tics, had in his judgment disqualified them for positions under a Democratic administration. But it is not fair to the President nor conductive to the advancement of true Civil Service reform, to cite merely the number of changes he has made in a Civil Service, infected from top to bottom with partisanship and long trained in the idea that service to party was paramount to service to the public, without also considering the different basis of qualification on which the President has rested his appointments, and how carefully he has endeavored to make personal fitness rather than partisan activity the ground of selection. There is more Civil Service reform in this than in declining to remove improper officials. Impartial history will record that a Democratic President coming into power at the head of a party which had been offensively excluded from all political positions under the government for twenty-four years; which in every campaign had been fought and harried by the Pretorian band of federal office-holders, and had been the victim of every conceivable wrong of the spoils system, by his moderation in removals, his painstaking care in appointments, and his enforcement of thorough business ideas in every department of the public service, has given to Civil Service Reform a far deeper root and a far more permanent and healthy growth than any of his predecessors, whose inaugurations only marked the transfer of the chief magistracy from one to another member of the same party. No one who contrasts the Presidential campaigns of 1884 and 1888 can fail to note how far the hand has moved forward on the dial, and whatever the result of the election may be, he can not believe that it will ever move backward again. This has been the work of Grover Cleveland. One other matter will be briefly noticed here, as not coming particularly in the scope of any of the special articles of this volume, and that is the President's position on the question of tariff reform. Beginning with his first annual message the President has urged upon Congress the reduction of surplus revenues by a reduction of the burdens of taxation. The subject has grown upon the President as it has upon the country, and his message of December, 1887, omitting the general survey of federal affairs usual in such a communication, was devoted exclusively to this great subject. No communication from the White House ever had a more magical effect upon parties in the country. The Democratic party, the hereditary champion of the people, felt the throbbings of a new life in its veins. Once more as in the days of Jefferson against Federalism, as in the days of Jackson against the bank, it was summoned by a leader to fight for equal rights against privilege and monopoly, to fight the battles of the people against the money power, and it responded loyally to the summons. With over 70 majority in the House of Representatives in the Forty-eighth Congress it had been able to give only general debate to a tariff reduction bill; with over 40 majority in the Forty-ninth Congress it had not been able even to consider such a bill; but with a majority of less than 15 in the Fiftieth Congress it triumphantly and by a practically solid party vote carried through the House a bill revising and reducing tariff taxes. The Republican party was also galvanized into new life by the President's |