the Administration toward the people of the United States, when the Treasury was emptied, forts, arsenals, and navy-yards, were surrendered, arms and munitions stolen and destroyed, and our little navy scattered and disabled-presenting a picture of governmental treachery unrivaled in its extent and unapproachable in the darkness of its shadows. That picture, so vividly recalled by the name of Buchanan, has dimmed the memory of the official corruption under his Administration, which had previously startled the American people, and aroused the wonder of the world.

In the teeth of the Constitution, of the law of the land, and the sentiment of Christendom, the African slave-trade was reopened beneath the spire of Trinity, on so large a scale that New York presently became, in the words of the London Times, "the greatest slave-trade mart in the world." The New York World of July 31, 1860, declared that "nearly a hundred slavers have been fitted out from this port within the last eighteen months;" and Mr. Seward, in the Senate, admitted that the African slavetrade was an American trade, and that its root was in the city of New York.

Passing the period of the war, we find that the scum of venality and corruption had come largely to the surface, while the country, exhausted by its struggles, reposed in the confidence of success. When, in 1868, General Grant was called from the command of the army to the Executive chair, so thoroughly unsatisfactory had become the condition of the civil service that in his second message he said, "The elevation and the purification of the civil service of the Government will be hailed with approval by the whole people of the United States."

In March, 1871, a law was enacted authorizing the President, with the aid of persons selected by himself, to put in operation rules and regulations for carrying a civil-service reform into effect. The Commission appointed was headed by the Hon. George William Curtis, and their report announced a loss of startling magnitude when it said, "It is calculated, by those who have made a careful study of all the facts, that one-fourth of the revenue of the United States is annually lost in the collection." In December, 1871, the report was transmitted to Congress by special message; and the President said, "If left to me, without further congressional action, the rules presented by the Commission, under the reservation already mentioned, will be faithfully executed."

Congress approved the rules reported by making an appropriation; the power of civil-service reform in the canvass was recognized by the Republican, the Liberal Republican, the Democratic, and the National Reform Conventions; and, after the success of the Republicans with their repeated pledges, there came the abandonment of the work by the President, and the consequent resignation of Mr. Curtis.

What General Grant's reform might have done for the country, had he maintained in the cabinet the same tenacity he had shown in the field, is a question which, perhaps, future historians will ask. What his abandonment of reform did for the party which had chosen him as its chief, history teaches us to-day, and the record is significant:

Grant in 1868 had 214 electoral votes, Seymour 71.
Grant" 1872" 286

Greeley (dead).
Tilden 184.

The Republican majority of 143 votes in 1868 came down to a majority of one in 1876, although it is but fair to say that expert politicians attribute a part of this loss-some fix it at forty votes to intimidation and violence in the Southern States.

Why President Grant made a surrender so disappointing to the hopes of the nation, so fraught with evil to the country, so ruinous to the Republican party, and so fatal to his own fame, has never been satisfactorily explained. "The humiliating truth is," said Mr. Eaton, "that the defeat and abandonment of the civil-service rules was without justifiable excuse, involved a breach of public pledges, and was a national disgrace.”

After that abandonment, eminent men who had been associated with the Republicans for years passed over to the ranks of the Democracy, whose chief, Governor Tilden, declared that "the question of honest administration and the question of securing official accountability were the great questions of the future."

A striking glance at some of the less pleasing features of the country at this period was given by Mr. Senator Hoar, whose ability, scholarship, and character, for a time, lent dignity to the cabinet of General Grant. In the impeachment of General Belknap for corrupt practices as Secretary of War, the Senator said: "My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of

senatorial office. But in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of peachment for corruption and maladministration. I have heard the taunt from friendliest lips that when the United States resented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world generous competition in the arts of life, the only product in which she surpassed all others beyond question was her corrupon. I have seen, in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth, four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the administration of her chief city become a disgrace and Sy-word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of

Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates, for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together this continent and uniting the two seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress-two of the House and one herethat every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrines avowed, by men grown old in public office, that the true way by which power should be gained in the republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service; and that the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfiah ambition, and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.

