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small number of places to be filled, one at a time—places requiring certain specific qualifications of a superior order—and then given an appointing officer of moral courage and firmness in resisting pressure, and even this scheme may work well. It has, for instance, brought forth some good fruit with regard to the consular service under the present administration. This is gratefully acknowledged. But have we any assurance that it will steadily continue to bear good fruit? We should not forget that rules to govern appointments to consular places very similar to those at present in force, had been introduced before and had fallen into abeyance. They were revived again and, again, but have heretofore always, after a short period of observance, become useless by the failure of the appointing power to resist the political pressure hostile to them. Is it not to be feared that what has happened before, may happen again—that, while these rules may work beneficially under the present administration and under the next, the time will come again when, with a less vigorous willpower in the Presidential chair, the wave of influence will wash down the feeble breakwater of the pass-examination once more? Secretary Olney was therefore entirely right when he characterized the present rules covering the consular service as only a “step in the right direction,” which, as we hope, will before long be followed by a measure of reform bottomed upon the competitive principle and thus offering greater guarantees of consistency and endurance.
But even if the system of pass examinations could be maintained in successful working when applied only to a small number of conspicuous positions, it would under our conditions inevitably and speedily become worthless, a mere cloak for arbitrary favoritism and spoils politics, when applied to the thousands upon thousands of places in the national service which are less in the public eye, and even with the smaller number under our state and municipal governments. Actual experience in this respect is so general and uniform as to extinguish all doubt. There is no teaching of history and no process of reasoning that will not unfailingly lead us to the conclusion that the element of favoritism and of spoils politics can be excluded from the public service at large only by the establishment and maintenance of competi-
