[Sidenote: Civil service reform.] Another political question, more important, if possible, than that of the Tariff, is to-day the question of the reform of the Civil Service; but it is not avowedly made a party question. Twenty years ago both parties laughed at it; now both try to treat it with a show of respect and to render unto it lip-homage; and the control of the immediate political future probably lies with the party which treats it most seriously. It is a question that was not distinctly foreseen in the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, when the Constitution was made and adopted; otherwise, one is inclined to believe, the framers of the Constitution would have had something to say about it. The question as to the Civil Service arises from the fact that the president has the power of appointing a vast number of petty officials, chiefly postmasters and officials concerned with the collection of the federal revenue. Such officials have properly nothing to do with politics; they are simply the agents or clerks or servants of the national government in conducting its business; and if the business of the national government is to be managed on such ordinary principles of prudence as prevail in the management of private business, such servants ought to be selected for personal merit and retained for life or during good behaviour. It did not occur to our earlier presidents to regard the management of the public business in any other light than this. [Sidenote: Origin of the "spoils system."] But as early as the beginning of the present century a vicious system was growing up in New York and Pennsylvania. In those states the appointive offices came to be used as bribes or as rewards for partisan services. By securing votes for a successful candidate, a man with little in his pocket and nothing in particular to do could obtain some office with a comfortable salary. It would be given him as a reward, and some other man, perhaps more competent than himself, would have to be turned out in order to make room for him. A more effective method of driving good citizens "out of politics" could hardly be devised. It called to the front a large class of men of coarse moral fibre who greatly preferred the excitement of speculating in politics to earning an honest living by some ordinary humdrum business. The civil service of these states was seriously damaged in quality, politics degenerated into a wild scramble for offices, salaries were paid to men who did little or no public service in return, and thus the line which separates taxation from robbery was often crossed.