, which saw the great victory of slavery in the Missouri
Compromise, was also the year in which the second great triumph of the
spoils system was gained, by the passage of the law which, under the
plea of securing greater responsibility in certain financial offices,
limited such offices to a term of four years. The decision of 1789,
which gave the sole power of removal to the President, required positive
executive action to effect removal; but this law of 1820 vacated all the
chief financial offices, with all the places dependent upon them, during
the term of every President, who, without an order of removal, could
fill them all at his pleasure.
A little later a change in the method of nominating the President from
a congressional caucus to a national convention still further developed
the power of patronage as a party resource, and in the session of
1825-26, when John Quincy Adams was President, Mr. Benton introduced his
report upon Mr. Macon's resolution declaring the necessity of reducing
and regulating executive patronage; although Mr. Adams, the last of the
Revolutionary line of Presidents, so scorned to misuse patronage that he
leaned backward in standing erect. The pressure for the overthrow of the
constitutional system had grown steadily more angry and peremptory
with the progress of the country, the development of party spirit,
the increase of patronage, the unanticipated consequences of the sole
executive power of removal, and the immense opportunity offered by the
four-years' law. It was a pressure against which Jefferson held the
gates by main force, which was relaxed by the war under Madison and the
fusion of parties under Monroe, but which swelled again into a furious
torrent as the later parties took form. John Quincy Adams adhered, with
the tough tenacity of his father's son, to the best principles of all
his predecessors. He followed Washington, and observed the spirit of
the Constitution in refusing to remove for any reason but official
misconduct or incapacity. But he knew well what was coming, and
with characteristically stinging sarcasm he called General Jackson's
inaugural address "a threat of re-form." With Jackson's administration
in 1830 the deluge of the spoils system burst over our national
politics. Sixteen years later, Mr. Buchanan said in a public speech
that General Taylor would be faithless to the Whig party if he did not
proscribe Democrats. So high the deluge had risen which has ravaged and
wasted our politics ever since, and the danger will be stayed only
when every President, leaning upon the law, shall stand fast where John
Quincy Adams stood.
But the debate continued during the whole Jackson administration. In
the Senate and on the stump, in elaborate reports and popular speeches,
Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, the great political chiefs of their time,
sought to alarm the country with the dangers of patronage. Sargent S.
Prentiss, in the House of Representatives, caught up and echoed the cry
under the administration of Van Buren. But the country refused to be
alarmed. As the Yankee said of the Americans at the battle of
White Plains, where they were beaten, "The fact is, as far as I can
understand, our folks did n't seem to take no sort of interest in that
battle." The reason that the country took no sort of interest in the
discussion of the evils of patronage was evident. It believed the
denunciation to be a mere party cry, a scream of disappointment and
impotence from those who held no places and controlled no patronage.
It heard the leaders of the opposition fiercely arraigning the
administration for proscription and universal wrong-doing, but it was
accustomed by its English tradition and descent always to hear the
Tories cry that the Constitution was in danger when the Whigs were in
power, and the Whigs under a Tory administration to shout that all was
lost. It heard the uproar like the old lady upon her first railroad
journey, who sat serene amid the wreck of a collision, and when asked
if she was much hurt, looked over her spectacles and answered,
blandly, "Hurt? Why, I supposed they always stopped so in this kind of
travelling." The feeling that the denunciation was only a part of the
game of politics, and no more to be accepted as a true statement than
Snug the joiner as a true lion, was confirmed by the fact that when the
Whig opposition came into power with President Harrison, it adopted the
very policy which under Democratic administration it had strenuously
denounced as fatal. The pressure for place was even greater than it had
been ten years before, and although Mr. Webster as Secretary of State
maintained his consistency by putting his name to an executive order
asserting sound principles, the order was swept away like a lamb by a
locomotive.
Nothing but a miracle, said General Harrison's attorney-general, can
feed the swarm of hungry office-seekers.
Adopted by both parties, Mr. Marcy's doctrine that the places in the
public service are the proper spoils of a victorious party, was accepted
as a necessary condition of popular government. One of the highest
officers of the government expounded this doctrine to me long
afterwards. "I believe," said he, "that when the people vote to change
a party administration they vote to change every person of the opposite
party who holds a place, from the President of the United States to
the messenger at my door." It is this extraordinary but sincere
misconception of the function of party in a free government that leads
to the serious defence of the spoils system. Now, a party is merely a
voluntary association of citizens to secure the enforcement of a
certain policy of administration upon which they are agreed. In a free
government this is done by the election of legislators and of certain
executive officers who are friendly to that policy. But the duty of the
great body of persons employed in the minor administrative places is in
no sense political. It is wholly ministerial, and the political opinions
of such persons affect the discharge of their duties no more than their
religious views or their literary preferences. All that can be justly
required of such persons, in the interest of the public business, is
honesty, intelligence, capacity, industry, and due subordination; and to
say that, when the policy of the Government is changed by the result
of an election from protection to free-trade, every book-keeper and
letter-carrier and messenger and porter in the public offices ought to
be a free-trader, is as wise as to say that if a merchant is a Baptist
every clerk in his office ought to be a believer in total immersion. But
the officer of whom I spoke undoubtedly expressed the general feeling.
