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It is true that they form a class by themselves, excluded from the actual business of the world, and seeming to be connected with the business of the State, earning a miserable pittance by reluctant labor, their energies paralyzed and their hopes extinguished by the uncertain tenure of their employment; but that they should ever become one of the dangerous classes is a new if not a patentable discovery. Among them are some noble, faithfal, earnest, hard-working, men and women, worthy of respect and deserving of honor. Would that they were all such, and that hereafter they may be, is one of the objects of this measure. I have not met with one of this better class who has not said to me, make your tests by examination and probation as rigid as you please; we will gladly submit to them if, after having passed them honorably, our offices shall thenceforth become permanent and respectable. They know and feel and the whole people are beginning to perceive that the aristocratic element in our system is the patronage which bestows its gifts upon favorites, which removes faithful public servants from caprice, and which places the worthy beneath the worthless.

who are thrust into their service while their education is going on and which in many cases never is and never can be completed. The proposed law elevates the meritorious and rejects the unworthy. If this be "class legislation," make the most of it.

The most disingenuous of the attacks upon this measure is that it creates a life tenure of office in these subordinates. The present bill is so drawn as to remove any possible pretext for that charge. It merely holds on to the faithful officer as long as he performs his duties efficiently; when he falls below the standard it puts him out. The interest of the Government only is regarded, not that of the servant. It may be cruel in many cases to the old and meritorious officer, but it is the hard condition upon which he is allowed to serve at all.

It is also argued against the provision for promotions for merit by the gentleman from Illinois that it might be used unfairly, as he intimates some advancements were made by boards during war time. Again we meet the same false logic that was used with regard to the commissioners. Because individual cases of favoritism or incorrect judgment may occur in the administration of a system framed for just ends, therefore no such system should be established at all, but everything should go by favor, and the consideration of merit be entirely excluded. Because merit might not in a few cases get the desert to which it is enti

not have the chance to win desert at all in the public service. This is the sum of that so-called argument.

That merit shall have the places it deserves is the true republican doctrine, and the measare which is devised to bring forward and advance merit and merit alone in the public service, is the keen edge of the ax to the root of these alien, corrupt aristocratical practices.tled under this system, therefore merit should Its benefits will be at once felt in the better spirit and higher tone which will be developed in each officer. Hitherto the position of all these subordinate officers has not been merely a service, but a servitude. The mode of obtaining office and the servility necessary to retain it, have brought into action the worst qualities of those thus serving. But when the officer obtains his place by his qualifications for it, holds it during efficiency, and can be advanced by merit, he becomes independent of the courtiers or politician's arts, and his best qualities are developed instead of his worst. Not the least beneficial effect of this measure in this era of emancipations, will be the abolishment of the servitude of office, which has been a blight upon the service and a curse to the Republic.

I admit that if the measure should be strictly enforced the Government servants would become a class with distinctive qualities. In that class would be found only the qualified, the honest, the faithful, the capable, the energetic, the patriotic, the competent, while the opposites of all these would be turned back at the doors of the examination halls. It brings into the public service only the skilled laborer whose education has been in a great measure completed before be receives his pay from the people's money; while under the present system the people pay the greater portion of those

Nor is it a valid objection to the measure that it does not include the higher officers. By the Constitution these are left to the exclusive jurisdiction of the President and Senate. It is a most insidious opposition to a measure that it does not go far enough. It is a part of the false logic I have already commented upon that would argue that we should not attempt to do any good, because we do not undertake at one effort all that may be supposed attainable. But the limit in this case is not of my seeking; it is found in the Constitution itself. The most that can be done in that higher sphere is to give the higher powers the use of the means which we create. The bill proposes to do this. For the results we are not at all responsible, for they are now, and must continue to be, beyond our jurisdiction or control.

WHY THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHER COUNTRIES SHOULD
BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF.

