for plunder.  It is noticeable that no administration has ever really attempted the formation of an irremovable body of officials.  No party has ever yet explicitly declared itself in favor of such a policy.  No actual leader of any party, bearing the responsibility of its success or failure in the elections, has ever yet sincerely and persistently advocated the measure.  None wish to undertake so tremendous a task.  He would indeed be a powerful orator who could carry a popular gathering with him in favor of the proposition that hereafter the holding of office was to be made more exclusive—­that the people were to put away from themselves, by a renunciation of their own powers, the expectancy of occupying a great part of the public places.  Rare as may be the persuasive ability of the true stump-orator, and serene as his confidence may be in his powers, there would be but few volunteers to enter a campaign upon such a platform as that.  It would be a forlorn hope indeed.

The view of the people undoubtedly is (1) that the public places are common property; (2) that any one may aspire to fill them; and (3) that the elevation to them is properly the direct or nearly direct result of election.  The elective principle is democratic.  It has been, since the beginning of the government, steadily consuming all other methods of making public officers.  In most States the appointing power of the governor, which years ago was usually large, has been stripped to the uttermost.  It is thirty years in Pennsylvania since even the judiciary became elective by the people.  And in those States—­of which Delaware furnishes an example—­where most of the county officers are still the appointees of the governor, the tendency to control his action by a display of the popular wish—­such an array of petitions, etc. as amounts to a polling of votes—­is unmistakable.  The governor is moved, obviously, by the people.  And if to some this general tendency toward the elective idea seems dangerous, it must be answered that it is not really so if the people are in fact capable of self-government.  Conceding this as the foundation of our system, we cannot, at this point and that, expect to interpose a guardianship over their expression.

To the permanency of tenure it is that we have given, and expect will generally be given, most attention.  This is the essence of the proposed “reform.”  The manner of selecting new appointees is of no great consequence if the vacancies are to occur so seldom as must be the case where incumbents hold for life.  Whether the new recruits come in upon the certificates of a board of examiners, such as the British Civil-Service Commission, or upon the scrutiny of the Executive and his advisers, as now, is a consideration of minor importance.  It is the idea of an official class, an order of office-holders, which appears to throw itself across the path of the democratic activity which we have attempted to describe.  This is the point