"These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time, will record them with his inexorable pen."

The sadly solemn warning of the Senator of Massachusetts has been echoed from beyond the sea.

"The high offices of the state," said the London Quarterly Review, "have been largely filled by such adventurers as we described; hence the corruption, the sale of offices, the unblushing bribery which have fixed an indelible stigma upon the Administration of General Grant."

Personally," said the Nineteenth Century, after referring to some of the scandals of Grant's second term-the Washington ring, the accessories of the whiskey ring, and the complicity with fraud in the War Department-" personally, the character of the Administration sank lower and lower."

The Fortnightly Review, drawing a distinction generously stated, and not to be overlooked, said, "The corruption and general discredit which lowered the reputation of the United States under the Administration of General Grant were alarming, but they were certainly not the outcome of any corruption in the nation at large."

Here is the idea, confidently stated by General Grant, that the American people desire the elevation and purification of the civil service; and that idea was embodied in the platform on which Mr. Hayes was nominated and elected. The President took his seat in March, 1877, and during the next month of April Mr. Secretary Sherman organized a Commission to examine into the New York Custom-House, composed of Messrs. John Jay, Lawrence Turnure, and J. H. Robinson. Their sittings after the first two or three days were held in public, and the testimony taken was more or less fully reported and commented upon. The examination was conducted chiefly by Mr. Robinson, the learned and experienced Assistant Solicitor of the Treasury, and Mr. Turnure, the well-known and accomplished member of the firm of Moses Taylor & Co.; and the familiarity of these gentlemen with the minutest details of the service contributed to the ease and thoroughness of the investigation. The Secretary, while indicating the subjects of the inquiry, advised the Commission that the object of their appointment was "not to examine into the conduct of the present officers, but into the present system." This instruction enabled the Commission to receive the officers with frank courtesy, not as men on whom they were to sit in judgment, but as gentlemen conversant with the workings of the system, and able and willing to favor the Commission with their suggestions for its improvement.

The Secretary had asked the heads of the departments to give the Commission their cordial assistance in pursuing the inquiries. Such assistance and advice were courteously and constantly given by the Collector, as well as by the Naval Officer, the Sur

veyor, the Appraiser, deputy-collectors, heads of departments, and chief clerks; so that, of some ninety witnesses, about seventy were custom-house officials and experts; and the appendices to the reports contain various documents furnished by the Collector, with the exception of one which General Arthur speaks of as having been suppressed, but which miscarried on its way to Mr. Robinson at Washington. The Commission had also the benefit of suggestions made privately and in letters from more than two hundred mercantile firms, whose names they were not at liberty to quote; but the chief facts on which they based the reports, reviewed by the Collector, were furnished by that gentleman and his leading associates.

These conspicuous features of the investigation seem, curiously enough, to have escaped General Arthur's recollection when he suggests in his letter that the Commission "were in effect sitting in judgment" upon the chief officers of the customs; when he complains that "no opportunity was given to cross-examine the witnesses or to show the spirit which animated them;" and when he complains again that the Commission had failed to furnish him with evidence "of misconduct on the part of any ubordinates." All three suggestions are disposed of by the plain instructions of Mr. Secretary Sherman.

General Arthur further remarks that "a reference to the testimony will show, however, that the prominent and honorable merchants of this port made no complaints against the administration of the laws during the last five years." But this assertion seems a little broad, for General Arthur will hardly pretend to exclude from the class of "prominent and honorable merchants" the gentlemen who represented "the American silktrade," or those who appeared for the "National Pottery Association;" or the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, and the distinguished representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, led by the Hon. Jackson S. Schultz, who so ably addressed the Commission on behalf of that venerable and influential body. The gentlemen of the Chamber, while explaining the defects in our system, remarked that the "customs service of Great Britain assists the merchant in every way it can, while ours purposely obstructs and hinders." They alluded to the "estrangement" which at present exists, and they said that "the efforts of the Commission were