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Old World." He says, further, that our Constitution "starts all the people even in the race of life, and recognizes no distinctions except such as they create themselves." This is precisely what this bill proposes to secure to every citizen, according to the spirit of the Constitu tion as the gentleman interprets it. Across the avenues to public employment are now placed bars which are taken down only for political and personal friends of the person who holds the appointing power, or for those who have exerted influence for the party to which that person belongs, or to those who may work for that party if admitted within the magic cirele of office. This measure proposes to throw down all these bars. Every one is to have a fair chance. Every young man in the country is to have the opportunity, if he chooses, of competing for the privilege of entering the public service, and to be entitled to the right to enter it if he proves that he has prepared himself for it better than his competitors. Its principle is that the people have a right to the service of the best men, and that the best men have the best right to serve the people. If this be not the true idea of the Republic my studies have been in vain. And even if the selection should be confined to the party in power the honest application of this measure would secure the services of the best material from each party as it came in power, instead of admitting some of the worst of each, as under the present system.

But the idea that we should not take a hint from the improvements in the machinery of administration made in other countries because their Governments are "despotic and monarchical" is as ridiculous as it is preposterous. The same rule would require us to reject the steam-engine, the railway, and the locomotive because they came from Great Britain, and the art of printing because it came from Germany, and all inventions and discoveries in the arts and sciences which may originate among the subjects of the emperor of the French or the autocrat of all the Russias. These free trade men upon all articles of manual manufacture would be prohibitionists upon ideas and inventions. They forget that the science of government is progressive, and that all improvements in it are the common property of the human race, to whom governments of some sort are a necessity. The great family of civilized nations are continually borrowing from and giving to each other, and gaining by the exchange. It never could have entered into the mind of any but a Pennsylvania Democrat, who has been educated in the belief which he still clings to, that the administration of Andrew Jackson was the perfection of civil government, that we should not seek and receive lessons from the experience of other civilized nations, especially when that experience is in the line of our own innova

tions upon ancient traditions in opening a career for the children of the people, and not merely for "privileged classes" and "aristocratic ranks, or the younger sons of a landed nobility."

We should remember that our present system of appointments to office is of monarchical origin and is copied from that of the parent nation. Our fathers adopted the best system which they knew of. They did not invent any. The offices which they created were to be held at the pleasure of the President. The commissions for all inferior offices within the scope of this bill still read that the office is to be held during the pleasure of the superior from whom the appointment is received. "This, in 1787, was the best known mode, and the fathers of the Republic adopted it as the best. It was not till some years later that the French republic discovered a better. But, like many good things evolved in that Revolution, it was lost sight of among its companion evils, and has but recently become apparent to the civilized world. And when its value has once been discovered we look further and find that it has existed as an immemorial usage in the most ancient of civilizations, and that it is the secret of the long continuance of the government of the greatest of the oriental nations. Like many other arts and inventions, it was known to them before our civilizations were born.

We are constantly borrowing ideas in jurisprudence and in legislation from other countries. All our jurisprudence is based upon that of the country from which our first colonists emigrated, England, monarchical England. Our Government itself, with an executive chief, our representative legislature and independent judiciary, are all copied from the same model. We have made what we think are many improvements upon that system, but if we should reject other improvements made in the parent country because first made there we might as well reject the parent system itself. Underlying all our constitutions, all our legislation, colonial, State, and national, is the great common law of England; a system of jurisprudence whose merciful maxims, wisely administered, have done more for the improvement of the human race in civil government than any utterances save those upon the Mount-the common law of England, which is to-day the rule of action for more millions of the human race than any other system of jurisprudence which ever emanated from man's experience; whose vigorous root and giant growth have sent its offshoots over the land and under the sea wherever colonies of the parent nation have been planted, on every continent and in every clime; which have again taken root and flourished with a vigor equal to the parent stock; whose fair flower has been the perfect freedom of thought and speech to all whom it shelters, and whose ripe fruit is the perfect equality of all men before the law.

It would be as unwise to reject any improvements upon that law as to attempt to reject the law itself. And as of the law, so of improvements in administration which are akin to it. Nothing can be more foolish than for any man to believe that all wisdom dwells in one man's head, or in the practice and policy of any one nation. We render to other nations far more striking results of experience in civil government than they can give to us, for in them history but repeats itself in the main; and while we absorb yearly some hundreds of thousands of their citizens, we should be unwise to reject the practices by which they make their admin. istration more perfect and their Governments

more secure.

