nsiderations, and that the officer appointed shall serve
as long as he discharges his duty faithfully. This is shown in Mr.
Jefferson's familiar phrase in his reply to the remonstrance of the
merchants of New Haven against the removal of the collector of that
port. Mr. Jefferson asserted that Mr. Adams had purposely appointed in
the last moments of his administration officers whose designation he
should have left to his successor. Alluding to these appointments, he
says: "I shall correct the procedure, and that done, return with joy to
that state of things when the only question concerning a candidate shall
be, Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?"
Mr. Jefferson here recognizes that these had been the considerations
which had usually determined appointments; and Mr. Madison, in the
debate upon the President's sole power of removal, declared that if a
President should remove an officer for any reason not connected with
efficient service he would be impeached. Reform, therefore, is merely
a return to the principle and purpose of the Constitution and to the
practice of the early administrations.

What more is necessary, then, for reform than that the President should
return to that practice? As all places in the Civil Service are filled
either by his direct nomination or by officers whom he appoints, why has
not any President ample constitutional authority to effect at any moment
a complete and thorough reform? The answer is simple. He has the power.
He has always had it. A President has only to do as Washington did,
and all his successors have only to do likewise, and reform would be
complete. Every President has but to refuse to remove non-political
officers for political or personal reasons; to appoint only those whom
he knows to be competent; to renominate, as Monroe and John Quincy Adams
did, every faithful officer whose commission expires, and to require the
heads of departments and all inferior appointing officers to conform to
this practice, and the work would be done. This is apparently a short
and easy and constitutional method of reform, requiring no further
legislation or scheme of procedure. But why has no President adopted it?
For the same reason that the best of Popes does not reform the abuses
of his Church. For the same reason that a leaf goes over Niagara. It is
because the opposing forces are overpowering. The same high officer of
the government to whom I have alluded said to m