conviction and of the constitutionality of the act under which it was had, by the full bench of the Circuit Court, and by the Supreme Court of the United States. This result was vastly more than the defeat and punishment of an individual. It was a victory over the political machine of which he happened to be only the operator. It was a triumph over an established system, and upon a point touching the pretended constitutional rights of office-holders, hitherto regarded by its votaries as sacred and impregnable. It gave great strength to the Reformers in the estimation of the public. They had flooded the country with their pamphlets and stuffed the newspapers with their articles. But there were multitudes, too indifferent or too busy to read them, who were nevertheless greatly affected by the intelligence of the conviction of Curtis, and who then for the first time began to see that there might after all be something of practical consequence in this movement for reform.

It has been the good fortune of the Reformers, indeed it is to some extent the secret of their success, that they have had the press on their side. Take, if you please, half a dozen large independent journals, representing diverse interests and circulating among different classes of readers, such as Harpers' Weekly, The New York Times, The New York Herald, and The Evening Post. Bring them together on the approach of an important election

Wheel them into line and make them move in harmony, and if your cause is a just and righteous one, you have an engine of political warfare as powerful and effective as any that has been invented. It was such an engine as this that the Reformers had to help them in the canvass of 1882, and it swept every thing before it. Day after day and week after week it discharged its volleys, "hot and heavy," of solid argument and of telling facts, of scathing invective and of poignant wit, against the abuses and scandals of the spoils sys. tem, against the supercilious indifference towards reform of the dominant party in Congress and the deliberate violation of the promises and pledges of conventions and platforms, and against the organized system of robbery and black-mail involved in the levying of political assessments, as practiced by Honorable Jay A. Hubbell, "of Bedouin ancestry," chairman and treasurer of the Republican Congressional Executive Committee.

The result is well known. The State of New York, which in 1880 gave Garfield a majority over Hancock of 21,033, in 1882 gave Cleveland a majority over Folger of 192,854. The elec tions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other States showed similar results. The effect upon Congress of this revolution of public opinion is admirably described in the Address delivered at Newport in August, 1883, at the annual meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League, by George William Curtis, upon whose presidency and leadership, the Reformers have numberless reasons to congratulate themselves. "When we met here a year ago," said Mr. Curtis, "Congress was still in session. The Pendleton bill had been reported to the Senate, but no action had been taken. The House of Representatives, with ribald sneers at the project of reform, had contemptuosly granted the President three-fifths of the pittance which he had 'urgently' asked to enable him to continue efforts of reform which had been begun. The record of the proceedings upon this subject in the House of Representatives last summer is one of the most disgraceful passages in the history of Congress." "The Congress which had adjourned in August laughing at reform, heard the thunder of the elections in November and re-assembled in December. If members had been draped in sheets and had carried candles, they could not have borne a more penitential aspect." The Pendleton bill underwent an active debate in the Senate, and passed that body on the 27th of December. The House passed it as it came to it from the Senate, without the least alteration. Its action was summary and precipitate. Mr. Curtis speaks of it as follows: "The House which was so eager to make the bill a law that it would not tolerate debate and loudly cheered the proposal of an immediate vote, was the same house that five months before had derisively and angrily refused to give a paltry sum and to aid a single experiment of reform. Men who could not laugh loud enough at the ridiculous whim of transacting the public. business on business principles, now tumbled over each other in their breathless haste to make that whim the national policy."

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Considerable progress has been made in the extension of the reformed system to the States and municipalities. Civil ser

vice acts were passed by the legislature of New York in May, 1883, and an excellent commission is now on duty there, consisting of John Jay, Augustus Schoonmaker and Henry A. Richmond.

