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It is the duty of this League to see to it that, if such an attempt is made, the responsibilities which it involves shall not escape the judgment of the American people.
Neither should the friends of good government in those States in which civil service laws are in preparation permit themselves for a moment to overlook or to underestimate the universal experience that, unless bottomed on the competitive principle, no civil service reform will be lastingly effective, and that unless made independent of the control of the appointing officers, no system of competitive examinations can maintain its integrity. Our duty to our cause demands that we should be careful not to let anything pass as true civil service reform that does not answer its essential requisites.
The rapid progress of our cause during the last few years has not only gladdened its friends, but also exasperated its enemies. Until a recent period the spoils politicians have looked upon the civil service reform movement as a mere whimsey of theorists which would have its day and then pass by. They have at last become aware that it is a substantial force seriously threatening to annihilate their trade, unless effectively checked. They will be incessantly busy, if they cannot hope to overthrow it by open assault, to destroy it by a warfare of underground sapping and mining. And this warfare will not cease until the victory of civil service reform is complete—that is to say, until the whole public service, national, State and municipal, excepting only the few distinctly political offices, has been taken out of politics by being brought under the merit system, and until this general rule of the merit system has become so fully identified with the political habits and ways of thinking of the American people as to exclude altogether the old idea of public office as the spoil of party victory from our party contests.
True, this is a large programme. But why should not that which has been actually accomplished elsewhere be possible here? As a remnant of feudalism, as a monarchical and aristocratic institution, the distribution of public offices as mere patronage, the spoils system, flourished in England as much as here. Owing to the progress of the democratic idea in government in England the patronage abuse has been completely supplanted there by the democratic merit system, as it is gradually being supplanted here. In consequence of this, the
