More than once it has been asserted that I am introducing “politics”; and then we have been reminded of the Presidential election, which to certain Senators is a universal prompter. I asked for reform, and the Senator from Indiana [Mr. MORTON], seizing the party bugle, sounded “To arms!” But I am not tempted to follow him. I have nothing to say of the President or of the Presidential election. The Senator cannot make me depart from the rule I have laid down for myself. I introduce no “politics,” but only a question which has become urgent, affecting the civil service of the country. Now, Sir, I have been from the beginning in favor of civil-service reform. I am the author of the first bill on that subject ever introduced into Congress, as long ago as the spring of 1864.[2] I am for a real reform that shall reach the highest as well as the lowest, and I know no better way to accomplish this beneficent result than by striving at all times for purity in the administration of Government. Therefore, when officials fall under suspicion, I should feel myself disloyal to the Government, if I did not insist on the most thorough inquiry. So I have voted in the past, so I must vote in the future. Call you this politics? Not in the ordinary sense of the term. It is only honesty and a just regard for the public weal. Then it has been said that I am a French agent, and even a Prussian agent,--two in one. Sir, I am nothing but a Senator, whose attention was first called to this matter by a distinguished citizen not named in this debate. Since then I have obtained such information with regard to it as was open to me,--all going to develop a case for inquiry.