can? What fool is there to pretend this? It is just as little un-American as Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; just as little as the common law, trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus; just as little as constitutional government, free press and free speech; just as little as common honesty and common sense. In fact, the principles of Civil Service Reform are none other than those which governed the original Democracy of America. Thomas Jefferson is called the father of the Democratic party. The sons would do well to learn and inwardly digest and keep living in their souls the lessons taught by the sire. What are those lessons? Jefferson was elected to the Presidency after one of the hottest party contests this country has ever witnessed. He went into power in 1801. There was a heavy pressure for place from members of his party, the offices being almost all in the hands of the defeated Federalists. What did Jefferson do? Let us see. On March 24, 1801, he wrote to Dr. Rush:

With regard to appointments. I have so much confidence in the justice and good sense of the Federalists [the defeated party] that I have no doubt they will concur in the fairness of the position that after they have been in the exclusive possession of all the offices from the very first origin of party among us to the 3d of March, at nine o'clock in the night, no Republican [Democrat] ever admitted, and this doctrine newly avowed, it is now perfectly just that the Republicans should come in for the vacancies that may fall in, until something like an equilibrium be restored. But the great stumbling-block will be removals, which, though made on those just principles only on which my predecessor ought to have removed the same persons, will nevertheless be ascribed to removal on party principles.

He then designates some persons that should be displaced, and proceeds:

Of the thousands of officers, therefore, in the United States, a very few individuals only, probably not twenty, will be removed, and those only for doing what they ought not to have done. Í know that in stopping thus short in the career of removals I shall give great offence to many of my friends. That torrent has been pressing me heavily and will require all my force to bear up against; but my maxim is fiat justitia, ruat cælum.

And in his letter of July 12, 1801, to the merchants of New Haven, he said:

It would have been a circumstance of great relief had I found

a moderate participation of office in the hands of the majority. I would gladly have left to time and accident to raise them to their just share. But their total exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I shall correct the procedure, but that done shall return with joy to that state of things when the only question concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?

I invite the modern Democrat to contemplate in a spirit of candor and soberness, and perhaps with some reverence, the example set by the father of the Democratic party. The Federalists, the first party in possession of the Government, had filled almost all the offices during three Presidential terms. When after a furious contest the Democrats came into power, the provocation for sweeping changes was as great as it has ever been since. What did Jefferson do? He was a warm partisan himself, and a keen politician too. But did he permit himself to be swept off his feet by the greedy clamor of his adherents? Did he resolve upon a clean sweep and, in the sanguinary parlance of to-day, "set up the guillotine" to make the heads of Federalist placemen promiscuously fly into the basket? Did he proceed upon the idea that under a Democratic Administration all Government officers must be Democrats? Not he. He deplored that the Federalists should have found it necessary to fill almost all the offices with Federalists. He denounced this as an injustice; but he did not propose to retaliate by being as unjust as they had been. He simply declared his purpose to equalize the possession of the offices between the parties by making a small number of removals, but only for cause, and then by filling vacancies as they might otherwise arise in the ordinary course of things with a just proportion of DemoThis done, then Jefferson would joyfully return to the regular practice of making appointments on the sole ground of fitness without regard to party.

It was thus clearly Jefferson's professed object, not to make the Government service a partisan service, but on the contrary to take from it the character of a partisan service which it had borne before; and then to start it anew on a distinctly non-partisan basis.

How did he carry out this plan? He did, indeed, make some removals, perhaps a few more than he had originally intended, and more than his Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, wished him to make, but in the eight years of his two Presidential terms he made after all only thirty-nine, and, as he often solemnly affirmed, not one of them solely for party reasons. There being. at that time no law limiting the tenure of offices to four years, and officeholders being not in haste to die and unwilling to resign, the process bringing about the equilibrium was necessarily trying to patience. But Jefferson saw no danger to his country nor to his party in the circumstance that a large number of the offices still remained in Federalist hands; for, being a sensible man, he knew that a postmaster had to receive and distribute not Democratic or Federalist letters, but simply letters; that a collector of revenue had to handle not Democratic or Federalist money, but simply money; that the officers of the United States courts had to secure and enforce not Democratic or Federalist justice, but simply justice; that Indian agents had to take care of not Democratic or Federalist Indians, but simply Indians; and so on. This was Jeffersonian Democracy-the Democracy which Thomas Jefferson not only preached but practised.

