“I have never said one word impugning General Arthur’s honor or integrity as a man and a gentleman, but he was not in harmony with the views of the administration in the management of the custom-house.  I would vote for him for Vice-President a million times before I would vote for W.H.  English, with whom I served in Congress.”

General Arthur, in a letter written by him to Secretary Sherman, on his administration of the New York custom-house, said:—­

“The essential elements of a correct civil service I understand to be:  First, permanance in office, which, of course, prevents removals, except for cause.  Second, promotion from the lower to the higher grades, based upon good conduct and efficiency.  Third, prompt and thorough investigation of all complaints and prompt punishment of all misconduct.  In this respect I challenge comparison with any department of the Government, either under the present or under any past national administration.  I am prepared to demonstrate the truth of this statement on any fair investigation.”

Appended to this letter was a table in which General Arthur showed that during the six years he had managed the office the yearly percentage of removals for all causes had been only two and three-quarters per cent. against an annual average of twenty-eight per cent. under his three immediate predecessors, and an annual average of about twenty-four per cent. since 1857, when Collector Schell took office.  Out of nine hundred and twenty-three persons who held office when he became collector on December 1, 1871, there were five hundred and thirty-one still in office on May 1, 1877, having been retained during his entire term.  Concerning promotions, the statistics of the office show that during his entire term the uniform practice was to advance men from the lower to the higher grades, and almost without exception on the recommendation of heads of departments.  All the appointments, excepting two, to the one hundred positions paying two thousand dollars salary a year, and over, were made on this method.

Senator George K. Edmunds, at a ratification meeting, held in Burlington, Vermont, on the twenty-second of June, 1880, said:—­

“I have long known General Arthur.  The only serious difficulty I have had with the present administration was when it proposed to remove him from the collectorship of New York.  No one questioned his personal honor and integrity.  I resisted the attempt to the utmost.  Since that time it has turned out that all the reforms suggested had long before been recommended by General Arthur himself, and pigeonholded at Washington.”

Meanwhile General Arthur had rendered great services as a member, and subsequently a chairman, of the Republican State Committee, and had united his party from one success to another through all the mazes and intricacies which characterize the politics of New York City.  Vice-President Wheeler said of him:—­