Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/176

152 civil service. Since the enactment of the civil service law every President of the United States has done something to extend the area of its operation. As it is said that no rich man in Boston can decently die without leaving a sum of money to Harvard University, so it seems no President can quit office without commending himself, by a tribute to civil service reform, to the merciful judgment of posterity. But President Cleveland has authorized us to expect from him a legacy of extraordinary value.

He is known as a man of genuine convictions, and may be trusted to mean what he says and to act according to his meaning. On no subject of public concern, neither on the tariff, nor on the currency, nor on Constitutional principles, has he expressed himself with deeper earnestness, with more emphatic directness, than on the necessity of civil service reform. Here are some of his words:

I venture to hope that we shall never again be remitted to the system which distributes public positions purely as rewards for partisan service. Doubts may well be entertained whether our Government could survive the strain of a continuance of this system, which upon every change of Administration inspires an immense army of claimants for office to lay siege to the patronage of Government, engrossing the time of public officers with their importunities, spreading abroad the contagion of their disappointment and filling the air with the tumult of their discontent. The allurement of an immense number of offices and places, exhibited to the voters of the land, debauches the suffrage and robs political action of its thoughtful and deliberative character. The evil would increase with the multiplication of offices consequent upon our extension, and the mania for officeholding, growing from its indulgence, would pervade our population so generally that patriotic purpose, the support of principle, the desire for the public good and solicitude for the Nation's welfare would be