Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/159

Still another example—the deputy internal revenue collectors, of whom there are a good many, and who are officers of great importance, as they have to collect more than half of the National revenue. They were put under the civil service rules by President Cleveland. The spokesman of the present Administration has defended their exemption on various grounds—in the first place, because the law vests the appointment of these deputies in the collectors, and they were, therefore, “according to the highest legal opinion the Treasury Department could get, illegally classified.” Let us examine this. Sec. 3148 of the U. S. Revised Statutes provides: “Each collector shall be authorized to appoint by an instrument in writing, under his hand, as many deputies as he may think proper, to be compensated by him for their services; to revoke any such appointment, giving notice thereof as the Commissioner of Internal Revenue shall prescribe; and to require and accept bonds or other securities from such deputies, etc.” The question is whether this statute precludes the subjection of the deputy internal revenue collectors to the civil service rules. The Administration contends on the authority of “the highest legal opinion the Treasury Department could get,” that it does. What was that “highest legal opinion” attainable? I am informed that it was not that of the Supreme Court, nor that of any U. S. Court, nor even that of the Attorney-General, but simply the opinion of Mr. O'Connell, the Solicitor of the Treasury, and that he gave that opinion not even in writing, but orally in an offhand way. If this information is correct, then the Administration must admit that it is easily satisfied as to the legal merits of a very important matter; for, on the other side, declaring that those positions could be legally classified, there stood President Cleveland, who made the order classifying them, and who is far from being considered a mean lawyer, and