as our observation extends, is the
first direct argumentative attack upon their doctrines and open defence
of the system they have assailed. We shall not undertake to anticipate
their reply, but I shall content ourselves with pointing out, on the
principle of _fas est ab hoste doceri,_ what they may learn from this
attack, and especially what hints may be derived from it in regard to
the proper objective point of their proposed operations. Hitherto, if we
mistake not, they have been led to suppose that the only obstacles in
their way are the interested antagonism of the "politicians" and the
ignorant apathy of the great mass of the people, and it is because they
have found themselves powerless to make head against the tactics of the
former class that they intend to confine themselves henceforth to the
work of awaking and enlightening the latter. There is always danger,
however, when we are expounding our pet theories to a group of silent
listeners, of ignoring their state of mind in regard to the
subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence.
George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation
of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his
hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed
in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be
the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the
English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any
appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our
present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow.
Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here,
and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly opposed to it.
There the system of patronage was intimately connected with
oligarchical rule; official positions were not so much monopolized by a
victorious party as by a privileged class; the government of the day had
little interest in maintaining the system, the bulk of the nation had a
direct interest in upsetting it, and its downfall was a natural result
of the growth of popular power and the decline of aristocracy. Our
system, however similar in its character and effects, had no such
origin; it does not belong to some peculiar institution which we are
seeking to get rid of: on the contrary, it has its roots in certain
conceptions of the nature of government and popular fr