Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/187

Rh desire “that the door of office be no longer shut against any man merely on account of his political opinions, but that, whether he shall differ or not from those avowed either by you or by myself, integrity and capacity suitable to the station be the only qualification that shall direct our choice.” And then he went on to say that officeholders should not use their official standing and opportunities as a means of partisan influence.

Such was the Democracy of Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin, the greatest apostles of the Democratic church in America. And it may not be presumptuous to suggest that Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin are as Democratic authorities preferable to Hill, Murphy and Croker, and even to Senators Gorman of Maryland, Voorhees of Indiana and Vance of North Carolina, to whom civil service reform is an abomination and the distribution of offices as spoils a necessity of political life.

It may be profitable to consider what an Administration conducted on the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy would do under existing conditions. It would, of course, scorn the idea of making “a clean sweep,” turning out all public servants belonging to the opposite party to put in its own. It would not make a removal except for good cause connected with official conduct, and it would utterly reject the notion that such a cause is furnished by the circumstance that a man has been in place four years—a notion, by the way, from a business point of view, so strikingly preposterous that it is amazing how it could ever be seriously considered among sensible people. Imagine a merchant discharging his salesmen and bookkeepers, a manufacturer discharging his foremen and artisans, a railroad corporation discharging its engineers and switchmen, a bank discharging its cashiers and tellers every four years on the ground that they have been in their places long enough and somebody else ought to