examples, we may wisely go on to the abolition of unnecessary offices, and, finally, to the patient, careful organization of a better civil service system, under the tests, wherever practicable, of proved competency and fidelity.
When you have read this somewhat elaborate paragraph and pondered over it a while, you still ask yourselves: How far does he mean to go and where does he mean to stop? There is plenty of well-expressed criticism; but what is the tangible, specific thing he means to do? The difference between these utterances and those contained in Governor Hayes's letter is striking and significant. There are none of the precise, clean-cut, sharply-defined propositions put forth by Governor Hayes, indicating how the spoils system with its demoralizing influences is to be eradicated and what is to be put in its place. When we try to evolve from this mountain of words the practical things which Governor Tilden promises to do, we find that they consist simply in the appointment of new men, according to an “elevated standard,” whatever that may be, and in holding officers to account for their doings, of course. When the offices are filled with new men superfluous offices are “wisely” to be cut off, and finally the “patient and careful organization of a better civil service system” is to be proceeded with “under the tests, whenever practicable, of proved competency and fidelity.” It seems, then, when we boil it all down—and I think I am doing Governor Tilden's language no violence in saying so—that, first, the offices are to be filled with good Democrats in the way of a “clean sweep” and a “new deal of the spoils,” and that afterwards it shall be “patiently and carefully” considered how and where “tests of proven competency and fidelity” can be established, so as to fill the offices with good men. But, first of all things, “the offices for the Democrats, the spoils for the victors.”
