themselves to the same branch of vast unchanging public business, which, from the smaller officers to the greater, moves on like streams and rivers in an unbroken succession and everlasting continuity. Indefensible as political indifference is in the citizen, we may unhesitatingly affirm that, so far as the mere discharge of official duties are concerned, these 50,000 officials would not be less useful public servants if they had neither opinions about politics nor share in party affairs? We may not, as was found necessary in England for a hundred years, disfranchise them, but we should clearly see and make them see, and make them feel also, that they not only need not, but should not, as officials, interfere with party politics or regard political opinions as qualification for ministerial duties.

Before considering what should be the term and tenure of this vast body of federal officials-referred to in the National Constitution as "inferior officers," and to which a much larger number of State and municipal officials holding like relations should be added—it will be well to notice some objections which stand in the way of considering the question of term and tenure upon its own merits. It is declared that any term and tenure which prevents inferior officers being removed and their successors appointed at the pleasure of the majority, disastrously restricts the freedom of action on the part of the great parties, and deprives them and the people of essential representation in the official life of the country; and further, that the establishment of competitive examinations, as the Civil Service Reformers propose, is an equally unjustifiable restriction.

The answer is not difficult. Under our institutions parties are inevitable and salutary. Their great functions are to arouse, embody, sustain and carry forward a sound public opinion until it finds fit expression in statutes and executive action.

Under these institutions, the federal and State legislators and all who govern in municipalities and towns, are selected by the vote of the majority, which majority in itself but expresses the will of the dominant party. In the selection of Mayors, Governors, and Presidents, that party majority is equally potential. These two classes of officers, the one wielding all legislative authority, and the other all executive authority, in their united action exert all the power which our institutions give, or a free people can safely

confer, for the representation and enforcement of their will. All of these officers may be, and in our practice they generally arewithin their respective spheres-the trusted favorites of the dominant party, bound in the double allegiance of gratitude and dependence.

Through these two classes of officers, the adherents of the dominant party practically make and repeal all laws and ordinances, direct their enforcement, fill every subordinate place, instruct and require obedience from all who hold them, enforce all principles and guide all policy in obedience to which the vast affairs of the nation, from the lighthouses and the signal stations to foreign embassies and the great departments are conducted. Is not this enough? Have we ever suffered because parties have needed opportunities or influence greater than these? Is not here a sphere broad and grand enough-a power and opportunity dazzling enough -to inspire the patriotism and reward the zeal of any party and of the noblest man who ever led any party in a great nation?

Let it not be said that competitive examinations or doctrinaire Civil Service rules block the way. For, I repeat, they in no way interfere with the elections or proper official action of any of these party-elected law makers or executive leaders, federal, State or municipal.

These examinations and rules stand in the way only when parties and their leaders--fearing to rest their fate with the people upon any sound principles they have sustained, any good administration they have enforced, any worthy persons they have put in office, or any wise laws they have enacted-attempt to perpetuate their power by filling the inferior offices with partisan henchmen potential at elections, by pledging and bartering appointments for votes, by converting the civil servants of the people into their oppressors, by levying exactions upon these servants for executing the coercive policy of chieftains and factions, for whom the people refuse to contribute.

Unless, therefore, it is claimed that a party, which cannot gain or retain power by adhering to the spirit of the Constitution and to common honesty and justice, may strengthen itself by using public authority to debauch and coerce the people-unless it can be shown that the term and tenure of these "inferior offices" should, in the interest of parties, be made brief and precarious so that patronage

and the appointing power may be conveniently prostituted as merchandise in the shambles of partisan politics-we may confidently declare that their term and tenure alike should be determined quite irrespectsve of mere party considerations.