THE ECONOMY OF THE MEASURE.

In its economical aspect I also ask for this measure the approval of the House and of the country. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. WOODWARD] has figured up the annual expense of the commission, including all salaries and incidental expenses, at about sixty thousand dollars, and I think they would not exceed that sum. He omits to estimate the credit to which it would be entitled from the receipt of fees; nor does he reflect that the sum of the salaries of the appointment clerks now employed in every Department and in the principal post offices and custom-houses exceeds all the salaries and expenses of the commission. This mote in his eye prevents his seeing the hundred millions that we lose for want of some system like this. On the day when this meas. ure was defeated by a majority of two votes in this House in the Thirty-Ninth Congress a fraud was detected in the Treasury, perpetrated by a clerk who had procured his appointment under an alias, which could not have been done if the proposed commission had been in existence, to an amount which would have paid the expenses of the commission for a year. While the bill was under debate during the session of the Congress just closed the amount discovered to have been lost in the drawback frauds in a single custom-house, and which never could have been committed under the proposed system, would have paid the expenses of the commission for at least ten years. I speak only of particular instances of discovered embezzlements. We all know that the amount which annually disappears from our revenues would pay the expenses of the commission for a thousand years. We hire the reapers that the harvest may be gathered; but parsimony like that which begrudges the expense of this inquest would let the grain rot on the ground before it would pay the hire of the laborer.

Nor is this loss alone in the failure to collect the revenues; it is almost as flagrant in the expenditures. The chairman of the Military Committee in the last House declared on this

floor that out of every dollar appropriated for the benefit of the Indians but twenty cents was ever received by them. We have just appropriated $4,500,000 for their benefit. || and on his estimate eighty per cent. of this sum must be a dead loss. We have also just appropriated $8,000,000 for the collection of our internal revenue, about five per cent. on the total receipts; while in other countries with a well ordered revenue service it costs less than two and a half per cent. for collection. In the customs the cost of collection! is about equally extravagant. Much of the loss is due to positive dishonesty; nearly. if not quite, an equal amount to incapacity. We do need an accession of intelligence as well as integrity to this branch of the civil service. although from what has been said in former discussions some members do not seem to think so. I have seen custom-house clerks who knew no more of the foreign weights and measures in the invoices placed before them, and of the coinage in which the articles were valued, than they did of Sanscrit; and appraisers who had no more idea of the manner in which the goods they were called upon to value were manufac tured, or of the cost of manufacture, than of the physical constitution of the moon; and gaugers who could not read the instruments put into their hands; and collectors and inspectors to whom the common chemistry of distillation was as much unknown as any of the lost arts. A former member of this House told me of one who said he could tell the strength and quality of whisky better by the "taste and the bead" than he could by any of "these newfangled instruments." It would require numer. ous relays of such officers to obtain correct returns from a single distillery. There is as much abstracted and withheld from the revenue under the noses of incapables as through con. nivance with the dishonest. The Government is plundered as well as defrauded; and so great is the extent of the thievery that the amount of it would buy up the national debt before it is due. Is it not a measure of econ. omy to furnish means to the executive department to present a check to these gigantic frauds? It may not be thoroughly successful; no legis lative measure can be; no millennium can be brought about by act of Congress. Yet the service can be improved by it. This measure simply proposes to fill a void in the present system, caused by the great growth of the country and its business. The garments which clothed it in its youth are now altogether too small for it. We must provide for its present and future gigantic proportions. We cannot return to the simpler and cheaper practices of earlier days. This Government cannot be set back into the condition in which it was in the days of President John Quincy Adams. You might as well undertake to remand it to the

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colonial condition. All our legislation should be based upon the possible requirements of fifty States and a hundred million people. We shall reach that stature before the heads of our young men shall grow white; and if the Government shall have honest and capable men in its service and no others, the present burdens of taxation upon the people would diminish so rapidly that their previous exist. ence would be as soon forgotten as was the debt of the war of independence funded by Hamilton. Those with whom we deal financially must not only be impressed with the extent of our resources, but also must be made to have faith in the honesty of the administration of our revenues. The credit of this Government would stand higher than any other upon the money exchanges of the world, and the Government itself would receive what is its just due-the respect, the reverence, and the love of all mankind.

