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 ago, and that it will always deserve it while it lives. Indeed, if it ever ceased to be perfectly non-partisan as between political parties, and perfectly impartial as between persons, it would forfeit all claim to public confidence, and all possibility of public usefulness. And this I am confident it never will, so long at least as you and I have any part in its direction.

Our record will bear me out when I say, that we have always been heartily glad to praise and heartily sorry, even reluctant, to blame, when our duty demanded it. And so we are now. But at present we find ourselves, much against our liking, compelled to recognize the fact that in the year now ending the cause of civil service reform has been less prosperous than in the year which preceded it. In saying this, I have the national service especially in mind.

President McKinley, was elected on a platform which declared that: “The civil service law was placed on the Statute book by the Republican party, which has always sustained it, and we renew our repeated declaration that it should be thoroughly and honestly enforced, and extended wherever practicable.” In his letter of acceptance and his inaugural address he emphatically accepted this platform, and pledged himself that under his administration there should be no backward step. These pledges clearly covered the extension and the scope of the civil service rules made by President Cleveland, which had long been published and sufficiently discussed by the public press to bring them to the knowledge of every intelligent person in any manner interested in public affairs. At our last annual meeting, at Cincinnati, the League whenever opportunity offered, was profuse in its praise of the fidelity with which President McKinley had withstood the pressure of the spoils politicians urging him to rescind President Cleveland's order, and with which he had upheld the integrity of the merit system as far as it then existed; and gladly were some delinquencies of minor importance overlooked which, occur r ing here and there, it was hoped would be promptly corrected by the administration as soon as its attention were invited to them. In short, the League in every possible manner expressed its confidence in the President's intention to make good the solemn pledges of his party, as well as his own, and it left nothing undone to assist him in doing so, by offering such information as was at its disposal, and such suggestions