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But let us not imagine, because these inferior officers are not representative or given large discretionary powers, that their term, tenure or relations are not vital and perilous. A glance at the evidence to the contrary will dispel all doubts as well as shed some light on the true relations between term and tenure and the approved methods of Civil Service Reform. It was the political assessment of the 60,000 officials which President Grant prohibited by executive order, which President Hayes declared to be "gross injustice to the officers" or "indirect robbery of the public treasury," which President Garfield denounced as "shameful" and "the source of an electioneering fund which in many cases never gets beyond the pockets of the shysters and mere camp followers of the party." It was these assessments in vast aggregates of hundreds of thousands of dollars, levied on the more than 2,500 federal officials, and the two and a half millions of their salaries at New York City, helped by like extortions from the $12,000,000 salaries of State and municipal officers at that city-their precarious, humiliating tenure degrading many of them into mere partisan vassals—which made possible the unparalleled corruption and despotism of New York politics, and led directly to the rebellious madness of her Senators in confronting the President and deserting their posts of duty for a faction war of treason at home. It is by reason of the crowding and bullying for these offices-invited and intensified by the frail tenure of those who fill themthat our late lamented President declared deliberately, in the Atlantic Monthly in 1877, "that one third of the working hours of Senators and Representatives is hardly sufficient to meet the demands in reference to appointments for office." He further declared his belief that with a "judicious system of Civil Service, the business of the departments could be better done at almost one half the present cost." It was the applications for these offices which the New York Tribune lately declared had occupied onethird the time of President Garfield; which one of his secretaries has stated had occupied more than one-half of his own time; which another declared had been the subject of seven hundred and ten out

of less than seven hundred hundred and fifty calls upon him during the first three months of his official service. It has been the expected facility of breaking the fragile tenure of these offices, which has drawn unprecedented numbers of office-seeking men and women to Washington within the past few months-the office-soliciting advertisements of impecunious women in a strange city, separated from their families, now being openly published in the newspapers of the national capital, in which, in their need and desperation, they` promise one-fifth of their salaries, and to back their claims with the influence of members of Congress, as a condition of getting one of those offices. It was the general effect of the intrigue, solicitation and coercion for these offices without stable tenure which Senator PENDLETON, of one party, in a late speech declared to be "the prolific parent of fraud, corruption and brutality.. It made

Guiteau possible.

It has debauched the public morals.

It drives Senators and Representatives into the neglect of their chief duty of legislation . . . and too often makes the support of an administration conditioned upon their obtaining offices for their friends," and of the same abuse that Senator DAWES, of the other party, in his late letters said, "It destroys his (the Congressman's) independence, and makes him a slave."

It needs no argument to make clear the intimate relations which exist between such abuses and the term and tenure of these "inferior offices."

These are the decisive questions: What, intrinsically considered, are the proper terms and tenure of these officers? In what way should such term and tenure be modified by reason of these abuses? What is the relation between such term and tenure and competitive examinations and the other practical methods of a true Civil Service Reform?

We have only to consider the great variety of officials to see that to most of the general rules we may lay down there must be some exceptions. The officers classed in the State department range from the Secretary and the Ambassadors to the Consular clerks and the dispatch agents. The department of the Treasury has at Washington about 3,000 subordinates; to which, the one hundred and eight Collectors, the Surveyors, the Naval officers, the officers of the Mints, and all their subordinates, the vast Internal Revenue service collecting nearly one-half the national income,

the Light house, the Life saving, the Hospital, the Revenue Marine services, and many more isolated officials must be added. In the Department of the Interior, there are the Pension and Patent Office service, the Land office, the Indian service, the Bureaus of Education and Agriculture, and various other officers. The War and Navy Departments have civil subordinates of many grades widely separated. More than 42,000 postmasters with their subordinates, upwards of 1,100 serving at the New York City office alone, and the many others with the most varied duties, of which the railroad and steamboat mail service, and the vast mail contract system are examples, are under the Postmaster General. The Department of Justice, with its District Attorneys, Marshals and election supervisors and their subordinates; the National Board of Health, the officers of the District of Columbia and of the Territories are also to be added, before we get a general view of the vast number and variety of the officials under the Executive. Every year they are becoming more numerous, their duties more complicated, and the need of fixed rules, which shall exclude favoritism and pressure, more imperative.

The authority to appoint these officers, subject to confirmation by the Senate, is given by the Constitution to the President, with the power, as we have seen, in Congress to vest the appointment of interior officers in heads of departments. Beyond declaring that all civil officers shall be removed on impeachment and conviction of treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, the Constitution leaves the stupendous power of removal to mere implication. It has, however, been authoritively decided and the constant practice has been (save as qualifitd of late by the Tenure of Office Acts), that the power of removal belongs to the President, as an incident to the power of appointment. The Constitution provides no term, and, otherwise than by implication, no tenure for any one of these inferior officers. And prior to a law of 1820, to which further reference will be made, no term or tenure was provided by law for any of these inferior officers. The tenure of usage had been that of efficiency and good behavior. The few scores of officers and the small amount of revenue-only $2,000,000 in the first year under the Constitution, as against more than $360,000,000 last year-apparently gave no great importance to such matters at the beginning. Even at the end of Jefferson's