I shall take the earliest occasion to present the following bill, and ask its reference to the appropriate committee:

A bill to regulate the civil service of the United States.

Be it enacted, &c., That hereafter all appointments of civil officers in the several Departments of the service of the United States, except postmasters and such officers as are by law required to be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall be made from those persons who shall have been found best qualified for the performance of the duties of the offices to which such appointments are to be made in open and competitive examinations, and after terms of probation, to be

Fifth. To make report of all, rules and regulations established by them, and of a summary of their proceedings, including an abstract of their examinations for the different branches of the service, annually, to Congress at the opening of each session.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That all appointments to the civil service provided for in this act shall be made from those who have passed the required examinations and probations in the following order and manner:

First. The applicants who stand highest in order of merit on the list of those who have passed the examination and probation for any particular branch and grade of the civil service shall have the preference in appointment to that branch and grade, and so on in the order of precedence, in examinations and merit during probation to the minimum degree of merit fixed by the board for such grade.

Second. Whenever any vacancy shall occur in any grade of the civil service above the lowest in any branch, the senior in the next lower grade may be appointed to fill the same, or a new examination for that particular vacancy may be ordered, under the direction of the Department. of those in the next lower grade, and the person found best qualified shall be entitled to the appointment to fill such vacancy: Provided, That no person now in office shall be promoted or transferred from a lower to a higher grade unless he shall have passed at least one examination under this act.

Third. The right of seniority shall be determined by the rank of merit assigned by the board upon the examinations, having regard also to seniority in service; but it shall at all times be in the power of the heads of Departments to order new examinations, which shall be conducted by the board, upon due notice, and according to fixed rules, and which shall determine seniority with regard to the persons ordered to be examined, or in the particular branch and grade of the service to which such examinations shall apply. Fourth. Said board shall have power to establish rules for such special examinations, and also rules by which any persons exhibiting particular meritin any branch of the civil service may be advanced one

onducted and regulated as herein prescribed, han fourth of the promotions may be nadrades; and one

shall

be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, a board of four commissioners, who shall hold their offices for the term of five years, to be called the civil service examination board, among whose duties shall be the following:

First. To prescribe the qualifications requisite for an appointment into each branch and grade of the eivil service of the United States, having regard to the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, knowledge, and ability for the branch of service into which he seeks to enter.

Second. To provide for the examinations and periods and conditions of probation of all persons eligible under this act who may present themselves for admission into the civil service.

Third. To establish rules governing the applications of such persons, the times and places of their examinations, the subjects upon which such examinations shall be had, with other incidents thereof, and the mode of conducting the same and the manner of keeping and preserving the records thereof, and of perpetuating the evidence of such applications, qualifications, examinations, probations, and their result as they shall think expedient. Such rules shall be so framed as to keep the branches of the civil service and the different grades of each branch, as also the records applicable to each branch, distinct and separate. The said board shall divide the country into territorial districts for the purpose of holding examinations of applicants resident therein and others, and shall designate some convenient and accessible place in each district where examinations shall be held.

Fourth. To examine personally, or by persons by them specially designated, the applicants for appointment into the civil service of the United States.

