IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



143 



business, would be willing to accept office on 

 these terms ; and that the civil service must, 

 therefore, be inefficient and expensive, and prob- 

 ably corrupt. But the conditions of society in 

 America are very different from the conditions 

 of society in England. There is reason to sup- 

 pose that many restless " ne'er-do-weels " find 

 refuge in public employment, and such men are 

 likely to be as incompetent and as inefficient in 

 the business of the public as in their own. In 

 America, however, it seems to be comparatively 

 easy to turn from one occupation to another. A 

 judge who loses his seat on the bench will go 

 out West and buy a farm, or he will start a 

 manufactory in New England, or become mana- 

 ger of a bank. Sometimes a man, while holding 

 a public office, carries on a business of his own 

 on which he will be able to fall back when his 

 party gets into trouble. A postmaster, for in- 

 stance, whom I met, was also a manufacturer, 

 and. in the event of his losing the $5,000 a year 

 which he received as postmaster, he would still 

 have a considerable income from his own busi- 

 ness. Men of excellent character and great en- 

 ergy are, therefore, eager for public appoint- 

 ments. The scandals of the New York Custom- 

 House are shameful and notorious ; in some 

 other departments there has been, here and 

 there, great inefficiency ; but I am convinced, on 

 the testimony 'of men of large knowledge and 

 high integrity, that the civil service is on the 

 whole both honest and effective. The organiza- 

 tion of the Post-Office, for example, is admirable, 

 and I believe that the whole administration of 

 this department is not only singularly vigorous 

 and able, but absolutely free from corruption. 



The popular election of judges in New York 

 and soma other States is obviously a mischievous 

 practice. There is strong reason to believe that 

 when the resolute administration of the law 

 would be generally unpopular, a judge, if he owes 

 his seat to a popular vote, sometimes shrinks from 

 doing his duty. But the system works better than 

 might have been expected. Now and then, espe- 

 cially in the thinly-settled districts, a man is 

 elected who knows as little of law as the unpaid 

 magistrates that administer justice on this side 

 of the water ; but it is rarely that there is any 

 suspicion of a judge's integrity, and since the 

 man who is " run " for a judgeship is usually 

 selected by the lawyers of his party, he is, in 

 the great majority of cases, a man of good abil- 

 ity and with a competent knowledge of law. 



It must also be remembered that the tenure 

 of office is less uncertain than it seems. The Re- 



publican party has now been in power for seven- 

 teen years, and since the changes incident on the 

 election of Mr. Lincoln there has been no political 

 reason for disturbing the appointments under the 

 Federal Government. Up to 1861 there had 

 been a Democratic President in the White House 

 for a very much longer period. I was told by a 

 gentleman, who had exceptionally good means for 

 knowing the facts, that among the present clerks 

 in the Secretary of State's office at Washington 

 the average length of service is longer than among 

 the present clerks in our own Foreign Office. 



In most of the States the ascendency of one 

 of the great political parties is, under ordinary 

 political conditions, sufficiently secure to relieve 

 its adherents from any serious dread of a political 

 catastrophe. Among ourselves most of the con- 

 stituencies usually remain faithful to their politi- 

 cal colors through a long course of years. The 

 counties and the boroughs are comparatively few 

 in which the political equilibrium is so unstable 

 as to make it uncertain whether the members will 

 be Conservative or Liberal. Except in times of 

 great political excitement it is only here and there 

 that there is any chance of changing the charac- 

 ter of the representation. It is the same in 

 America. There are some States in which the rival 

 parties are so nearly equal in power that an elec- 

 tion is always anticipated with anxiety ; but in 

 most the political bias is too strong and perma- 

 nent to leave the issue of a contest in any un- 

 certainty. The State officials, therefore, in the 

 majority of the States, have very little reason to 

 fear that they will lose their places through the 

 triumph of their political opponents. 



The worst consequences of the civil service 

 arrangements in America are to be found outside 

 the civil service. At this moment I suppose that 

 from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, every postmas- 

 ter, every supervisor, every Federal official of 

 every description, is, with rare exceptions, a Re- 

 publican. 1 These officials constitute the political 

 " machine " for securing the permanent ascend- 

 ency of the Republican party throughout the 

 United States. In those States which have a Re- 



1 Mr. Hayes is said to have appointed a few Demo- 

 crats as postmasters in the Southern States. The rea- 

 son alleged is that in some districts of the South there 

 are no Republicans that are decently qualified for the 

 office. Occasionally an announcement appears in the 

 newspapers of the death of a man " who has been 



postmaster at for forty years." Iu these cases 



the man was probably the only person in the district 

 whom it was possible to appoint, or else the office was 

 too obscure and too poorly paid for any one to have 

 been anxious to deprive him of it. 



