Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/332

306 The establishment of such principles and the regulation and perpetuation of the corresponding practices, wherever possible, by legal enactment, that is the civil service reform, which will not only purge the service of corrupt and incompetent officials, but which will take from it its partisan character, remove from the offices of trust and responsibility the odious attribute of spoils, stop the most prolific source of corruption and demoralization in our political system, take away from the public officer the most dangerous temptations now surrounding him and inspire him with an honorable ambition; relieve our political life of the regular army of paid party mercenaries, which threatens to subjugate all the movements of public opinion, and eliminate also that numerous class of National legislators who rely for their election and influence merely on a shrewd manipulation of the public plunder. That, then, is genuine civil service reform.

What patriotic man is there who will not recognize that the evils from which the body-politic suffers absolutely require so thorough a measure of change, and who will not eagerly embrace every opportunity to secure it? Now, let us see what prospects the two parties which ask for our votes open to us with regard to this most important subject.

The platforms, as well as the candidates of each, promise what they call “reform.” I will confess at once that I have lost my faith in the professions and promises made in party platforms. They have at last become, on either side, one of the cheapest articles of manufacture in this country, and that industry continues to flourish even without a protective tariff and in spite of the general depression of business. But civil service reform is not produced in that way. If we desire to ascertain by the success of which party that reform is most likely to be promoted, we must look to the character and principles