merit, irrespective of seniority in service, such merit to be ascertained by special examinations, or by advancement for meritorious services and special fitness for the particular branch of service, according to rules to be established as aforesaid.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That said board shall also have power to prescribe a fee, not exceeding five dollars, to be paid by each applicant for examination, and also a fee, not exceeding ten dollars, to be paid by each person who shall receive a certificate of recommendation for appointment or for promotion, or of seniority, which fees shall be first paid to the collector of internal revenue in the district where the applicant or officer resides or may be examined, to be accounted for and paid into the Treasury of the United States by such collector, and the certificates of payment of fees to collectors shall be forwarded quarterly by the commissioners to the Treasury Department.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That said board shall have power to prescribe, by general rules, what misconduct or inefficiency shall be sufficient for the removal or suspension of all officers who come within the provisions of this act, and also to establish rules for the manner of preferring charges for such miscon duct or inefficiency, and for the trial of the accused, and for determining his position pending such trial, Each member of said board shall have the power of administering oaths in all proceedings authorized by this act, and testimony may be given orally by witnesses in any hearing before said board or any member thereof, or by deposition to be taken in the manner prescribed by law, or upon such notice and in such manner as said board shall by general rule or special order direct.

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That any one of said commissioners may conduct or superintend any examinations, and the board may call to their assist

ance in much examinations such men of learning and high character as they may think fit, or, in their discretion, such officers in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States as may be designated from time to time, on application of the board, as assistant to said board, by the President or heads of Departments, and in special cases, to be fixed by rules or by resolutions of the board, they may delerate examinations to such persons, to be attended and presided over by one member of said board, or by some person specially designated to preside.

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the said board may also, upon reasonable notice to the person accused, hear and determine any case of alleged misconduct or inefficiency, under the general rules herein provided for, and in such case shall report to the head of the proper Department their finding in the matter, and may recommend the suspension or dismissal from office of any person found guilty of such misconduct or inefficiency: and such person shall be forthwith suspended or dismissed by the head of such Department pursuant to such recommendation, and from the filing of such report shall receive no compensation for official service except from and after the expiration of any term of suspension recommended by such report.

SEC.8. And be it further enacted, That the President shall have power at any time to revoke and cancel the commission of any officer appointed in pursuance of the provisions of this act: Provided however, That said revocation and cancellation shall not take effect if said officer demand a trial upon charges to be preferred against him in the manner prescribed in this set within thirty days from the time of being served with notice of such revocation and cancellation, unless he shall be found guilty upon his trial of the misconduct or inefficiency alleged against him in such charges. The discontinuance of an office shall discharge the person holding it from the service.

SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That the salary of each of said commissioners shall be $5,000 a year, and the said board may appoint a clerk at a salary of $2,500 a year and a messenger at a salary of $900 & year; and these sums and the necessary traveling expenses of the commissioners, clerk, and messenger, to be accounted for in detail and verified by affidavit, shall be paid from any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated. The necessary expenses of any person employed by said commissioners as assist

ants, to be accounted for and verified in like manner, and certified by the board, shall also be paid in like

manner.

SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That any officer in the civil service of the United States at the date of the passage of this act, other than those excepted in the first section of this act, may be required by the head of the Department in which he serves to appear before said board, and if found not qualified for the place he occupies he shall be reported for dismissal, and be dismissed in the manner herein before provided, and the vacancy shall be filled in manner aforesaid from those who may be found qualified for such grade of office after such examination and probation as is herein before prescribed.

SEC. 11. And be it further enacted, That any person appointed and commissioned in pursuance of the provisions of this act may be required to serve in the branch and grade to which he may be appointed in any part of the United States where the head of the Department in which he serves may think proper, and in case of removal from one place of service to another the necessary traveling expenses of such officer, to be ascertained and allowed according to fixed rules, shall be paid out of the Treasury.

SEC. 12. And be it further enacted, That all citizens of the United States shall be eligible to examination and appointment under the provisions of this act, and the heads of the several Departments may, in their discretion, designate the offices in the several branches of the civil service the duties of which may be performed by females as well as males, and for all such offices females as well as males shall be eligible, and may make application therefor and be examined, recommended, appointed, tried, suspended, and dismissed, in manner aforesaid; and the names of those recommended by the examiners shall be placed upon the lists for appointment and promotion in the order of their merit and seniority, and without distinction, other than as aforesaid, from those of male applicants or officers.

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That the President, and also the Senate, may require any person applying for or recommended for any office which requires confirmation by the Senate to appear before said board and be examined as to his qualifications, either before or after being commissioned; and the result of such examination shall be reported to the President and to the Senate.

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