I ask the attention of the public to the paramount necessity of reform
in our civil service--a reform not merely as to certain abuses and
practices of so-called official patronage which have come to have the
sanction of usage in the several Departments of our Government, but
a change in the system of appointment itself; a reform that shall
be thorough, radical, and complete; a return to the principles and
practices of the founders of the Government. They neither expected
nor desired from public officers any partisan service. They meant that
public officers should owe their whole service to the Government and
to the people. They meant that the officer should be secure in his
tenure as long as his personal character remained untarnished and the
performance of his duties satisfactory. They held that appointments to
office were not to be made nor expected merely as rewards for partisan
services, nor merely on the nomination of members of Congress, as
being entitled in any respect to the control of such appointments.
The fact that both the great political parties of the country, in
declaring their principles prior to the election, gave a prominent
place to the subject of reform of our civil service, recognizing and
strongly urging its necessity, in terms almost identical in their
specific import with those I have here employed, must be accepted as
a conclusive argument in behalf of these measures.
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