The necessarily evil consequences of the practice which he justified
seemed to be still speculative and inferential, and to the national
indifference which followed the war the demand of Mr. Jenckes for reform
appeared to be a mere whimsical vagary most inopportunely introduced.
It was, however, soon evident that the war had made the necessity of
reform imperative, and chiefly for two reasons: first, the enormous
increase of patronage, and second, the fact that circumstances had
largely identified a party name with patriotism. The great and radical
evil of the spoils system was carefully fostered by the apparent
absolute necessity to the public welfare of making political opinion and
sympathy a condition of appointment to the smallest place. It is since
the war, therefore, that the evil has run riot and that its consequences
have been fully revealed. Those consequences are now familiar, and
I shall not describe them. It is enough that the most patriotic and
intelligent Americans and the most competent foreign observers agree
that the direct and logical results of that system are the dangerous
confusion of the executive and legislative powers of the Government;
the conversion of politics into mere place-hunting; the extension of the
mischief to State and county and city administration, and the consequent
degradation of the national character; the practical disfranchisement of
the people wherever the system is most powerful; and the perversion of a
republic of equal citizens into a despotism of venal politicians. These
are the greatest dangers that can threaten a republic, and they are due
to the practice of treating the vast system of minor public places which
are wholly ministerial, and whose duties are the same under every party
administration, not as public trusts, but as party perquisites. The
English-speaking race has a grim sense of humor, and the absurdity of
transacting the public business of a great nation in a way which would
ruin both the trade and the character of a small huckster, of proceeding
upon the theory--for such is the theory of the spoils system--that a man
should be put in charge of a locomotive because he holds certain views
of original sin, or because he polishes boots nimbly with his tongue--it
is a folly so stupendous and grotesque that when it is fully perceived
by the shrewd mother-wit of the Yankee it will be laughed indignantly
and contemptuously away. But the laugh must have the method, and the
indignation the form, of law; and now that the public mind is aroused
to the true nature and tendency of the spoils system is the time to
consider the practicable legal remedy for them.
The whole system of appointments in the Civil Service proceeds from the
President, and in regard to his action the intention of the Constitution
is indisputable. It is that the President shall appoint solely upon
public considerations, and that the officer appointed shall serve
as long as he discharges his duty faithfully. This is shown in Mr.
Jefferson's familiar phrase in his reply to the remonstrance of the
merchants of New Haven against the removal of the collector of that
port. Mr. Jefferson asserted that Mr. Adams had purposely appointed in
the last moments of his administration officers whose designation he
should have left to his successor. Alluding to these appointments, he
says: "I shall correct the procedure, and that done, return with joy to
that state of things when the only question concerning a candidate shall
be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?"
Mr. Jefferson here recognizes that these had been the considerations
which had usually determined appointments; and Mr. Madison, in the
debate upon the President's sole power of removal, declared that if a
President should remove an officer for any reason not connected with
efficient service he would be impeached. Reform, therefore, is merely
a return to the principle and purpose of the Constitution and to the
practice of the early administrations.
What more is necessary, then, for reform than that the President should
return to that practice? As all places in the Civil Service are filled
either by his direct nomination or by officers whom he appoints, why has
not any President ample constitutional authority to effect at any moment
a complete and thorough reform? The answer is simple. He has the power.
He has always had it. A President has only to do as Washington did,
and all his successors have only to do likewise, and reform would be
complete. Every President has but to refuse to remove non-political
officers for political or personal reasons; to appoint only those whom
he knows to be competent; to renominate, as Monroe and John Quincy Adams
did, every faithful officer whose commission expires, and to require the
heads of departments and all inferior appointing officers to conform to
this practice, and the work would be done. This is apparently a short
and easy and constitutional method of reform, requiring no further
legislation or scheme of procedure. But why has no President adopted it?
For the same reason that the best of Popes does not reform the abuses
of his Church. For the same reason that a leaf goes over Niagara. It is
because the opposing forces are overpowering. The same high officer of
the government to whom I have alluded said to me as we drove upon the
Heights of Washington, "Do you mean that I ought not to appoint my
subordinates for whom I am responsible?" I answered: "I mean that you do
not appoint them now; I mean that if, when we return to the capital,
you hear that your chief subordinate is dead, you will not appoint
his successor. You will have to choose among the men urged upon you by
certain powerful politicians. Undoubtedly you ought to appoint the man
whom you believe to be the most fit. But you do not and can not. If
you could or did appoint such men only, and that were the rule of your
department and of the service, there would be no need of reform." And he
could not deny it. There was no law to prevent his selection of the
best man. Indeed, the law assumed that he would do it. The Constitution
intended that he should do it. But when I reminded him that there were
forces beyond the law that paralyzed the intention of the Constitution,
and which would inevitably compel him to accept the choice of others, he
said no more.
