EDITOR'S TABLE. 



697 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



TEE CONDITIONS OF EFFICIENT 

 GOVERNMENT. 



"TTTHEN a private employer of labor 

 VV wants work well done he tries 

 to employ, in the first place, persons 

 who are presumably, and to the best of 

 his judgment, competent to do it well, 

 and then he gives them an opportunity 

 to show what their qualifications i-eally 

 are. He tests their work as tbey go on 

 in every way possible, and, if he finds it 

 satisfactory, he congratulates himself on 

 the excellent service he is getting and 

 on the prospect of still better results in 

 the future as his workmen, clerks, su- 

 perintendents, or whatever they may be, 

 acquire greater experience. If any one 

 were to come and suggest to him to in- 

 quire into the political opinions of his 

 assistants and to replace any who did 

 not think quite as he did by inexpe- 

 rienced persons whose one certified vir- 

 tue was that their political complexion 

 was exactly the same as his own, he 

 would conclude that he had struck a 

 lunatic, and would probably inform the 

 gentleman that such was his opinion. 



But, turning to the people of the 

 United States, we may say, in the words 

 of the Roman poet, " The story is told 

 of you with a simple change of name." 

 Yet, after all, there is more than a 

 change of name; for we have assumed 

 that the private employer of labor would 

 treat the person who made such a sug- 

 gestion to him as a lunatic ; but not so 

 do the people of this country treat those 

 who make like suggestions to them. Far 

 from it ; they have in past times appeared 

 to find such advice good, and have made 

 those who gave it their trusted counsel- 

 ors. They have cut short the ofiicial 

 careers of men who had just begun, 

 after a few years' necessary experience, 

 to be fully competent in their several 

 positions, in order that the work might 



be taken up by incompetent (because 

 inexperienced) men of a diff"erent po- 

 litical profession of faith, on the under- 

 standing that the latter should remain 

 in office only so long as their party 

 was " on top " or so long as they them- 

 selves continued to be meet instruments 

 of party policy. A given official might at 

 a given moment be carrying on impor- 

 tant investigations, the various threads 

 of which were gathered in his own 

 hands and head possibly a post oflice 

 inspector trying to get on the track of 

 a series of mail robberies, or a customs 

 ofiicer similarly employed as regards 

 frauds on the revenue, or a statistician 

 marshaling an elaborate array of facts 

 by methods which he himself had care- 

 fully devised and could alone apply with 

 the best results, or the head of some 

 scientific bureau who, after a battle 

 with disorganization and sloth and the 

 indifference bred of the political sys- 

 tem, had conquered the forces of oppo- 

 sition, established order, and prepared 

 the way for a vigorous advance of the 

 important work committed to him 

 what would it matter? whatever he 

 was, or whatever he was doing, when 

 the hour came that a stronger than he 

 politically wanted his place, the sup- 

 posed guardian of the public interests, 

 cabinet minister or President, would 

 order his dismissal, and bring in the 

 new man to throw everything into con- 

 fusion, or, at the very least, to retard in 

 a more or less serious degree operations 

 that might have been carried on with- 

 out a break, to the great advantage of 

 the community. 



We do not mean to say that changes 

 have never been made for the better. 

 That has been as it chanced; and cer- 

 tainly under our system changes for the 

 better have for the most part been only 

 too possible. Who that has any ac- 



