Orleans County Monitor

PRESIDENT HAYES AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.

We are to remember now that the new administration is pledged to a reform of the Civil Service. How much it will be able to effect, without the aid of a friendly House of Representatives, cannot at present be seen; but its whole influence must not only be promptly given to this reform, but held to it by the popular demand. The spoils system has been so controlling an element in our politics, that it will be very hard to eliminate it There are so many men in politics who are there for nothing but spoils—there are so many men in Congress with whom spoil has always been the great political motive—that the old system will not be permitted to die without protest. If the new president succeeds in effecting a reform, or in taking important steps toward it, he will do it against the open and covert opposition of corrupt men in both political parties. Public virtue is hardly a Republican monopoly, and political consistency can scarcely be expected of a party whose president is obliged to be patriotic rather than partisan in his administration. There will undoubtedly be a great deal of "filibustering" on this question; but we look to see the reform persistently pushed as long as Mr. Hayes is president. If he can in one term of office purify American politics of debasing element, his name will stand among the foremost of those presidents who have established claims to the gratitude of their country and mankind.—Dr. J. G. Holland, in Scribner.