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from positions subject to competitive examination shall be made without assignment of cause in writing, and without giving the person to be removed an opportunity for being heard in his defence, was at the time hailed by public opinion as a reformatory step of great value. And such it unquestionably was, not only inasmuch as it established a rule desirable in itself, but also as it served to confirm the popular belief that it was the President's settled purpose to advance the progress of civil service reform so far as his power would go. I am sincerely glad to say that the order did have the effect of making arbitrary removals—and a great many of them of sufficiently flagrant and conspicuous a character—to attract public attention.
In my last annual address it was my duty to mention the fact that in some cases the President's order had been set at defiance with great boldness; that such instances had been duly brought to the President's notice, and that it was hoped the President would, after satisfactory ascertainment of the circumstances, deal with the offenders according to law, and make of some of them warning examples by dismissing them from the service. I sincerely wish I could report that this had been done, but I am compelled to say that it has not, and that so far the offenders have escaped with impunity. This is deplorable in two respects. In the first place it is apt to encourage in the service itself a spirit of insubordination and contempt for the law and the rules. When the spoils politicians in public place, or public officers who are subject to the influence of spoils politicians, are made to understand that they can trample upon the law and upon the regulations laid down by the Chief Magistrate, without danger of being held to account for it, what can be more natural than that in constantly widening circles the law should become an object of sport for those who desire to circumvent or to subvert it? But we observe another effect of that toleration of insubordinate conduct which is hardly less important. There is not one of those occurrences which, as soon as it came to public knowledge, did not call forth from the enemies of the merit system the customary cry—“See there another proof of what an unmitigated humbug civil service reform is!” Indeed, such cries are extremely unjust; but who will deny
