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which they rush upon the President they have just elected, to force him to break his word and to proclaim himself a dishonest man—the very audacity with which they seek to deceive the people with the most barefaced falsehoods about the civil service system—and all this for the palpable purpose of looting the government for party spoil—these very exhibitions of unscrupulousness and fury make unprejudiced men, who never cared much about civil service reform, stop and ask: “What does this all mean? Can a fight carried on so indecently be a good fight? Must not the right be on the other side?”
There was a rumor in the newspapers that the opponents of civil service reform planned a national convention to be held in this very city of Cincinnati for the purpose of organizing a grand movement for the overthrow of the civil service law. This plan is very much to be commended and I fervently hope that its promoters will strain every nerve to insure its execution. Nothing could be a more striking object lesson than a grand muster of the enemies of civil service reform in bodily exhibition. Nothing could be more edifying to the people of Ohio than an open denunciation of the honored son of their State who now stands at the head of the republic, by members of his own party for doing his manifest duty as President and patriot. Nothing could be more generally instructive than clear avowals by themselves of their principles and aims.
Their leading statesman, Representative Grosvenor, has already sounded the keynote of their movement by a cry of exultation with which, in a letter to a Washington newspaper, he recently greeted the triumph of that next of political pirates, Tammany Hall in the city of New York. Mr. Grosvenor says: “The battle cry of Van Wyck (the Tammany candidate for Mayor) is a liberal political education to the people of the United States. He won a victory unprecedented, and he gave out but one great battle cry, and that thrilled through the hearts of a great body of the American people and an echo will be heard. That battle cry was: ‘I will put none but Democrats into office in New York.’” Mr. Grosvenor can hardly ignore the fact that there was, accompanying this, another and kindred Tammany battle cry: “To hell with reform!” the two watchwords being inseparably united. And then, after this enthusiastic greeting to Tammany Hall, Mr. Grosvenor