The point towards which the Reformers have recently been especially directing their efforts, is the repeal of the legislation which prescribes a term of office of four years for a large por tion of the officers who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The first statute in the series was passed in 1820. It was explicitly condemned by Jefferson, Madison, Webster, and Calhoun. "The law itself," to quote again from the Address of Mr. Curtis, "vacates the office, and gives the President the means of rewarding a favorite, without exercising the power of removal. It thus enables him to displace a satisfactory officer without the responsibility or odium of dismissing him." As these lines are being written, the prospect of the desired repeal at the present session of Congress is not encouraging. On the 21st of April, the House of Representatives refused by a vote of 146 to 99 to suspend the rules, so as to allow the bill to repeal to be taken up and passed. Greater discouragements than this, however, have been encountered and overcome. The present agitation will not cease until the Civil Service is taken out of politics, the same as the Army and Navy. Competitive examinations and the rest of the new machinery are only the means to an end. They have only become necessary by reason of the immense increase and enlargement of the Civil Service, so that it is simply impossible. for the Executive to determine, by the ordinary methods of inquiry and recommendation, which of the applicants are the most fit and suitable for appointment. The end which the reformers seek is not an innovation, but a restoration-the restoration in place of the spoils system, of the merit system and its principles, as practiced under Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. They want nothing more, and they will be content with nothing less.

ARTICLE II. TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

II. THE CUSTOMS TARIff.

THE State in the form to which political evolution has finally carried it is the consensus and enrollment of all the people, partly for the transaction of business in which all are equally concerned but principally for security from dangers to which all are equally exposed. If it has any right to exist at all it has ipso facto the right to the means necessary for the ends of its existence, and among the rest to so much of the national wealth as it requires for the protection of the remainder and of the persons of its subjects.

As the expenses of the State are all practically current expenses provided for by continuous or periodical taxation, what rightfully belongs to it is a definite proportion of the whole product or revenue of the wealth of the nation; for the capital required to produce the wealth of future years cannot belong to the State for the expenses of the current year. This proportion of the whole again is made up of parts in the same proportion of the several revenues of all the subjects; for the State can have no rightful claim upon the property of any one beyond the uniform rate for all. On the one hand the budget which calls for a sum-total greater than the legitimate expenses of the State, and on the other the taxation which in the end takes from any subject more than his proportion, is appropriation of the very property which the State is set to protect.

With this recapitulation we may return to the case with which we began. Brown & Co. have imported a certain number of watches upon which, delivered at their house in New York, they have paid $1000 to the manufacturers and a fourth of this in duties to the government. To bring out more clearly the full effect of the tax let us suppose that they have invested all their available means, say $1,000,000, in foreign watches, of which sum they will have paid $800,000 to the manufacturers and $200,000 to the government. It is evident that this latter sum as much as the other is a portion of their capital and if the

rate of taxation at the same time is uniform everywhere the government will have taken one-fifth part of the whole capital wealth of the country. Now there are several contingencies. in which this may be supposed to have actually occurred. For example, it may have been concluded that communism is the true political gospel, that the State as everybody's trustee and agent is rightful proprietor of all property, and the people may have resolved by a constitutional majority to begin the exper iment by conveying to its agent a fifth part of its wealth to be administered in its behalf. Or again, it may have been concluded and resolved that the best provision for the expenses of the State is a permanent endowment to that amount, the annual revenue from which will release the people from all future burdens of taxation as the police relieves it from service on the posse comitatus, a standing army from military service, or the constitution of certain courts from service on the jury. Or again, to meet some exceptional emergency, the State may have contracted a loan which has now matured and payment on which is demanded, so that caught, if one may say so, between the devil of default and the deep sea of liquidation it meets its engagements by appropriating to that purpose the requisite portion of the national wealth. In all these cases the confiscation once effected the account is closed; its force is exhausted when the money is taken and the necessity provided for. The State put in possession of a fifth part of the national wealth, whether as administrator in behalf of the people, or as permanently endowed for transacting its business and protecting its rights, or as furnished with the means of paying off its debt capital, has no further claim until a new necessity of the same kind arises and another portion of the national wealth is appropriated to meet it. But as it happens there are no traces of any of these necessities in the fiscal position of the United States. The doctrine of communism is a mere speculation of certain peculiar theorists, the magnificent national endowment in the shape of public lands has been nearly dispersed under the homestead law and in land-grants, and as to its capital debt the anxiety of the creditors is not that it will not be paid at maturity but that it will. In a word it is under no pressure of instant and final liquidation whatsoever, but is tranquilly pro