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This development becomes so threatening that it is the highest time to put a stop to it; and one of the things necessary to put a stop to it is the destruction of the patronage business by placing the public service out of the reach of spoils politics. This can be done by putting all—I say absolutely all—the public employments to which the civil service rules can, under the Constitution, be applied, under those rules; and this is to be supplemented by such action on the part of the Executive as will establish, concerning the offices beyond the reach of legislation, rules for his own guidance based upon the merit principle, which will altogether make an end of the usurpation of the appointing power by members of the legislature, and thus destroy the patronage. This may have a very radical sound; but deep-seated and far-reaching evils demand thorough-going remedies, and we must not indulge in any delusion about this: So long as public offices are a matter of patronage to any extend, so long will that patronage exercise a demoralizing influence and constitute a most serious danger to the working of our democratic institutions. I say this as one who has had much experience of public life, official as well as unofficial, and I have reached this conclusion as the result of long and careful observation without the slightest bias of partisanship or pride of opinion.
What I have said of our National Government applies, of course, no less to the governments of our States and of our municipalities—especially those of our large cities in which spoils-politics have already wrought uncalculable mischief and threaten to work more. Indeed the governments of our large cities have become a matter of national concern, and no man can call himself a consistent friend of good government in general and a faithful defender of the Nation's welfare and good name, who would not apply the same rule that he thinks good for a department official or revenue clerk, also to our police officers, firemen and school-teachers. He who condemns the evils of the spoils system in the National Government and condones them in the home politics, which most nearly touch the
