in force and degree, of the sentiment of the national political conventions.1

The improvement is gratifying, and will any one say that there was not sad need of it? For the dictum, already quoted, "No fountain rises higher than its source," has a wider significance than as referring to the votes cast for some particular measure. It is because the people have not before this risen to the point of disapproving a system the spirit of which develops professional politicians, rather than statesmen, that our politics have remained on the lamentably low plane which have characterized them for many years. It cannot be claimed that there has been a lack of distinguished and able men in the country. In previous periods of the government they have appeared. This nation has had in its revolutionary epoch such men as Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams; in the period of its constitutional development such men as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson; and in the early presidential administrations such presidents as Washington, Madison, and John Quincy Adams. The discussion of vital constitutional questions, later on, developed the three great statesmen of our middle period, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. Already, however, the partisan system of spoils had settled down over the country, and when the great heroic epoch of the civil war dawned in 1861, while it was impossible that the occasion should not call forth and develop characters memorable through all coming history, yet the great names of that period were not connected with legislation.

A notable exception readily suggests itself to all minds. He who so lately took his seat in the presidential chair, only to be wickedly murdered after a few short months, was the most conspicuous example of a statesman as distinguished from a politician that later years have witnessed. A statesman needs a broad foundation of scholarship on which to build; he needs also a natural capacity and faculty for acquiring the details of his subject, and a close and ready famil-iarity with history; he needs, moreover, a natural predilection for affairs of state, and long and careful training in their exercise; he needs a wide and thorough knowledge of men, and daily intercourse with them; he needs that excellent quality, tact, in dealing with other men; he needs, certainly, a sense of humor, for the lack of which even Mr. Gladstone has sometimes made his course a needlessly difficult one; he needs (to use the language of President Eliot, of Harvard)1 "the power of clear, forcible, and persuasive exposi-tion." Judged by this standard, does our late president fail to come up to the requirements? Rather, is he not the most conspicuous instance we know, of a man coming to the presidency, nay, coming to each position of responsibility which he occupied in turn, before reaching the presidency, fully equipped for that position by long, patient, profound, farreaching study of the principles and problems involved? It. has been said of another public man, whose public career recently closed quite suddenly, that "the most important questions of his time have taken no hold upon him: tariff reform and our commercial relations with other countries; methods of taxation; regulations of elections, etc." But whoever that public man may be, to whom such language was applicable, there is, assuredly, no one of whom it was more untrue than President Garfield. His acquaintance with all these points was intimate and thorough. Yet this is not all. President Eliot goes on to say, that, if mental preparation be essential, moral qualities are even more so. President Garfield was, as the whole American people have seen in the closing portion of his career, a man, in the truest, highest sense. He possessed a character preeminent in its loftiness and purity, a possession which he has left as

a precious legacy to the American people. Where will you find elsewhere a man of such ** high heart," to use the French term, who bore not only with fortitude, but with unflagging spirits, a phenomenal pluck and even keen sense of humor, the long and excruciating days of pain? His was the "victorious spirit," which not even the most adverse physical surroundings could subdue. Well has a writer in Punch expressed it :

"So fit to die, with courage calm,

Armed to withstand the threatening dart.
Better than skill is such high heart
And helpfuller than healing balm.

"So fit to live, with power cool
Equipped to fill his function great,
To crush the knaves who shame the state;
Place-seeking pests of honest rule.

"Equal to either fate he'll prove.

May Heaven's high arm incline the scale
The way our prayers would fain avail,
And weight it for long life and love." 1

Where will you find one who has attached greater importance to the heroic virtues of patience and self-reliance; who has climbed, by dint of his own efforts, to the highest point; who has, with calm dependence on the results of time, taken time for the accomplishment of needed projects? Where will you find one in whom the moral element has so predominated; who has acted constantly, not for the sake of gaining the flattering and shallow praise of some one else, but has constantly obeyed the dictates of his own conscience and preserved his own self-respect? "It is of some moment to me," he once said to a meeting of his own constituents, "what this and that one may think of me; but this is of no weight as compared with this other consideration, What will James A. Garfield think of me?"

But how exceptional to the direct tendency of the system itself such a career as President Garfield's was, his whole life witnesses, for it was a prolonged struggle with that system; nay, his words themselves bear witness. In an article already quoted from, he said: "The present system impairs the efficiency of the legislators;

it degrades the civil service; it repels from the service those high and manly qualities which are so necessary to a pure and efficient administration; and, finally, it debauches the public mind by holding up public office as the reward of mere party zeal. To reform this service is one of the highest and most imperative duties of statesmanship." 1

This declaration is strikingly borne out by figures which have been collected, showing, for example, the withdrawal of educated men from active participation in the government.2 "The truth is, and it is well that it should be impressed upon the public mind, that the struggle for principles is ennobling. It makes men think. It makes men feel themselves to be the instruments of the great forces that uphold and control society." "A struggle for spoils, on the other hand, is the reverse of ennobling." 3

It is not, then, that the nation is destitute of men who can render the highest service to their country, but that that service has not attracted them. Has there not been, to quote again from the same journal, a diversion of some of "the most powerful personalities into business enterprises? Is it not true that the finest spirits, and the men best qualified by character, and best equipped by culture for public service, have turned away from such a career into the walks of literature, art, science, or philanthropy? And can it be said that there is no connection between such facts as these and the ascendency of the politician class?" "It is time to substitute measures for men, and principles for patronage, in the management of parties and the conduct of the government. Personal politics beget small men."

For many years public sentiment has supported, or seemed to support, the rule.and management of the late senior senator from New York. This is no place to give to his career any extended consideration, though the minute analysis, one might almost say "dissection" - of it in a late periodical article well merits thoughtful study. It is sufficient to say, in the language of another writer,1 that "The interest he now awakens is due to the fact that he is the representative and the victim of the spoils system, from the great manor where it was born and is now developed. His utter neglect of great things, and his supreme care for little things, his rise, his rule, and his collapse, alike illustrate the spirit and the effects of that system."

It is plain, then, that there has been a progress in public opinion not only truly remarkable, and extremely gratifying, but well-nigh controlling. We say "well-nigh controlling,” for it is above all things important, in a matter like this, to recognize the extent and influence of the opposing sentiment.

And there are several reasons for this. In the first place, the very fact that the reform is essentially a reasonable one, and one which advances by gradual and natural stages, renders it natural that there should be many honest and sincere lovers of their country who are not yet persuaded as to its overwhelming importance. And so there are every day many who are for the first time opening their eyes to the fact that the reform is not undemocratic, is not unnecessary, is not impossible, or is not unbusiness-like. And, until recently, it has been true, as expressed by the Boston Advertiser, that "the masses of the people will not be moved until, with the proof that matters are in a bad way, they are furnished with a complete, intelligible, and practical plan, demonstrably better in practice than the old, while obviously better in principle; " an objection removed by the bill now proposed. All sensible advocates of the reform will heartily admit, with the same paper, that it is a great mistake to think that any one who tries to test the value of their remedy is an enemy. Every one who is prepared to admit that the prevailing method of choosing subordinate officers of the United States is irrational and harmful to the political morals of the people is a possible reformer." In this many-sided, bewilderingly complex civilization or ours there is opportunity to give time and attention to only a small number of those topics which one would like to study thoroughly; and, unquestionably, there are hundreds of citizens who have heretofore dismissed this reform from their