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



as a final judgment by Congress against its ex- 

 pediency, and gives notice that he should there- 

 after abandon the attempt. 



" Now, the time has come when these two 

 belligerents are asked to agree to disuse in our 

 political conflicts hereafter an instrument of 

 warfare which has been so injurious to the 

 public interest hitherto. We wish if we can 

 now, taking advantage of the present earnest 

 condition of public sentiment, excited on this 

 subject, to stereotype these expressions of pub- 

 lic opinion into a statute which may be per- 

 manent. 



" Mr. President, I expect to support the bill 

 of the committee, and, without entering upon 

 the details which have been so much discussed, 

 and which will be discussed further I dare say, 

 I expect to support it for these reasons : First, 

 that it is the measure agreed upon by the large 

 majority of persons who have made special 

 study of this cause. I do not propose to sur- 

 render to any man or to any body of men the 

 prerogative or the duties of the members of 

 this body; but I think in discharging our du- 

 ties, taking upon ourselves as we must the 

 ultimate responsibility of every measure, it is 

 proper that a large respect should be had for 

 the opinion of those persons who have specially 

 studied for ye#rs the evil which we are seek- 

 ing to remove, who have specially studied the 

 proper remedy, and to whose efforts the exist- 

 ing public sentiment on the subject is largely 

 due. 



"Next, the bill commends itself to my judg- 

 ment because it proceeds with a statesmanlike 

 caution in making the necessary experiment and 

 proceeding from step to step. It is applicable 

 to only a few of the great public offices in the 

 country besides the seven departments exist- 

 ing in the city of Washington. It applies, I 

 think, to about thirty offices only out of Wash- 

 ington and to the departments here, and it 

 permits the President, if he see fit, to extend 

 gradually, as experience shall warrant, there 

 being full opportunity for the legislative power 

 to amend or supply any defects in this bill 

 hereafter, until finally, if it is found expedient, 

 it shall embrace the entire civil service of the 

 country so far as it can be properly applied. 



"Again, it is a measure justified by experi- 

 ence in the great offices at New York, and to 

 some extent in Boston and in the Department 

 of the Interior here. It is difficult to raise a 

 practical objection to any detail of the bill to 

 which an answer is not found in the reports of 

 the experience of Mr. James and Mr. Pearson 

 in the post-office in the city of New York. 

 Every public officer to whom there comes any 

 responsibility in putting on trial this scheme 

 becomes a convert to its practicability and its 

 wisdom. Every public officer under whose 

 administration this scheme is permanently en- 

 forced becomes, as the months and years go 

 by, a more enthusiastic and emphatic adherent 

 of this plan. 



"The measure commends itself to me also 



because it carefully and wisely avoids all the 

 disputed constitutional questions which have 

 been raised in the discussion of this subject. 

 It nowhere trenches upon the constitutional 

 power of the President under any definition or 

 limitation, even the largest and broadest, of 

 the executive powers which is to be found in 

 our constitutional discussions. The President's 

 right to make rules, to apply rules, to change 

 rules, the President's responsibility growing 

 out of his constitutional duty to see that the 

 laws are faithfully executed, are not impaired, 

 and in my judgment can not be impaired by 

 legislation. I do not understand that it has 

 been the purpose of the honorable Senator 

 from Ohio in reporting this bill in any degree 

 to infringe upon the constitutional prerogative 

 of the Executive. 



" It does not assert any disputed legislative 

 control over the tenure of office. The great 

 debate as to the President's power of removal, 

 the legislative power to establish a tenure of 

 office with which the President could not in- 

 terfere, which began in the first Congress, 

 which continued during the contests of the 

 Senate with Andrew Jackson, revived again at 

 the time of the impeachment of Johnson, and 

 again in the more recent discussion over the 

 Tenure-of-Office Bill in the beginning of the 

 administration of President Grant, does not in 

 the least become important under the skillful 

 and admirable provisions of this bill. 



"It does not even (and that is a ciiticism 

 made upon it, but in my judgment it is one of 

 its conspicuous merits) deal directly with the 

 question of removals, but it takes away ev- 

 ery possible temptation to improper removals. 

 What Executive, what head of a department, 

 what influential public man anywhere can seek 

 in the least to force a worthy and deserving 

 public officer from his office merely that there 

 may be a competitive examination to fill his 

 place to fill a place at the bottom of the list, 

 not to fill his place, as is well suggested? 



"Now, Mr. President, while this avoids the 

 use of any doubtful constitutional power or 

 mechanism to create a removal, it, as I have 

 said, cures the great abuse which has existed 

 recently by removing the temptation to an 

 improper removal. In my own judgment the 

 abuse of improper, cruel, and unjust removals 

 of worthy and deserving public officers is an 

 abuse almost or quite equal to the other against 

 which this bill directly aims, the use of the 

 civil service of the country as a political in- 

 strumentality. 



" I congratulate the Senator from Ohio, I 

 congratulate the Senator from Connecticut, I 

 congratulate the country, on the auspicious 

 circumstances under which this bill has been 

 presented ; and, whatever else may happen, I 

 believe if this system shall be inaugurated now, 

 the session of this winter will be one of the 

 marked and conspicuous eras in the political 

 history of the country, as the time when the 

 two great political parties were willing, under 



