dexterity which is able to "keep the word of promise to our ear but break it to our hope." This is the language:

"We are opposed to life tenure in the public service. We favor appointments based upon merit, fixed terms of office, and such an administration of the civil service laws as will afford equal opportunities to all citizens of ascertained fitness."

This may seem to promise reform but the first sentence is the key to its true meaning. There is no life tenure, and this attempt to mislead is in keeping with the demagoguery of the whole Bryan movement, which brought the Democratic party to defeat at the polls, as overwhelming as it was richly deserved.

But even then men were found who, without hope of political preferment, held to the faith and rallied round the standard of true Democracy. These men made at Indianap olis the strongest declaration of devotion to our cause and their sincerity is doubted by no one. They stand to-day the only representatives of the true Democratic party.

From this retrospect it appears, and perhaps the lesson is worth teaching, that the strength of the Democratic party at the polls has increased and decreased with its support of reform. When it has taken the highest ground on this question, it has won. When it has receded or faltered, it has lost. While there was in the country a strong body of voters, not tied by partisan feeling to either organization, but considering only the welfare of the country, their votes were the prize for which each party bid. A distinct declaration in favor of civil service reform was necessary to win their support. Each party out of office, and seeking to regain it, has been willing to promise more than the same party in office and expecting to retain it. The disappointed office seekers of a Presidential term have had influence enough in the next national convention of their party to lower the standard. When this surrender of public interests to private demands has been followed by defeat, the standard rises again.

The activity of Republican spoilsmen to-day is readily explained by the disorganization of the compact force which has stood for reform so long. With the Democratic party committed to the spoils and to heresy of every kind, the Republicans feel that no reform voter can support a Democratic candidate. Believing that the votes of reformers are secure, Re

publican politicians feel it safe to take a little risk of disgusting them for the sake of reviving the good old days when every Congressman was a patron, who could buy his election with the money of the people, ostensibly spent for the public service, but really to pay for personal support. If we would influence either party, we must still stand a compact body, ready to vote for either which will best help our cause, or better still form a new party, organized to promote by active work what we have at heart. The practice of Hobson's choice, the election between two evils, has gone too far. Let us hope for a party which will give us a positive good.

The real feeling of the two parties can best be judged in the States where each has undisputed sway. If this field is examined, it will be found that in proportion as their power is unquestioned, their zeal for civil service reform has languished. Men who are in earnest use their power to accomplish their real ends, and the failure to use established power in our cause shows that the earnest purpose is lacking. Those of us who have enlisted for the war must stand together, must increase our efforts, must rally to our banner new recruits and must become an organized force, which both parties will fear. The organization of the Gold Democrats is heartily with us, and where independent action is needed we can unite our force with theirs; but the lesson of our whole movement, the lesson which Grosvenor and Gallinger are teaching us to-day is that our strength lies in independence, and that unwavering allegiance to either party is inconsistent with true devotion to civil service reform.

To the Democratic party we may commend the study of their own history. They will find that their principles, their consistent declarations for twenty-five years, and the teachings of their great leaders all support our cause, and that the spoils system is undemocratic. They will find that when they have been strongest in their support of reform, they have been strongest in the country, and that as they have faltered, they have lost ground. Wherever civil service reformers have been strong they have been prompt to punish any treachery to their cause. The party must return to Democratic principles, if it is ever again to be trusted with power, and it must abandon a course which drives from its ranks the men who have led it to victory. Whenever it is ready in all sincerity to say again.

with Pendleton, "We contend for power, not that we may enjoy the emoluments of office, but that we may lead the country in the pathways of advancement and beneficence under the inspiration of a true Democracy," nothing can keep it from -the lasting control of the government. Till then it deserves and will meet only defeat.

Do the American People want Civil Service

Reform?

BY CHARLES J. BONAPAKTE.

My attention was called some three or four weeks since to a letter addressed to the President by a Mr. J, L. Kennedy* of the "Anti-Civil Service League" (a gentleman of whom my own obscurity had doubtless prevented my hearing sooner), in which occurred the following passage:

"There is not one grain of comfort for the civil-service reformers in the late elections. Look at Maryland! The Legislature of the State submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to the people to be voted on at the recent election. It proposed to erect a State civil-service establishment, patterned after the National Civil Service Commission. As an issue in the campaign, it, like all others, was subordinated to the greater one, which Mr. Gorman's personality brought into the canvass. Nevertheless, the people kept it in mind, and had their eyes on it when they went into the booths to mark their ballots. A Baltimore Republican of some fame, who was in the city Saturday, informed me that the proposed amendment was buried under an adverse majority of 75,000, and that it did not carry in a single county in the State. This, too, notwithstanding the fact there is a strong civil service reform organization in Baltimore, the leading spirit of which is Colonel Charles Napoleon Bonaparte."

Upon the interesting information thus vouchsafed the President by Mr. Kennedy and the "Baltimore Republican of some fame," the Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Star, to whom I should say, I am indebted for knowledge of the measure of "fame" so accorded to myself, comments as follows:

*Since this paper was first published I have had some correspondence with Mr. Kennedy: he denies that he belongs to the Anti-Civil-Service League or that he wrote any letter to the President, and says the words I quoted were "exultant remarks" contained in an interview published in the Washington "Post." I congratulate Mr. Kennedy on thus avoiding disreputable associates and refraining from an exhibition of ridiculous presumption; my authority for both statements was, as I say above, the Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia "Evening Star," whom he calls "Honorable James Rankin Young." I have no acquaintance with this “honorable" person.

"Col. Bonaparte and his confreres were strong enough to go to the Legislature of Maryland and have such a proposed amendment submitted to the electorate; but they were very weak with the people. It is always thus with the civil-service reformers. They can go before small bodies like Legislatures and conventions, and exert an influence, as Senator Lodge and a few others of them did in St. Louis, when they had a mugwump plank inserted in a Republican platform, but they have little influence with the people."

In point of accuracy these statements rival the well-known definition of a crab mildly criticized by Cuvier. His colleagues of the Academy having described the animal as "a little red fish that walks backwards," his only comments were that it "wasn't a fish, wasn't red and didn't walk backwards." The suggested amendment did not "propose to erect a State Civil Service establishment patterned after the National Civil Service Commission," or propose to erect a "State Civil Service establishment" of any sort, kind or description whatsoever. My "confreres" and I were not "strong enough to go to the Legislature and have such an amendment submitted to the electorate;" the bill which they and I did ask that body to pass it refused to make law, and I did everything in my power to prevent the enactment of the measure actually adopted. In this matter I was most emphatically not the "leading spirit" of the "Civil Service Reform organization in Baltimore," for I retired from its presidency a few weeks after the act had been passed because it would not be "led" by me into openly repudiating the proposed amendment. Whatever may be my "weakness" or however "little" my "influence" with the people of my native State, the result of this particular election certainly did not tend to show such weakness or lack of influence, for as I voted on the amendment so voted an overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens. Finally, my middle name is not "Napoleon" and I am not, and have never been, a "Colonel" or a soldier at all.

A very eloquent and plausible preacher of my acquaintance, when privately questioned as to effective, but rather sweeping, statements in his sermons, had the habit of saying: "Now don't let's be too accurate." In this respect (but, it is fair to say of him, in no other) he would have been well qualified for membership in the "National Anti-Civil Service League." The editor of "City and State" said recently of that great body: