ake democracy the fashion. Send devitalized Americans to
Coventry. Make an unrepublican word or deed the unpardonable political
sin. Do this: or else ship the statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World back to France, and ask her to set it in the harbor of
Marseilles.

Another of these un-republican tendencies is the current movement for
civil service reform. Every thoughtful citizen perceives and laments
the evils attendant on the present spoils system. It is the quartering
of the conquerors upon the conquered. It makes public office the
reward of party service. It loads half a dozen men (the President and
his Secretaries) with the responsible but impossible duty of filling
hundreds of thousands of offices, on the grab-bag principle.

With the best intentions, the civil service reformers would make a bad
matter worse. On their plan, the un-American method of fixed tenure by
competitive examination and appointment by irresponsible cabals would
replace the method of political appointment for party service. Thus
they would fasten upon the country a great army of permanent
officials. It is out of harmony with our whole system. Every other
officer is elected, and for a specified term. Why, even in the
ministry, the tendency is to break up the life-pastorate. The largest
of our religious denominations has deliberately adopted the principle
of rotation. And the other bodies, while nominally retaining the life
theory, have practically borrowed the Methodist plan.

No wonder civil service reform is unpopular. It goes to work at the
wrong end--works away from instead of towards republicanism. In
England, in Germany, where families reign, and where governmental
servants might consistently hold office for life, such a system has a
warrant--though even there it is found to be obstructive and
reactionary. But in a republic, where universal suffrage is the law,
nothing more intolerable could be conceived. The idea of creating a
class distinct from all other classes, independent of the
administration and unaccountable to the voters, fixed and immovable
save for causes proven--why, it is, not a _step_, it is a _stride_
towards absolutism. Such a proposition, like "Hamlet's" case,

"----makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of."

That the civil service needs reform goes without the saying. But the
reform should be pushed along consistently republican lines. The
proper, the democratic me