CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



127 



apply the proper remedy. If the system is 

 as perfect as we can make it, if the accusa- 

 tions recently made in the newspapers of the 

 country as to the abuse in the use of patron- 

 age, particularly in the city of New York, be 

 untrue, let the fact be made known. I have 

 heard nothing in reference to the present col- 

 lector. The investigation from which I have 

 read took place before he was appointed, and 

 I hope he may bring about all the reforms we 

 desire in his office. If he has done so, and is 

 administering the collector's office honestly 

 and faithfully, let the country know it. 



" Throughout the land there is an impres- 

 sion that corruption exists, and that there 

 is great demoralization in the public service. 

 The recent exposures, showing that the people 

 of the city of New' York had been robbed of 

 millions of dollars, have awakened a public 

 sentiment throughout the nation ; and how, 

 Mr. President, was it possible for Tammany to 

 perpetrate its frauds ? Only upon this prin- 

 ciple of partisanship in official position. Do 

 you suppose that all of the many millions of 

 which the people of that city have been 

 robbed remained in the hands of the robbers? 

 Do you suppose the persons who were arrest- 

 ed in the city of New York for robbing that 

 city have got the many millions of dollars that 

 they took from the public treasury? They 

 may have a portion of it, but millions of it, I 

 doubt not, have gone to perpetuate themselves 

 in pow^r from year to year. It has been paid 

 to just such persons as are spoken of in this 

 report persons who had political influence. 

 It has been paid to pack conventions, to carry 

 elections, and to stuff the ballot-boxes. I 

 have no doubt millions have gone in that 

 way." 



Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, said : "Mr. Pres- 

 ident, I .believe the question is up now, and 

 the last speech of my friend from Illinois is 

 fully to the point. I think, however, that my 

 friend misapprehends a little what the precise 

 point of discussion here is, after all. I think 

 everybody on all sides of the Chamber will 

 agree with him in condemning robbery, pecu- 

 lation, dishonesty, favoritism, every thing that 

 is mean and unholy. I know the Republicans 

 here will, and I have no doubt the Democrats 

 will. The point is not whether it is wise and 

 right to purify every department of the Gov- 

 ernment, but what is the wisest and most 

 effectual method of doing it. That is the ques- 

 tion, and that is all the question. My honor- 

 able friend need not spend time in reading 

 pieces of testimony taken in the city of New 

 York to show that appointments to office in 

 the custom-house at New York can be im- 

 proved. He does not need any special com- 

 mittee, or any joint select committee, to show 

 that the appointments in the custom-house in 

 New York and in other custom-houses can be 

 improved. It is a waste of the public treasure 

 to enter upon any such inquiry for such a 

 purpose, because every Senator who hears 



me, and every intelligent man in the country 

 knows and has known for a great many years, 

 that the system of selections for appointment 

 to subordinate offices and not very subordi- 

 nate either, for I would go up pretty high, 

 higher perhaps than my friend would be 

 willing to go has not been the system best 

 adapted to subserve the public interests. 



" Whether another can be devised is a sub- 

 ject that the Committee on Retrenchment at 

 the first session of its existence acted upon, 

 exhausted itself, reported upon; and it at- 

 tempted with all the zeal and ability it pos- 

 sessed then to persuade Congress to pass the 

 bill regulating the civil service of the United 

 States, which I had the honor the other day 

 to introduce in the identical language in 

 which the committee reported it the last time 

 I was on the committee. But there are diffi- 

 culties about this business, as my friend from 

 Illinois knows perfectly well, difficulties that 

 I hope he and I and the other members of the 

 Committee on the Judiciary, to which the bill 

 to which I have just referred has gone, will 

 be able to overcome. Where, for instance, 

 are you to draw the line (as he speaks of it) 

 between appointing a man on account of his 

 political status and appointing a man on ac- 

 count of his want of political status, or some 

 other reason, is the difficulty. He has read 

 from the testimony of Horton as showing a 

 case of grave misconduct on the part of Mur- 

 phy, and it may have been I pronounce no 

 opinion on that his statement when asked 

 upon whose recommendation he was appoint- 

 ed to office: 'Well, I guess my own political 

 status gave me the position.' That is exactly 

 the answer that might be truthfully made by 

 my friend from Illinois as to his being in this 

 Chamber at this moment. It was his political 

 status that made him a Senator. It was not, 

 I suspect, because he was thought exclusively 

 and solely the only man in the State of Il- 

 linois whose private character and whose 

 fidelity to the Constitution were above ques- 

 tion, for, as high as we all place that, and I 

 certainly place it as high as possible, nobody 

 will maintain that Senators are selected upon 

 that ground solely. 



"But, I think we have misconceived the 

 issue here a little. The point is not whether 

 we are to have a civil service reform which 

 is a subject referred to my friend's own com- 

 mittee, where, I trust, it will meet prompt and 

 favorable action but the point simply is 

 whether we are to have a particular commit- 

 tee raised, which the Senate at the last session 

 decided there was no occasion for, or whether 

 we are to proceed with the duties of investi- 

 gation that belong to this body according to 

 the ordinary course of requiring each com- 

 mittee charged with a particular branch of 

 the public service to make inquiries into that. 

 That is all there is to it. 



''Another thing I was a little sorry for, 

 and that was, to hear my friend boldly assert, 



