The attentive reader will have noted that it has been argued, first that the spoils system is the natural and inevitable outcome of the rigidity that seems unseparable from our form of administration; and second, that such a system, in its grossest development, is almost impossible under a parliamentary government. The latter line of argument has been taken less for its own sake than for the purpose of strengthening the conclusions reached by the former; and the writer would not be understood as insisting that to eliminate the spoils system we must adopt exactly such a parliamentary form as now exists among the free peoples of Europe. Any system that should make it easy to ascertain the popular will, and should insure the prompt and certain expression of that will in legislation, would accomplish the object of substituting principles for spoils in our politics. To suggest a plausible plan for grafting upon our system this far more democratic scheme of administration would be a stupendous work, calling for the highest exercise of trained political sagacity; but it is not difficult to indicate some of the things that need not be done. It is not necessary that the president should be reduced to any such mere figure-head as is the monarch in the half-dozen parliamentary governments of Europe. Perhaps the principle of a ministry sitting in the houses of Congress might be omitted; and it is not clear that the president's veto would have to be altogether sacrificed. It is not positive, indeed, that a formal amendment of the constitution would be necessary to obtain the essentials of the reform under consideration. We have amended the spirit of the constitution in one highly important feature without changing the letter of that instrument. Perhaps the nearest way to the object in view lies through a more intimate relation between the cabinet and the committees of the Lower House. Finally, the consideration presents itself that if the conclusions reached here are correct, those persons who have sought by statutory restriction and appeals to public conscience to abolish the spoils system have not employed the wholesome policy of attacking the evil at its source. They seem to be mowing rather than uprooting the weeds. Doubtless our political garden has been tidied, but the roots of the evil growth and the aptitudes of the soil remain. The reform system, as applied to the great body of minor clerical offices, will probably prevail from now on; but we can scarcely hope that the broad spirit of civil service reform can reign in this land until the people shall have made themselves immediate masters of the legislative power. Edward V. Vallandigham. UNCLE SCIPIO.