ted by an examination. Undoubtedly he could, because he knows
his men, and he selects solely by his knowledge of their comparative
fitness. If this were true of the Civil Service, if every appointing
officer chose the fittest person from those that he knew, there would
be no need of reform. It is because he cannot do this that the reform is
necessary.

It is the same kind of objection which alleges that competition is a
droll plan by which to restore the conduct of the public business to
business principles and methods, since no private business selects
its agents by competition. But the managers of private business are
virtually free from personal influence in selecting their subordinates,
and they employ and promote and dismiss them solely for the interests
of the business. Their choice, however, is determined by an actual,
although not a formal, competition. Like the military officer, they
select those whom they know by experience to be the most competent. But
if great business-houses and corporations were exposed to persistent,
insolent, and overpowering interference and solicitation for place
such as obstructs great public departments and officers, they too would
resort to the form of competition, as they now have its substance, and
they would resort to it to secure the very freedom which they now enjoy
of selecting for fitness alone.

Mr. President, in the old Arabian story, from the little box upon the
sea-shore, carelessly opened by the fisherman, arose the towering and
haughty demon, ever more monstrous and more threatening, who would not
crouch again. So from the small patronage of the earlier day, from a
Civil Service dealing with a national revenue of only $2,000,000, and
regulated upon sound business principles, has sprung the un-American,
un-Democratic, un-Republican system which destroys political
independence, honor, and morality, and corrodes the national character
itself. In the solemn anxiety of this hour the warning words of the
austere Calhoun, uttered nearly half a century ago, echo in startled
recollection like words of doom: "If you do not put this thing down it
will put you down." Happily it is the historic faith of the race from
which we are chiefly sprung, that eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty. It is that faith which has made our mother England the great
parent of free States. The same faith has made America the political
hope of the world. Fortunately removed by our position from th