(Possibly this may seem dogmatic, to begin with; but if we agree to treat the question as one in democratic politics, the principle stated becomes perfectly apparent.)

It must be fair, then, and for the purposes of this article not premature, to point out that the measure which is especially known as “civil-service reform,” and which has been occasionally recognized in the party platforms along with other generalities, is one whose essence is the creation of a permanent office-holding class.  Substantially, this is what it amounts to.  A man looking forward to a place in the public service is to regard it as a life occupation, the same as if he should study for a professional career or learn a mechanical trade.  Once in office, after a “competitive examination” or otherwise, he will expect to stay in:  he will hold, as the Federal judges do, by a life-tenure, “during good behavior.”  This is now substantially the system of Great Britain, which, in the judgment of Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, is so much better than our own as to actually reduce the rate of criminality in that country, and which, he declares, only political baseness can prevent us from imitating.  A change of administration there, Mr. Eaton adds, only affects a few scores of persons occupying the highest positions:  the great mass of the officials live and die in their places, indifferent to the fluctuation of parliamentary majorities or the rise and fall of ministries.

We must ask ourselves does this system accord with American democracy?

A little more than half a century has passed since John Quincy Adams, unquestionably the best trained and most experienced American administrator who ever sat in the Presidency, undertook to establish in the United States almost precisely the same system as that which Great Britain now has.  Admission to the places was not, it is true, by means of competitive examination, but the feature—­the essential feature—­of permanent tenure was present in his plan.  Mr. Adams took the government from Mr. Monroe without considering any change needful:  his Cabinet advisers even included three of those who had been in the Cabinet of his predecessor, and these he retained to the end, though at least one of the three, he thought, had ceased to be either friendly or faithful to him.  Retaining the old officers, and reappointing them if their commissions expired, selecting new ones, in the comparatively rare cases of death, resignation or ascertained delinquency, upon considerations chiefly relating to their personal capabilities for the vacant places, Mr. Adams was patiently and faithfully engaged during the four years of his Presidency in establishing almost the precise reform of the national service which has been in recent times so strenuously urged upon us as the one great need of the nation—­the administrative purification which, if effectually performed, would prove that our system of government was fit to continue in existence.