CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (CIVIL-SERVICE REFOEM.) 



175 



support to the measure if Congress shall agree 

 upon it. 



" When the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pendle- 

 ton) addressed the Senate, the other day, he 

 directed some very eloquent and very severe 

 reproaches against the Republican party. 

 These reproaches were by no means wholly 

 undeserved. They ought to be met not by 

 counter-reproaches, not by undertaking to 

 show by way of set-off similar conduct, or 

 similar misconduct, on the part of his party, 

 but by admitting and conceding the fact that 

 this system which has come down to us from 

 the very origin of party government in this 

 country has gone on, sometimes operating bet- 

 ter and sometimes operating worse, until it 

 has reached a point where some of the abuses 

 to which it is liable have excited the attention 

 of the American people and caused a demand 

 for their reform. 



" When Mr. Jefferson came into power in 

 1801, as I said the other day, he encountered 

 the same condition of things that the Demo- 

 cratic party encounters to-day. He declared 

 that he found the civil offices of the country 

 filled without an exception by the opponents 

 of his administration, and he was obliged to 

 hold back a wave and torrent of indignation 

 from his own associates, demanding the use of 

 the civil service of the country to establish its 

 party in power. I have upon my desk here 

 the correspondence between Mr. Jefferson's At- 

 torney-General and himself with regard to the 

 appointments in the State of Connecticut, in 

 which a large committee of leading Connecti- 

 cut Republicans sst forth the political proscrip- 

 tion under which they have labored for the 

 past twelve years, during Adams's and Wash- 

 ington's administrations, at the hands of the 

 Connecticut Federalists, and recommending the 

 exercise of the President's power of removal 

 to cure that condition. 



" Mr. Jefferson replies in one letter he thinks 

 the Connecticut Federalists will find that he 

 can be as intolerant as they can ; in another he 

 proposes to exercise the power of removal in 

 regard to all United States district attorneys 

 and marshals and to st^nd at the porch of the 

 courts ; in a third, that lie proposes to turn out 

 all the men who sympathize with Hamilton and 

 the Essex junta, whom he regards as incura- 

 ble, fit only for -a mad-house; and in another 

 that he shall regard activity in the late revolu- 

 tion (that is, the revolution which had placed 

 him in power) as a good reason for a political 

 appointment, and activity on the other side as 

 a good reason for a political removal. He says 

 that he advises his correspondent to give him 

 a list of the obnoxious Federalists in his State, 

 and ' leave the rest to me.' When these things 

 are done, and the Republican party as it was 

 then called, the Jefferson party has attained 

 its fair and just proportion of the civil offices 

 in the country he hopes then, and it is in that 

 connection he uttered his famous sentence, to 

 be able to inquire, as to the person to be ap- 



pointed to office, * Is he honest, is he capable, 

 is he faithful to the Constitution ? ' 



u I will have the letter of Mr. Lincoln, At- 

 torney-General of the United States under Mr. 

 Jefferson, placed in the 'Record,' so that it 

 may be read by the Senate and by the public 

 without my reading it. The Attorney-General 

 recommends to Mr. Jefferson that he shall not 

 make all his removals at once, because, he says, 

 that will make 11 the officers removed and all 

 their friends unite in opposition to his adminis- 

 tration ; that he had better remove by degrees 

 and let the process extend over a year or two, 

 because then the first batch will be the only 

 ones that will complain, and those who are left, 

 with their friends, will stand by the Adminis- 

 tration, thinking they are to escape. 



" So that it is an entire injustice to say that 

 when Mr. Marcy, under Jackson, made his 

 coarse and well-known statement, that 'to the 

 victors belong the spoils,' he was introducing 

 for the first time this vicious system. He was 

 avowing not a new system, but was frankly 

 stating a -system which had so far preceded the 

 accession of Mr. Jefferson to power in 1801 

 that when he came in he did not find, he said, 

 a single one of his political associates in office. 



" As I said, the thing which the Democratic 

 party is asked to do in giving Its assistance to 

 this measure is an immediate and present sac- 

 rifice for the permanent and enduring welfare 

 of this country, and the question of its fitness 

 ever to be trusted with administration will in 

 my judgment be very largely determined by the 

 American people at some time in the future as 

 it shall itself decide this question. 



" It is, I think, fairly to be said in extenua- 

 tion (if it were desirable. to enter into an ex- 

 tenuation of the conduct of those who have 

 been charged with administration in this coun- 

 try) that it is only within a very recent period 

 that there has been any substantial and ade- 

 quate support in public opinion of this reform. 

 President Grant entered upon the administra- 

 tion of the Government on the 4th of March, 

 1869, in my opinion penetrated with an ear- 

 nest desire to elevate the civil service of the 

 country not only above corruption but above 

 party. The first important political event of 

 his administration was the warfare of the lead- 

 ers of this body when he attempted to con- 

 struct the Circuit Court of the United States in 

 favor of their claim to exercise their patronage 

 and to control the Executive in that particular. 



"Again and again down to 1874 President 

 Grant urged upon Congress the necessary ap- 

 propriation and the necessary legislation to 

 enable him to elevate the civil service of the 

 country above party. The result is shown in 

 President Grant's message of 1874, an extract 

 from which, I think, was read by the honorable 

 Senator from Connecticut. If so, I shall not 

 read it again. In it President Grant declares 

 that he shall regard the refusal by the. legis- 

 lative power of the continuance of the small 

 appropriation of $25,000 in aid of his measure 



