THE AMERICAN CIVIL SERVICE.
MOST of our readers are, we believe, aware that Mr. Thomas A. Jenekes, Senator of the United States, from Rhode Island, has a Bill before Congress for creating a permanent Civil Service. Leaving the higher appointments still to be filled by the President and the Senate, he proposes that all others shall be filled by open competition, and that the successful competitors shall, unless dismissed for specific misconduct, continue to hold them for life. It was imagined, we believe, in this country that this Bill, which, as it seems to Englishmen, would indefinitely advance the cause of good government in America, was so opposed to the manners and therefore the feelings of the Union, that it was sure, after more or less of discussion, to be burked. It had been some six years before Congress already, and the opposition did not seem to grow less with lapse of time. Indeed, many observers fancied that it never could grow less, for it must always be the interest of political partizans to keep the existing system in full vigour. Usually men of moderate means, and backed in most States only by an electioneering fund which consists of a per-tentage levied on official salaries—in itself a great abuse—the candidates are thirsty for patronage with which to reward the men who canvass, or, as it is called in America, who " work" for them. So strong is the desire for office among these men that many regard it as the mainspring of political life, believe that without it politics would cease to be pursued as a profession, that the "instruction " of the country voters would be left almost exclusively to the Press. The trading politicians, therefore, have denounced the Bill as one tending to create an aristocracy ; and so great is the opprobrium which attaches to that word, even when misapplied, that Mr. Jenekes himself is believed to have been temporarily disheartened, and " Jenckes's Bill " was for a time almost forgotten.
A whole series of events has, however, concurred to revive the hopes of its promoter, and he is now, in the regular
American fashion, delivering speeches on the object and necessity of his Bill throughout the country, and meets, according to the newspapers, with very friendly and sometimes with enthusiastic audiences. In the first place, the importance of the Union Service as compared with the importance of the State Service has been of late indefinitely increased. Partly through the increase of territory, which multiplies post offices, partly through the increasing action of the Central Government, as, for example, in the civil departments of the Army, but chiefly throtigh the call for a great revenue, the Civil Service of the Union has expanded till it now comprises more than 50,000 persons, with enormous opportunities of profit. The class which, in the long run, governs the Union, that of • the non-political freeholders, begins therefore to think, as our middle-class did, that such a profession ought to be open to all Americans ; that it would be " fairer," as they say, to give everybody's son a chance, than to give it only to the friends and dependents of agitating politicians. Then they are fretting under taxation, and begin to ask why, when they pay so much, the Treasury gets so little, and receive statements like that of Mr.Welles, the Chief Commissioner of Revenue, with a sense of angry disgust in which any remedy seems to be a relief. That gentleman affirms in his official report, and has indeed proved, that 100,000,000 of dollars, £20,000,000 sterling a year, is fraudulently diverted from the Treasury, half of that sum perhaps going to officials, and half to those who pay them to make false returns. The heaviest of these frauds occurs in the collection of the duties on liquor, but American opinion doubts the purity of the entire department. This frightful loss, which, as Mr. Jenckes has observed, absorbs a sum that would sweep away the National Debt " before it was due," that is, in about twenty-five years, can only be prevented by the employment either of upright men, or of men who would prefer their offices to any sudden chance of illicit gain. The former class will not do the politicians' work, and the latter, under the existing system, feel that they have no security whatever, but may be dismissed at an hour's notice without fault, simply because the President is dead, and his successor "holds by " certain different political ideas. The "country," therefore, as we understand the phrase, begins to like Mr. Jenckes' plan, and it has gradually been growing in favour even with the members of Congress. A great many of these, many more than some of our readers suppose, really wish well to their country, even when its welfare is opposed to their immediate interest; and they are growing sick and ashamed of the lobbying they see at Washington, weary of the pressure applied to them by men anxious for a share in the "spoils." A violent prejudice has been raised against Congressmen both in America and England by accounts of their action in the matter of their own mileage allowances. It was and is very mean, but it must be remembered that they are not usually men of fortune, that they are at once paid and insufficiently paid, and that the "mileage robbery " is really a coarse way of making their salaries sufficient. If our readers will remember the extraordinary difference which is so frequently apparent between the talk in Congress and the votes of Congress, they will acknowledge that there must be somewhere a good many sensible and honest men in the House of Representatives, while the Senate is comparatively pure. Above all, the new President, who will be comparatively unfettered, as the Tenure of Office Bill is to be abolished, is understood to approve the new plan, which is in accord with all his military instincts. No army
could be kept together if the moment an officer had learned his duty he were to be dismissed to make room for a successor, and an efficient Civil Service needs discipline quite as much as an army. The effect of this belief in the President's mind is that he will dismiss nobody merely to make a vacancy; and as he will not, no member of this Congress will get any patronage to dispose of. That being so, as Americans say, members have very little interest in opposing Mr. Jenekes' Bill, may even find it extremely expedient to tie their adversaries' hands by abolishing patronage altogether. They certainly will, if their constituents become anxious about it, and it is this anxiety which Mr. Jenckes and his supporters are endeavouring to create. In opposition to many intelligent Americans, who are apt to confuse the opinion of politicians with the opinion of the public, we are inclined to believe that the Bill may pass,
the freeholders seeing at last, as Mr. Jenckes has ably argued, that competitive examination for place, so far from being aris
tocratic, is the death-warrant of aristocracy. It is the present system which inflicts on America that greatest of evils,—an aristocracy of jobbing politicians.
We have often been asked how it happens that under the existing system American public business has got itself done at all, and the answer is, we believe, that up to 1860 there was wonderfully little to do. The real work of the country was got through by the State employe's and unpaid men. Except in the Post Offices, the Indian Department. and the seaboard Custom-houses, the Supreme Government had very few officials of its own, and very little to do, and with a full Treasury, boundless land, and a moderate tariff, did not particularly care if that little was done badly. The Post Office got along in spite of the system, because an ubiquitous press had a direct interest in kicking it along every day in the week, and acted on its interest. It is disgracefully mismanaged on points,—its finances, for example, would have killed Sir R Hill with chagrin,—but it does somehow or other deliver letters and newspapers, and a country voter who can't get his Tribune in time worries and abuses his postmaster till he is punctual. The Indian Department just failed. We do not suppose there ever was a greater failure in the world than that bureau, which has spent millions of acres without civilizing or quieting a single powerful tribe. They can't be civilized ? So the French say of the Barbary Arabs, who built Cordova for all that. The Department is now to be abolished as a confessed nuisance, and the task which Punjabee civilians perform as a matter of course,—there is a man at Rawul Pindee who turned a tribe as fierce as the Seminoles into taxpaying farmers,—is to be handed over to the War Department, where there is no rotation of office. As to the seaboard Custom-houses, they collected cash, and remitted it away ; and as the cash never amounted to much, and bribes could not be high, they did their work pretty well ; but they would not exactly have liked to submit their statistics of the cost of collection to Mr. Gladstone. It is only since the war that the Government of the Union has begun to feel the want of the scientifically organized service which Mr. Jenckes is now striving to provide ; and when the people feel it too, as they are beginning to do, it will be established, all the moonshine about "aristocracy" notwithstanding. Aristocracy ! How many postmasters or revenue clerks go to a Vanderbilt ?
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