his audience. In Pesth they will tell you stories of contracts, which, if you believed them, would make you believe the high Austrian aristocracy who, to do them justice, never think about money even when they ought—a gang of peculators; and discontented Magyars will prove to you, if you have the patience, that every leader in Hungary, except Deak, has at some time or other been sold. Muscovites in a gossiping mood explain every thing by crime, and no more believe that an official, however highly placed, can keep his hands clear of pelf, than an Englishman can believe a Jesuit honest, or a Greek free from political guile. Political society is honeycombed with suspicion, till in every capital of Europe, except Berlin, great men are compelled to defend themselves, either by a caution which makes them alike weak and sensitive, or by a cynical callousness which ends in the first cause of tyranny, contempt for the judgment and the motives of ordinary mankind.1

If

The indiscriminate suspicion of corruption may prove more perilous to the public honor and safety than is actual corruption detected and denounced. Many a public man in the United States might break all the commandments, and yet not be half so vile as his political opponents had pictured him during his candidacy. "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," universal suspicion is a premium for tyranny. When all men distrust one another, the first bold usurper will master the whole. Our civil service should be above temptation, and beyond suspicion. Prussia has such a service. The pay, indeed, is not large; but this is graduated to the economical habits of the people. The service is honorable, and brings a certain social consideration: it admits of promotion as a reward of merit, and it insures a pension for the decline of life. Above a certain grade, an official position in Prussia is evidence of a university education, or equivalent scholarly attainments.

What in the world will you do with these thousands of law-students now in your universities?" I asked a professor. "Oh!" he replied, "very many of them have no thought of making the law their profession; but there is constant need of jurists in all departments of our public service. In the administration of schools, churches, railways, banks, post-offices, customs, consulates, everywhere there must be at hand some one who is well versed in the law; and hence this legal training is an avenue to

1 Spectator, Oct. 28, 1876.

the higher civil service." Now, such a service as this, so admirably planned and so thoroughly disciplined, must be rooted in the constitution of society. We could not hope to reproduce it by a bare act of Congress, or the will of a single administration: the people must set themselves resolutely to build up a sound and stable system for the support of the national life. It is often said, that to require a competitive examination for appointments to the civil service would work injustice to the average citizen by excluding him from the right to hold office, and restricting this to the favored and educated few. Now, I do not dispute the right of any man to be eligible to office: I only maintain that he shall make himself eligible; that the people shall refuse to intrust their affairs to any man's ignorance or incompetence; and that no party shall have the opportunity of thrusting ignorance and incompetence into places of public trust for mere political services. Moreover, since in every State education is now so cheap and liberal, it would be no hardship to require that every candidate for the public service shall be educated up to a certain standard. The poor man would thus have before him an object of ambition in training a son for a service that would be also an elevation honorable in itself, and giving a lifelong position and support. To insure the separation of the service from political partisanship, every one accepting a place in the civil service should thenceforth cease to be a voter, and should forfeit place and pension upon taking part in politics.

If the loftiness of the Prussian system would deter us from attempting that, we may take encouragement from the English system, which is a thing of recent growth, and already yields satisfactory results. In 1853 the ministry called upon Parliament to enact "that a nomination for the civil service of India should thenceforward become the reward of industry and ability, instead of being the price of political support, or the appanage of private interest and family connection." Macaulay advocated a system of competitive examination upon the ground that he who has proved diligent and successful in prescribed studies shows the qualities needed for the public service. The proposal, that the governor-general should have the power of appointing, he met as follows:

the

"There is something plausible in the proposition that you should allow him to take able men wherever he finds them; but my firm opinion is, that the day on which the civil service of India ceases to be a close service will be the beginning of an age of jobbing, most monstrous, the most extensive, and the most perilous system of abuse in the distribution of patronage that we have ever witnessed. Every governor-general would take out with him, or would soon be followed by, a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, sons of friends, and political hangers-on; while every steamer arriving from the Red Sea would carry to India some adventurer bearing with him testimonials from people of influence in England. The governor-general would have it in his power to distribute residences, seats at the council board, seats at the revenue board, - places of from four thousand pounds to six thousand pounds a year, — upon men without the least acquaintance with the character or habits of the natives, and with only such knowledge of the language as would enable them to call for another bottle of pale ale, or desire their attendant to pull the punka faster. In what way could you put a check on such proceedings? Would you, the House of Commons, control them? Have you been so successful in extirpating nepotism at your own door, and in excluding all abuses from Whitehall and Somerset House, that you should fancy that you could establish purity in countries the situation of which you do not know, and the names of which you cannot pronounce? I believe most fully, that, instead of purity resulting from that arrangement to India, England itself would soon be tainted; and that before long, when a son or brother of some active member of this House went out to Calcutta, carrying with him a letter of recommendation from the prime-minister to the governor-general, that letter would be really a bill of exchange drawn on the revenues of India for value received in parliamentary support in this House.