He stood not alone. With him James Madison and Albert Gallatin formed the famous triumvirate which initiated the Democratic epoch and has ever since remained the most brilliant constellation of the Democratic firmament. Of these James Madison was the greatest constitutional authority. He had been one of the makers of the Constitution and he has always been respected as one of its weightiest contemporary expounders. He expressed it as his opinion that under the Constitution the power of removal from offices filled by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate rested in the President alone. But did he think that the President had the lawful power to remove meritorious officers merely to put party friends in their places? Let us hear him: "The President who does that," said Madison,

"will be impeachable by the House before the Senate for such an act of maladministration, for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust." Nor were these idle words. These principles were well kept in mind by the Democratic Presidents of that period; for we find it recorded that Madison, during the eight years which he was President, made only five removals; Monroe during his eight years only nine, and John Quincy Adams during his four years only two.

Nor was Gallatin, the great financier and administrator of the triumvirate, of a different mind. In a circular to the collectors of revenue drawn by him he emphatically expressed his desire "that the door of office be no longer shut against any man merely on account of his political opinions, but that, whether he shall differ or not from those avowed either by you or by myself, integrity and capacity suitable to the station be the only qualification that shall direct our choice." And then he went on to say that officeholders should not use their official standing and opportunities as a means of partisan influence.

Such was the Democracy of Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin, the greatest apostles of the Democratic church in America. And it may not be presumptuous to suggest that Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin are as Democratic authorities preferable to Hill, Murphy and Croker, and even to Senators Gorman of Maryland, Voorhees of Indiana and Vance of North Carolina, to whom Civil Service Reform is an abomination and the distribution of offices as spoils a necessity of political life.

It may be profitable to consider what an Administration. conducted on the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy would do under existing conditions. It would, of course, scorn the idea of making "a clean sweep," turning out all public servants belonging to the opposite party, to put in its own. It would not make a removal except for good cause connected with official conduct, and it would utterly reject the notion that such a cause is furnished by the circumstance that a man has been in place

four years a notion, by the way, from a business point of view, so strikingly preposterous that it is amazing how it could ever be seriously considered among sensible people. Imagine a merchant discharging his salesmen and book-keepers, a manufacturer discharging his foremen and artisans, a railroad corporation discharging its engineers and switchmen, a bank discharging its cashiers and tellers every four years on the ground that they have been in their places long enough and somebody else ought to have them now-would you trust a bank conducted upon such principles with your deposits, and would you like to travel on such a railroad?

The Jeffersonian Administration would, therefore, as a matter of common sense, never think of applying to the far more important Government business a rule which would be scouted as criminally absurd when applied to the business of a railroad or a bank. It would go further, and consider as an improper removal the non-reappointment of a meritorious officer to whose place the .existing four-years-term law applies, and it would do all in its power to bring about the repeal of that mischievous law. It would remember that this law was in its very inception a fraud practised upon the people. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe, instigated its enactment under the pretence that it would give him better control over officers handling the public money, a pretence the futility of which became soon apparent. His real purpose was to strengthen his hold upon the officeholders and to make them further, as a political machine, his chances for the Presidency. The bill was passed without debate, and Monroe signed it in a hurry without consideration. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter of November 28, 1827, addressed to James Madison, called it the mischievous law vacating every four years nearly all the executive offices of the Government." And thus he described, with admirable foresight, its effects:

It saps the constitutional and salutary functions of the President, and introduces a principle of intrigue and corruption which will soon leaven the mass, not only of Senators but of citizens.