Page:The Necessity and Progress of Civil Service Reform.pdf/19

 maxim, that when a political party has to rely upon the spoils to hold it together, it is high time that it should dissolve; because in the same measure as it needs the spoils as a means of cohesion, it ceases to be an instrument of public usefulness, and becomes a nuisance and a public danger.

A kindred question is, whether party government can be carried on, and more especially, whether an Administration can get along with Congress, without the use of the patronage. A discussion of this subject among Civil Service Reformers not long ago attracted wide attention. Mr. Josiah Quincy, as First Assistant Secretary of State, having the consular appointments in charge, had, during the first months of the present Administration, made an almost clean sweep of that branch of the service, removing Republicans from consulships and putting Democrats in their places with unprecedented vivacity. When speaking of Mr. Quincy's doings, I do not mean to ignore the President's responsibility in authorizing what was done; but Mr. Quincy, bearing the reputation of a friend of Reform, was the official adviser and became the defender of it. I speak of him as such. At a meeting of the Massachusetts Reform Club he explained his conduct, which had greatly shocked his friends, saying "that the personnel of the service had been decidedly improved by the changes made, taken as a whole, and that the methods of making appointments outside of the scope of the Civil Service Law could not be suddenly changed by any Administration so as to conform to the ideas of advanced Civil Service Reformers, without almost disrupting the political party which it represents, and destroying its influence with Congress." This is, as I understand, Mr. Quincy's own statement of the case.

I am sure I do him no injustice when I say that, in order to avoid the danger of following the ideas of the advanced Civil Service Reformers, he followed the practice of the most advanced spoilsmen; for no spoilsman in that office has ever turned over the consular service from one party to the other with greater