CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (CiviL-SEEvioK REFOBM.) 



173 



politics. I have an unutterable contempt for 

 the man who justifies his neglect of his public 

 duties by talking about the dirty waters of 

 politics. If they are dirty, and he thinks he 

 knows what they ought to be, and that if he 

 were controlling them they would be better, 

 then he is a coward and next door to a moral 

 traitor if he does not come in with all his soul, 

 and not simply sit on the fence and scold the 

 rest of us who are in, and who are conscious of 

 as high and honorable motives, conscious of as 

 devoted worship of the Constitution and the 

 laws and the glory of our country as any man 

 in the republic. 



" Sir, this country is not in a ruinous condi- 

 tion; it is the most magnificent nation that ever 

 lived under the sun. There are fifty -five mill- 

 ions of people here ; some of us now here will 

 be living when they shall number one hundred 

 millions of people. The nation has gone 

 through the most glorious war known in his- 

 tory. I am not now speaking of it at all in a 

 partisan way. If you go to the very essence of 

 it on both sides, it was a contest over the very 

 fundamental question of society and of govern- 

 ment. It was a case where forty millions of 

 people took up the sword by the hundred 

 thousand, and even by the million, to settle 

 controversies, not concerning the control of 

 the Suez canal or the Bosporus, or this, that, 

 or the other mere territorial or trade question, 

 but to decide upon the political and social 

 foundations on which the future hundreds of 

 millions of this continent shall rest. 



" Look at our general financial condition. 

 There is not a nation in the world that does 

 not envy us the embarrassment under which 

 we labor to-day, the embarrassment of an ex- 

 traordinary and excessive revenue. We are 

 pained by what ? By debts that stagger and 

 shake us? No; by the question of how we 

 shall reduce our revenue, and how we shall 

 cease to reduce our debt, which we have di- 

 minished some $1,200,000,000 since the great 

 war closed. I affirm that throughout the great 

 branches of the public service in general the 

 work of the Government is well done, by men 

 who desire to do it well. I appeal to the 

 records of the collection of our revenue ; I ap- 

 peal to the figures of the reduction of our debt ; 

 I appeal to the facility with which we borrow 

 money, and to the matchless credit this nation 

 has now in every money market of the world. 

 I appeal in other fields to the general provisions 

 of our Constitution and of our fundamental 

 laws to show that the rule of the country, how- 

 ever imperfect the practice of it may be, is ab- 

 solute and universal freedom, equality, justice. 

 These things the people worship ; these things 

 are in words in our Constitution and laws ; 

 they are essentially in the hearts of our people, 

 and toward the perfection of the administra- 

 tion of them we are steadily aiming and march- 

 ing. I believe in my country ; I believe it is 

 an honest country, as honest as ever lived : I 

 believe it is the strongest and freest and best ; 



and, if I may say it, it has as good a civil service 

 as any other country, or a better one. 



" At the same time I am ardently in favor of 

 this bill and measures of this description, to be 

 followed steadily in search of better things. I 

 said, do not let us indulge an idea that we can 

 make a perfect system and eliminate all evils 

 or possibilities of evil. We can lay out some 

 general lines under which the civil service shall 

 be administered, without attempting to fill up 

 the minute details. The more you do that, the 

 more you embarrass the officers charged with 

 the execution of the plan, and the more you 

 relieve them from personal responsibility. I 

 would say generally : ' Within such and such 

 lines you shall conduct it. We do not tell you 

 what you shall do in this, that, and the other 

 minute affair, because the duties and proprieties 

 will vary in each of these cases ; but we hold 

 you, the President, or this Cabinet officer, or 

 that chief of a minor bureau, or the head of a 

 post-office or custom-house we hold you re- 

 sponsible for the thorough administration of all 

 affairs under you under these general rules.' 



" Sir, I think perhaps the most perfect human 

 machine in the world is a regiment fully organ- 

 ized, with ranks full, and fully equipped. For 

 every duty there is a man ; for every man there 

 is a duty, well graded, well related. If every 

 man but half tries to do his duty there is no 

 more charming movement in the world, not 

 even that of the finest chronometer, than that 

 of a regiment ; and the essence of military or- 

 ganization which military organization we are 

 not expected to copy in civil affairs, but which 

 nevertheless can teach us a great deal one 

 of the essential things of it at least is the re- 

 sponsibility of chiefs. The general of division 

 or of a corps rides through a camp and per- 

 ceives one regiment perfect in the performance 

 of duty ; another slovenly, dirty, with ill-regu- 

 lated ranks and ignorant of duty. He does not 

 stop to rebuke individual men. He rides back 

 to his tent and sends word to the colonel, and 

 that colonel makes that a better regiment speed- 

 ily or he goes. 



" In general analogy to that must be any 

 good system of civil service which we shall im- 

 pose, for if you attempt to tie the hands of the 

 chief of a bureau or the chief of a department 

 in the civil service against removals and against 

 what you may choose to call punishment, and 

 against some control of promotion also, just to 

 that extent you relieve him from responsibility ; 

 just to that extent you fortify the subordinate 

 against him, and he will encounter insolence 

 and negligence and freely-expressed criticisms' 

 and defiance. I think no man who has had 

 military experience would consent to take 

 charge of a bureau of 100 persons without 

 having something of the power of prompt re- 

 moval and promotion vested in his own hands. 

 This bill does not seek to remove those entirely, 

 by any means. 



" It is said that the President has power to 

 do what we propose to do here. So he has, 



