Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/161

Rh although the language of one statute may be a little more elaborate or stronger than that of the other, their legal intent and effect is the same. Such a legal doctrine, applied to all Departments, would, of course, sweep away at one swoop the whole merit system, root and branch; and the Secretary of the Treasury, as a friend of civil service reform, would have to find his consolation in thinking that this was “the highest legal opinion the Department could get.”

As another reason for exempting the deputy internal revenue collectors, the Administration tells us that the Civil Service Commission recommended it. So it did, after having long and strenuously argued that those officers should not be exempted. Why did the Commission at last recommend the exemption? It gave its reason in a letter of May 8, 1899, addressed to the President, in these words:

The fact that the Internal Revenue bureau continued to claim and exercise the right of collectors to appoint deputies without compliance with the civil service act and rules, notwithstanding the arguments of the Commission to the contrary, was the principal reason for the Commission's recommendation to the President on June 1, 1898, that these positions be included in the list of positions excepted from the requirement of examination.

What a state of things this reveals! Here was the Civil Service Commission faithfully fighting for the enforcement of the law as it stood; on the other side a branch of the Government persistently and defiantly violating that law, until the Commission, feeling itself utterly powerless against the Government, at last threw up its hands in despair saying: “Well, rather than have the law openly and continually violated under the eyes of the Government, let the law be modified to suit the