It is easy to assert that the reform of the Civil Service is an
executive reform. So it is. But the Executive alone cannot accomplish
it.
The abuses are now completely and aggressively organized, and the
sturdiest President would quail before them. The President who
should undertake, single-handed, to deal with the complication of
administrative evils known as the Spoils System would find his party
leaders in Congress and their retainers throughout the country arrayed
against him; the proposal to disregard traditions and practices which
are regarded as essential to the very existence and effectiveness of
party organization would be stigmatized as treachery, and the President
himself would be covered with odium as a traitor. The air would hum with
denunciation. The measures he should favor, the appointments he might
make, the recommendations of his secretaries, would be opposed and
imperilled, and the success of his administration would be endangered. A
President who should alone undertake thoroughly to reform the evil must
feel it to be the vital and paramount issue, and must be willing to
hazard everything for its success. He must have the absolute faith and
the indomitable will of Luther. "Here stand I; I can no other." How can
we expect a President whom this system elects to devote himself to its
destruction? General Grant, elected by a spontaneous patriotic impulse,
fresh from the regulated order of military life and new to politics and
politicians, saw the reason and the necessity of reform. The hero of a
victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed
and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress,
good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience,
granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous.
"I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this
pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was
enveloped in whirlwinds of sophistry, scorn, and incredulity. He who
upon his own line had fought it out all summer to victory, upon a line
absolutely new and unknown was naturally bewildered and dismayed. So
Wellington had drawn the lines of victory on the Spanish Peninsula and
had saved Europe at Waterloo. But even Wellington at Waterloo could
not be also Sir Robert Peel at Westminster. Even Wellington, who had
overthrown Napoleon in the field, could not also be the parliamentary
hero who for the welfare of his country would dare to risk the overthrow
of his party.
When at last President Grant said, "If Congress adjourns without
positive legislation on Civil Service reform, I shall regard such action
as a disapproval of the system and shall abandon it," it was, indeed,
a surrender, but it was the surrender of a champion who had honestly
mistaken both the nature and the strength of the adversary and his own
power of endurance.
It is not, then, reasonable, under the conditions of our Government and
in the actual situation, to expect a President to go much faster or
much further than public opinion. But executive action can aid most
effectively the development and movement of that opinion, and the most
decisive reform measures that the present administration might take
would be undoubtedly supported by a powerful public sentiment. The
educative results of resolute executive action, however limited and
incomplete in scope, have been shown in the two great public offices
of which I have spoken, the New York custom-house and the New York
post-office. For nearly three years the entire practicability of reform
has been demonstrated in those offices, and solely by the direction of
the President. The value of such demonstrations, due to the Executive
will alone, carried into effect by thoroughly trained and interested
subordinates, cannot be overestimated. But when they depend upon the
will of a transient officer and not upon a strong public conviction,
they are seeds that have no depth of soil. A vital and enduring
reform in administrative methods, although it be but a return to the
constitutional intention, can be accomplished only by the commanding
impulse of public opinion. Permanence is secured by law, not by
individual pleasure. But in this country law is only formulated public
opinion. Reform of the Civil Service does not contemplate an invasion of
the constitutional prerogative of the President and the Senate, nor does
it propose to change the Constitution by statute. The whole system
of the Civil Service proceeds, as I said, from the President, and the
object of the reform movement is to enable him to fulfil the intention
of the Constitution by revealing to him the desire of the country
through the action of its authorized representatives. When the
ground-swell of public opinion lifts Congress from the rocks, the
President will gladly float with it into the deep water of wise and
patriotic action. The President, indeed, has never been the chief
sinner in the Spoils System, although he has been the chief agent.
Even President Jackson yielded to party pressure as much as to his own
convictions. President Harrison sincerely wished to stay the flood, but
it swept him away. President Grant doubtfully and with good intentions
tested the pressure before yielding. President Hayes, with sturdy
independence, adhered inflexibly to a few points, but his party chiefs
cursed and derided him. President Garfield,--God bless and restore
him!--frankly declares permanent and effective reform to be impossible
without the consent of Congress. When, therefore, Congress obeys a
commanding public opinion, and reflects it in legislation, it will
restore to the President the untrammelled exercise of his ample
constitutional powers according to the constitutional intention; and the
practical question of reform is, How shall this be brought about?