f the tests
and the method of determining the results, and those visitors
have without exception approved the methods employed, and
several of them have publicly attested their favorable
opinion.

Upon such considerations I deem it my duty to renew the recommendation
contained in my annual message of December, 1877, requesting Congress
to make the necessary appropriation for the resumption of the work of
the Civil Service Commission. Economy will be promoted by authorizing
a moderate compensation to persons in the public service who may
perform extra labor upon or under the Commission, as the Executive may
direct.

I am convinced that if a just and adequate test of merit is enforced
for admission to the public service and in making promotions such
abuses as removals without good cause and partisan and official
interference with the proper exercise of the appointing power will in
large measure disappear.

There are other administrative abuses to which the attention
of Congress should be asked in this connection. Mere partisan
appointments and the constant peril of removal without cause very
naturally lead to an absorbing and mischievous political activity on
the part of those thus appointed, which not only interferes with the
due discharge of official duty, but is incompatible with the freedom
of elections. Not without warrant in the views of several of my
predecessors in the Presidential office, and directly within the law
of 1871, already cited, I endeavored, by regulation made on the 22d
day of June, 1877, to put some reasonable limits to such abuses. It
may not be easy, and it may never perhaps be necessary, to define with
precision the proper limit of political action on the part of Federal
officers. But while their right to hold and freely express their
opinions can not be questioned, it is very plain that they should
neither be allowed to devote to other subjects the time needed for the
proper discharge of their official duties nor to use the authority of
their office to enforce their own opinions or to coerce the political
action of those who hold different opinions.

Reasons of justice and public policy quite analogous to those which
forbid the use of official power for the oppression of the private
citizen impose upon the Government the duty of protecting its officers
and agents from arbitrary exactions. In whatever aspect considered,
the practice of making levies for party purposes upon the sal