"We are not without experience on this point. We have only to look back to those shameful and lamentable years which followed the first establishment of our power in Bengal. If you turn to any poet, satirist, or essayist of those times, you may see in what manner that system of appointment operated. There was a tradition in Calcutta, that, during Lord Clive's second administration, a man came out with a strong letter of recommendation from one of the ministers. Lord Clive said in his peculiar way, Well, chap, how much do you want? Will a hundred thousand pounds do?' The person replied, that he should be delighted, if, by laborious service, he could obtain that competence. Lord Clive at once wrote out an order for the sum, and told the applicant to leave India by the ship he came in, and, once back in England, to remain there. I think that the story is very probable and I also think that India ought to be grateful for the course which Lord Clive pursued; for, though he pillaged the people of Bengal to enrich this lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had received an appointment, they would have been pillaged and misgoverned as well. Against evils like these there is one security, and, I believe, but one; and that is, that the civil service should be kept close."

A member of the present government, who went to India in 1875 on an official tour of inspection, expressed to me his great satisfaction with the Indian service, in its punctuality, thoroughness, and efficiency, and especially in the absence of any trace of peculation in a country where the temptations are great, and the opportunities easy.

An attempt to apply the same system of competitive examination to the civil service of England was made by the ministry in 1854; but this met with the same sort of opposition in Parliament which the civil-service reform has encountered in Congress. "Very few leading politicians," says Mr. Trevelyan, "had their hearts in the matter. It was one thing for them to deprive the EastIndia directors of their patronage, and quite another to surrender their own. The outcry of the dispensers and expectants of public employment was loud and fierce; and the advocates of the new system were forced to admit that its hour had not come." "That system, however, at last prevailed; and Mr. Trevelyan testifies, that “to this, more than to any other cause, we owe it that our political morality grows purer as our political institutions become more popular, a system which the most far-seeing of American statesmen already regard with a generous envy."1 The success of Great Britain in carrying through a reform which thirty years ago was as much needed in England as it now is in the United States, and which triumphed at Westminster over the same obstacles that resist it at Washington, should determine the American people to secure the same.

Meanwhile, unless official corruption is punished as fast as exposed, there is danger that the exposure will so familiarize the public with this form of iniquity, that it shall lose something of its grossness. And, indeed, there are not wanting critics who charge corruption in high places to the prevailing tone of luxury among the people. Now, this word "luxury" is one of the most indefinite of terms, its application being graded by circumstances of individuals and of society for which there can be no common measure. You know the story of the pietist who took her Christian sister to account for wearing

1 Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, chap. xiii.

feathers in her hat. "But," said the accused, “my feathers are not so costly nor so showy as the flowergarden on your hat." "Well," retorted the first, "we

must draw the line between the church and the world somewhere; and I draw it at feathers." Some of our domestic manufacturers denote certain imported articles luxuries, and would have these heavily taxed in order that they may produce and sell the same at a higher rate; as, for instance, Connecticut tobacco for Havana cigars. And, by the new custom-house regulations, every lady who shall take home from Europe more than six pairs of gloves, more than two new dresses (already made and worn), one hat, and one set of jewelry, shall be summarily convicted of seeking to corrupt the country with luxury, and fined accordingly. To pay a thousand dollars for a picture would for me be a bit of extravagance that would justify my friends in sending me to an insane-asylum; but it was no extravagance in my old neighbor-the richest merchant of New York, and a public benefactor-to outbid European noblemen and galleries, and pay seventy-five thousand dollars - which might represent his income for as many days for a bit of canvas four and a half feet by two and a half, on which Meissonier had painted the battle of Eylau. And here, by the way, we must hold criticism to its proper bounds. The critic who berates us for want of culture; who tell us that the American is only a merchant, and worships the dollar; who, like the architect of the London school board, with such profundity of self-assertion issues his dictum, that "America is profoundly ignorant of art,"1 — this same censor of our sordid tastes shall not be permitted to whisk about and rebuke our luxury, when the American merchant shows the best possible taste in giving his dollars over all competitors to possess the best works of art. After all, does there not lurk in much of this criticism the feeling that a republican citizen has no right to be a cultivated gentleman, and show his culture beside that of nobles and princes? If only a duke had bought the Meissonier, what a noble use of wealth in the patronage of art! For a man to live

1 Mr. E. R. Robson, Builder, Oct. 9, 1875.