Address.

BY HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE.

A number of years ago I attended a small political meeting in the vicinity of my residence. It was just before an election, and an old gentleman who was a candidate for a local office produced a formidable role of manuscript and informed those present that inasmuch as he had spoken-as he said, ex tem-pore-at a great many meetings during that campaign, he had reduced his remarks to writing on that occasion so that his friends and neighbors might see what he could do when he laid himself out to do it. He proceeded to read a very long and very flowery speech and his friends and neighbors having heard what he could do when he set himself out to do it decided that he should remain in private life. I shall follow his example this evening, partly because there is no danger under existing circumstances of the same consequences ensuing, and partly because it will show you not perhaps how ill I can do under the like circumstances as those which attended his effort, but because it will at least insure my not detaining you too long from hearing what better deserves your attention.

At old-time temperance meetings converted drunkards and even reformed rumsellers were sometimes encouraged to tell of their instructive, if not edifying, experiences while yet they trod the path of iniquity. I suppose it is on somewhat the same principle, although perhaps for different reasons, that a civil service reformer who has so far "backslid" as to get and hold successively two very important federal offices has been requested to address you this evening. However I may have attained this unmerited honor I thank those who were so ill-advised as to confer it upon me, and I wish it were in my power to repay them and you by saying something about civil service reform which might be worthy the

hearing and which you had not heard before. In default of anything to say with these two characteristics, I propose to tell you something neither especially novel nor especially amusing, but which I find interesting and I think important.

By way of introduction, I wish to suggest a method of adding to your number. I must own there are impediments to its application on a large scale, but it is very effective when it can be applied. If you find any one who agrees with you in thinking that the decalogue and the golden rule have something to do with politics and with public business, but who differs from you in doubting that through the merit system and not otherwise. can they be assured of practical recognition in these fields. of human thought and action, just get this skeptic made a Cabinet officer; if that experience does not remove his doubts these doubts can hardly be sincere. The remedy will be peculiarly efficacious if he can be put for a time at the head of a department where offices are filled without regard to politics, and be transferred to the like post in another where this is no longer true. When for seventeen months one has seen captains and admirals promoted or chosen for command without thought as to whether they are republicans or democrats or neither, as to whether their selection might or might not help things in this or that state or meet the views of this or that prominent political leader; and when he is afterwards brought into personal contact with all the complex problems which must be solved in the choice of United States marshals and attorneys, he can hardly fail to sigh for such a condition of public opinion as will make considerations of politics as irrelevant to the employment of one class of public servants as these now are to that of the other.

For I ask you to note that I look for permanent improvement in these matters to an aroused and enlightened public opinion; not, primarily, to better laws nor even to better officers. The favorite substitute for charity with respect to such sins is the necessity for confirmation by the Senate; but this necessity exists in the choices of military and naval officers no less than in the

choice of civil officers. The real difference is that public opinion, the opinion of you and me and everybody, has come to look upon soldiers and sailors as the servants of the whole people, and will not "stand for" their selection or advancement for reasons approved by the half or less than the half of the people. When you and I and everybody take the same view of officers who serve process, arrest or prosecute criminals or conduct lawsuits for the state or nation, then these officers also will be chosen on like principles and receive the like treatment. We can note a transition stage in the development of this view of public service in the case of our judges, whether state or federal. Public opinion tends steadily to demand more and more imperatively that party affiliations and political views shall have less and less weight in their choice; this tendency is the more marked in the more enlightened communities, but to some extent it is shown everywhere. Nowhere, however, have we come to treat such considerations as altogether irrelevant; and it must be owned that so long as political issues are so often joined, as they are with us, on questions of constitutional interpretation, and so long as our laws are so generally enforced through our courts, and not, as in most European countries, in general, though the action of administrative officers, it will be difficult to completely disregard the political opinions of one suggested for a judgeship.

It is for you, gentlemen of the League, it is your business to awaken and guide a healthy public opinion as to these matters, matters of vital moment to the general welfare. You must teach the American people to want an executive public service, federal, state and municipal, chosen for fitness only and devoted only to its proper public work. When you have fulfilled this duty, when the American people has been taught to want such a service, to want it in earnest and to be willing to put up with none other, then the American people will have such a service; for, in our country, the people always gets, sooner or later and rather sooner than later, what it really wants. But the American people, although an intelligent, is not a very studious or docile pupil; it has

many distractions in its enormous private interests, gladly takes a recess from public affairs, studies its lessons in self-government somewhat by fits and starts and is rather prone to forget them. So you will not soon lose your job. It may outlast my day and yours and be handed on, unfinished, to some not yet here to take it up. But, if we persevere, the end is certain and it will repay our work and our waiting. That end is to make our public service worthy of the nation's greatness, by making the nation worthy of the best and purest public service the world has known.

Address.

BY HON. CHARLES E. HUGHES.

It is a special pleasure to come to Buffalo on the errand which has brought me here at this time. It is necessary to correct the remark of the Chairman that I have come at sacrifice of official duty, for it happens that I am here in connection with a very important duty and one which it is a very agreeable thing to perform. It has long been my desire to visit the state institutions, to be able to carry about with me a mental picture of their physical condition and to form amid the din of rival exhortations at Albany a fair judgment as to their necessities. I was very glad to be able to come to the western part of the state at a time when I could attend this meeting and in this way testify to my appreciation of the great importance of the subject which is here under discussion and of the long-continued and unselfish efforts of those who have promoted interest in it and through whose endeavors the civil service of the country to so large an extent has been put upon a rational basis. It is not my purpose to address you in any formal manner. Being here on a tour of inspection and having had the advantage to-day of visiting several institutions under the care of the state and noting with the greatest satisfaction the admirable work that is being conducted and the vast extent of that work, I think it is eminently proper that the day should be closed with some remarks on civil service reform.

Now, it is said that we are a government of laws and not of men, and most important is it that we should never lose sight of that fact. The government depends upon principle, upon the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law and in legislation enacted according to popular desire, and does not depend upon the wish or caprice of individuals. But in another and equally im