Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/190

166 permits Republican officeholders to continue in place, one, two or three years until their terms expire. The Democratic executive thereby recognizes two things: firstly, that these Republican officers are good officers—for if they were not, they would have been removed for cause; and secondly, that Republican officers may continue to serve under a Democratic Administration without detriment to the public interest. In other words, the Democratic executive practically recognizes that the public interest does not demand the displacement of these Republican officers; and yet, taking advantage of the mischievous four-year-term law, the executive displaces them—displaces them confessedly without valid reason.

The Jeffersonian Administration will not do things so irrational; but, casting aside all inconsistencies and subterfuges, it will simply follow the precept given by Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin, remove only such officers as are, upon fair ascertainment, shown to have become obnoxious to the public interest; fill vacancies in such a way as to give the service an unpartisan character, and ask about candidates only: “Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?”—employing, in order to secure to such questions reliable answers, the most trustworthy methods and instrumentalities. This is Democracy according to Jeffersonian teaching. It is the destruction of the spoils system. It is civil service reform. And he is no Jeffersonian Democrat—he is no true Democrat at all—who will obstruct, or rather, who fails actively to support the President in any endeavor to bring about a practical return to these sound Democratic principles.

Is such a consummation beyond reasonable hope? Why should it be? I do not underrate the difficulty of uprooting abuses which seem to have become imbedded in popular habits and ways of thinking. But no brave