Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/155

Rh duties of that office are “quasi-judicial in their character, and it is needless to point to the fact that an examination will not point out the presence of the judicial temperament.” This has a fair sound. But is it a good reason for excepting positions of that kind from the competitive test? That an examination will not surely “point out the presence of the judicial temperament” may be admitted. But may not an examination demonstrate other capabilities required for the discharge of the duties in question, among them a knowledge of the things with which the judicial temperament will in that office have to deal? The Administration spokesman was, perhaps, not aware that in the British India services those who wish to be judges in India and who need at least as much of the judicial temperament as our shipping commissioners, have to go through the examination mill, and that this is considered as one of the peculiar virtues of that system. He may also have forgotten that a shipping commissioner appointed upon competitive examination will, during his term of probation, have an opportunity for showing whether he has or has not the necessary judicial temperament, that, if he has not, he may be dropped, and that, as to this matter, the shipping commissioners might, therefore, safely have remained in the classified service.

But let us go further. Since they have been taken out of the classified service for such a reason, who is there to test the “judicial temperament” of the candidates? The Secretary of the Treasury himself cannot do it, being occupied with too many other duties. Has he, then, any experts on “judicial temperament” at his elbow to do it for him? He himself would smile at the suggestion, for he knows as well as we all do, that as soon as such places are withdrawn from the protection of the merit system, spoils politics reach out for them, and they are, in nine cases out of ten, demanded by—and I regret