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that the public interest required all the officers of the Government to be in harmony with the party in power. On the contrary, they thought that the public interest was served by keeping efficient officers in their places, for a considerable time at least, although they were not in such harmony. And no doubt all sensible people admit that the common weal did not suffer therefrom. The theory of the necessity of political accord between the administrative officers of the Government and the party in power has thus been thoroughly exploded by actual practice and experience. Being obliged to admit this, candid men, it is to be hoped, will go a step farther in their reasoning. If those two Presidents were right in thinking that the public welfare was served by keeping meritorious officers not belonging to the ruling party in place until they had served four years, is it not wrong to deprive the country of the services of such men, made especially valuable by their accumulated experience and the training of their skill, by turning them out after the lapse of the four years? If it was for the public interest to keep them so long, is it not against the public interest not to keep them longer?
This observance of the four-years-term law has the great merit of conclusively demonstrating, from the point of view of the public interest, the utter absurdity and viciousness of the law itself. And I fervently hope that the repeal of the law will before long follow this demonstration.
The question whether the spoils system, or whether the distribution of offices among its members, will make a political party strong or, which is practically the same thing, save it from defeat, has been answered by recent events in so drastic a fashion as to shake the faith even of the most inveterate spoilsman. When he remembers that the Republicans with all the offices, except the classified service, in their hands, were defeated in 1884, that the Democrats with all the offices in their hands were defeated in 1888, that the Republicans again with all the offices in their hands were defeated in 1892, and that all the offices in Christendom
