Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/165

Rh Is it not also natural that, in consequence of this, the public service should not stand as high in public opinion as it ought to do; that men who aspire to office, do so not infrequently at a sacrifice of self-respect? I have seen men of ability and a fine sense of honor walk the streets of Washington hanging their heads and full of shame for doing what ought to be considered honorable: aspiring to public office; now smarting under the necessity of self-humiliation which the desire to succeed seemed to impose upon them, and giving up the attempt because they could not endure it. The consequence of this is obvious; it is a class of aspirants of lower character. The impaired respectability of the service can hardly fail to have such effects. It weakens the inspirations of an honorable pride, which public servants ought to possess. There is the destruction of that esprit de corps which preserves the morality of the civil service in other countries, and which here distinguishes the Army and Navy in point of personal honor and integrity. Render our public servants proud of the dignity of their position, and most of the immoral practices will disappear from which the public service is now suffering.

I am certainty very far from representing all our public servants as a degraded class of men. There are, I am happy to say, many, very many, who manfully bear up against the influences working upon them. Honor to them! But those influences are as I have described them; they are the natural product of the “spoils” system as it exists; and their effects will grow worse the longer they are suffered to be at work.

But, sir, their effect upon the efficiency of the civil service itself is not the worst evil we have to deplore. Follow a Congressman into his State or district. Look at him as a candidate. Some of them rely for success upon their ability, their character, their merits; others