Permit me another suggestion. We are likely to have a fierce fight about the civil service law in Congress next winter. In my humble opinion a strong word in favor of the merit system in your annual message, and some out spoken statements to the same effect in the reports of the Secretaries, especially those of the three great patronage Departments, the Treasury, the Post-Office and the Interior, would be half the battle. Indeed a vigorous pronouncement by the united Administration would probably spike the artillery of the assailants, confirm the Republicans in the faith avowed by their platform and substantially put the matter beyond controversy for the rest of your term.
As you know, my dear Mr. President, we do not agree on all points; but I am all the more anxious to coöperate with you to the best of my ability as to those things on which we do agree, especially as to the cause of civil service reform which we have both so warmly at heart. You may always count not only upon my personal gratitude for every forward step undertaken by you, but also upon my earnest desire to secure the gratitude of others—of the whole country, if that were in my power. I therefore look forward with especial pleasure to the opportunities for presenting your order concerning removals, as a practically accomplished reform, when giving a review of the situation in my annual address at the meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League on December 16th, at Cincinnati.
I trust you have received the suggestions I took the liberty of submitting to you through Mr. McAneny, concerning the supposed interference of your Administration in our municipal election, in the spirit in which they were conceived; and I am exceedingly glad to learn that no such interference on your part is intended. New York municipal politics have always been an extremely danger-
