have left to his successor.  Alluding to these appointments, he says:  “I shall correct the procedure, and that done, return with joy to that state of things when the only question concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest?  Is he capable?  Is he faithful to the Constitution?” Mr. Jefferson here recognizes that these had been the considerations which had usually determined appointments; and Mr. Madison, in the debate upon the President’s sole power of removal, declared that if a President should remove an officer for any reason not connected with efficient service he would be impeached.  Reform, therefore, is merely a return to the principle and purpose of the Constitution and to the practice of the early administrations.

What more is necessary, then, for reform than that the President should return to that practice?  As all places in the Civil Service are filled either by his direct nomination or by officers whom he appoints, why has not any President ample constitutional authority to effect at any moment a complete and thorough reform?  The answer is simple.  He has the power.  He has always had it.  A President has only to do as Washington did, and all his successors have only to do likewise, and reform would be complete.  Every President has but to refuse to remove non-political officers for political or personal reasons; to appoint only those whom he knows to be competent; to renominate, as Monroe and John Quincy Adams did, every faithful officer whose commission expires, and to require the heads of departments and all inferior appointing officers to conform to this practice, and the work would be done.  This is apparently a short and easy and constitutional method of reform, requiring no further legislation or scheme of procedure.  But why has no President adopted it?  For the same reason that the best of Popes does not reform the abuses of his Church.  For the same reason that a leaf goes over Niagara.  It is because the opposing forces are overpowering.  The same high officer of the government to whom I have alluded said to me as we drove upon the Heights of Washington, “Do you mean that I ought not to appoint my subordinates for whom I am responsible?” I answered:  “I mean that you do not appoint them now; I mean that if, when we return to the capital, you hear that your chief subordinate is dead, you will not appoint his successor.  You will have to choose among the men urged upon you by certain powerful politicians.  Undoubtedly you ought to appoint the man whom you believe to be the most fit.  But you do not and can not.  If you could or did appoint such men only, and that were the rule of your department and of the service, there would be no need of reform.”  And he could not deny it.  There was no law to prevent his selection of the best man.  Indeed, the law assumed that he would do it.  The Constitution intended that he should do it.  But when I reminded him that there were forces beyond the law that paralyzed the intention of the Constitution, and which would inevitably compel him to accept the choice of others, he said no more.