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and the triumphs of one set of men over another, as the trial of the principles which govern States and Empires. — "Edinburgh Beview," 1885. It is needless to say that our public servants cannot possibly do their work thoroughly ; they cannot give it their best thought and effort.. They will necessarily and certainly give their.time to election work ; they will put their best work where it will do the most good—in the management of caucuses and conventions. In short, we can lay it down as a law of politics. Tenure by election certainly destroys official efficiency, and turns government into an election-machine. — Stickney, "The Political Problem." Party diminishes responsibility by dividing it; subjects the Executive Government to sudden and dangerous changes ; it confers office upon the wise and the upright together with the incompetent and the corrupt, and in turn ejects them from power simultaneously: degrades politics from a science to a warfare, assigning public office not to the ablest men necessarily, but to those who have the greatest political power.— Cox, "Institutions of the English Government." The advantages of party discipline are almost insignificant beside its evils, beside its moral cowardice and insincerity, its want of principle and indifference to the public interest. No one can view without some feeling of disgust the cavilling and bickering, the maligning misrepresentation and calumny which pass for political criticism, and which are the chief articles of party warfare.— 'Williams, "Party and Patriotism." President Hayes not only saw the magnitude of the evil, but he pointed out the difficulties in the way of reform with great clearness. " The most serious obstacle," said he, "to an improvement in the Civil Service, and especially to a reform in the method of appointment and removal, has been found in practice under what is known as the ' Spoils System,' by which the appointing power has been so largely encroached upon by the members of Congress. The first step in the reform of the Civil Service must be a complete divorce between Congress and the Executive in the matter of appointments." — Charles Kendall Adams, " Contemporary Review," 1889. It is impossible to lay down M. Scherer's pamphlet without a conviction that the opinion is held in France by the public men who direct the public affairs of the French Eepublic that the party system cannot continue without corruption. The account which this writer gives of the expedients by which all French Governments have sought to secure support since the resignation of Marshal Macmahon, is most deplorable. There is a scale of public corruption, with an excessive and extravagant scheme of public works at one end of it, and at the other the open barter of votes^ by the electoral committees for the innumerable small places in the gift of the highly-centralised French Administration. The principle that the " spoils belong to the victors" has been borrowed from the United States and receives a thoroughgoing application. Every branch of the public service—even, since M. Scherer wrote, the judicial bench—has been completely purged of functionaries not professing allegiance to the party in power for the time being.— Maine, " Popular Government." Freeman writes : " The United States are regularly convulsed at fixed intervals by the personal question, ' Who shall be President ? ' England, Italy, every constitutional kingdom, is irregularly convulsed at uncertain intervals by the personal question, ' Who shall be Prime Minister ? ' So is the commonwealth of France, with the further chance of another personal question, ' Who shall be President ?' in other words, ' Who shall be temporary King ?' turning up unexpectedly. Switzer-, land, on the other hand, is never convulsed by any of _ these questions ; for it has a form of executive under which none of them can ever be put. — Universal Beview, July, 1890. The Victorian legislators and colonists adopted what they intended to be a close counterpart of the British constitution with sanguine anticipations of its proving worthy of like veneration. But, the community being utterly democratic, there were, to begin with, neither Lords nor Commons, no privileged self-representing class, and no large section having cultivated intellect, leisure, and wealth for the multitude to choose representatives from. Artificial distinctions of class had, therefore, to be made and privileges assigned, but to them the prestige and dignity of the Lords and Commons of England could no more be imparted than could the architectural beauty, the venerable antiquity, and the historical interest of Westminster Abbey be tranfused into " The Cathedral," in William Street. . . Poor colony !If it be your business, which is of consequence to you, you have chosen a marvellous plan for transacting it—a plan which no business man would tolerate for an hour in regard to his own affairs—commercial, professional, or private—if he would escape ruin, and the reputation of suitability for admission to a madhouse. Imagine a bank the elected directors of which should divide into factions, and from time to time interrupt and defer all banking business of the directory until they had fiercely contested and settled which of themselves should pocket the largest sums in attendance-fees, and be enabled to take " spoils " out of the bank cellar for the benefit of themselves and their friends. . . . This seems to be an absurdity too gross for suggestion, yet, with merely changing the word " directors " into " members of Parliament," we have a simple and truthful parallel of the system of government by party in its application to the mismanagement and perversion of the affairs of the colony.— E. G. MtzGibbon, " Melbourne Beview" 1878. If free government carf. be carried on in no other way, the prospect is dark, for party is apparently doomed alike by morality and by the growing tendencies of the age. But there_ is obviously one other way at least in which free government can be carried on. Instead of making office the prize of a perpetual faction fight, the members of the Executive Council of State may be regularly elected by the members of the Legislature for a certain term under such a system with, 2—L 10.