with that esprit de corps to which the "reformer" looks with such high hope, constantly getting farther and farther, in interest and sentiment, from the great body of the people, may, at any moment, become the instrument by which an ambitious usurper may overturn our institutions. We have now a hundred thousand civil officers. Can a nation, which looks with apprehension on a standing army of twenty thousand men, regard with favor a similar organization of far greater power? The prospect now is that this proportion will be greatly increased rather than diminished. It is not improbable that before the century ends it may be doubled. The demand is well-nigh imperative for an increase of force in every department. Should the Government undertake telegraphy and railroading, it would be impossible to estimate the number. To make this service a separate class, having a peculiar and distinct interest in the Government, uniformed and decorated with the marks of rank, may well be regarded as an experiment which might be fraught with great danger.

Sixth. Another frequently urged objection is in regard to the insufficiency of competitive examinations as a test of merit. This no doubt depends very much upon the character of the particular service. As a general rule, the duties of any minor officer may be mastered by a man of fair intelligence in a few days. In others, as in the postal service, experience is required to memorize details. In others still, the work to be performed is discretionary or judicial in its character, as in the Pension and Patent bureaus. In addition to all these there are certain places requiring especial technical skill, as in the case of the Treasury experts who pass upon the validity of notes, bonds, etc., and the type-setters in the Government printing-office. The store-keeper, gauger, or deputy-collector of the Internal Revenue Service may master his whole duty in a brief time, but no possible system of competitive examination can determine his value, since that depends on his activity, skill, and character. He may be the best officer in the service and yet never make a seizure, because his watchfulness may be such as to deter the violators of the law from attempting to operate in his district. In the postal service, examinations may very clearly indicate the capacity of an officer, since it chiefly depends on his ability to make a clean and rapid distribution of miscellaneous matter. In the judicial work of such bureaus as the Pension Office, no possible examination can disclose the value of the clerk. It is not the amount of his work but its character that

determines that question. Beyond a certain point, which, of course, may vary greatly in the different services, competitive examination offers no means of ascertaining the most valuable qualities of the officer or applicant. Literary excellence or scientific attainment is no test of those practical qualities, skill, tact, and character, which give value to a placeman's services. The experience of a few years of business life may be worth in such a place more than the most complete mastery of the university curriculum.

There is no little weight in the theory that change is beneficial and wholesome; it brings an infusion of fresh blood and new life; it puts a swarm of relentless enemies on the trail of the malfeasant; it promotes interest in political affairs. There are always ten men who want place to every one who holds office. It is true an election brings a universal fever-becomes often a scramble for place; but is it not better, with all its ills, than lethargy? These are questions which vitally touch the future of our institutions. They are at least of equal rank with the plea of economy, and entitled to like consideration.

We have not space to discuss the evils of what is termed "patronage," though, in the English sense, it has little place in our politics. No true man or patriot defends incompetency or dishonesty. The patriot who doubts, as well as the "reformer," desires good men and good results.

Those who entertain these doubts generally believe that a short secure term, with a preliminary examination not competitive, graded in its character to meet the requirements of the various ranks and services, and leaving to the appointing power discretion to appoint from any who shall pass the examination required for the specific grade, would more nearly comport with the spirit of our institutions, more probably secure an efficient service, be less likely to establish the reign of routine, and more certainly avoid possible danger, than the re-formation of the service now advocated under the name of "reform."

ALBION W. TOURGEE.

THE THING THAT MIGHT BE.

THE tendency to go about showing other people what might be is widely enough sown by nature. But the mere tendency which exists in us all when young is unequally developed in later life, as individuals vary in observation of what is, power of imagining what might be, and energy of will urging them to replace what is by what might be. As we advance in life, many things occur to check the growth, or kill the germ of this tendency. The two main counteracting forces are: (1) The enlargement of our own knowledge, which discovers to us reasons why things are not better done than they are, which reasons had been before beyond our vision. (2) The discovery that the trade of general improver is one that is apt to make us very odious to our fellows, and that, even if we can show demonstratively that something better could be put in the place of something that is, we had better not say so.

Thus it comes to pass that every ingenuous and intelligent youth is sent into the world by nature with the initial promptings of enterprise and innovation, and that the same youth, by a process equally natural, is found in middle age a stout, conservative, and sturdy champion of the thing that is. Thus there goes on in the social laboratory a constant manufacture of a generation of conservatives out of a generation of liberals; and by this thesis and antithesis of nature the equilibrium of a political community is maintained.

It is not enough to say that the antithesis of the old and the new-the old striving to maintain itself, the new struggling to get a footing-is widely diffused; it is universal. Trace it first throughout human society. Begin within the individual, and in the life of a single man you see the transformation of the ambitious and reforming youth into the stout champion of the creed

of orthodoxy, that "Whatever is, is right." We extend our view to the British nation, and we see its social progress to have been worked out by the shock of two colliding forces,-that which aims at change, and that which resists change. Of these forces, the terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" are very imperfect names. For it is not only in party politics that the conflict of principles occurs; it is met with in every city and municipality throughout the kingdom; it is found in the church and in the family, in all arts and manufactures, and meets us on all occasions in the common business of every-day life.

Now enlarge the horizon, look beyond Great Britain, and see the same conflict of principle developing itself upon a greater scale on the wider area of Europe. It is true the old political factors are still in operation. There exists still the jealousy of hostile races and languages-a jealousy which, in one instance at least, where the pushing Teuton finds himself in contact with a most pushing race,-the Slav,-threatens to override all perception of a common interest in a common civilization. Europe is still divided by the old religious schism into Catholic and Protestant. This dividing element has still great hold on the passions of men, notwithstanding that its foundation is a mere sentiment and does not represent any social or human interest.

These two pairs of opposed forces, Teuton and Slav, Catholic and Protestant, may, at any moment, break into violent conflict, with consequences disastrous to the community of nations. But these conflicts, which have filled so many pages of historical books, are incidental disturbances of the surface only; they form no part of the moral antagonism by which humanity is carried along on the road of civilization. The collision of rival races, and the battle of hostile creeds, are facts of first importance in the eyes of practical statesmen. In the theory of social evolution they are facts of secondary moment. The progress of human society, from the lowest type of animal aggregation toward the most highly organized state which we can conceive, is being conducted all the while by means of the perpetual struggle between what is and what might be. This strife of elements is always going on in the bosom of every society, but, like all the great operations of nature, noiselessly and imperceptibly. In ordinary conditions of society it requires close and minute observation to detect the traces of the conflict. It is only when discontent with what is assumes unusual dimensions that public attention is VOL. CXXXII.—NO. 293.

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arrested by its manifestations, as just now by the agrarian outrages in Ireland, or the Nihilistic frenzy in Russia. For what is Nihilism? It is only an enthusiasm for what might be, vague in point of idea, ecstatic in its passion. Nihilism is an ultra form of rejection of what is, not illuminated by any rational conception of that better thing which should replace it. The Nihilist does not advance beyond the brute desire to destroy. His motto is:

"Alles was besteht

Ist werth dass es zu Grunde geht."

The only value of existing institutions is that they offer something for us to pull down. This instinct, thus blindly working its way through burning, wasting, killing, is recognized by the naturalist as the same human instinct which, in more fortunate countries, manifests itself in those inventions and improvements which make life more comfortable and more beautiful. And as, in Russia, the instinct of bettering oneself takes the form of wild and aimless destruction, so the counterinstinct of protection of what is takes the brute form of the stick and the bayonet. The two natural forces-the tendency to the might be, and the persistence in what is the two forces through whose equilibrium social progress is worked out-are thus exhibited to us in the east of Europe in a form so elementary that most of our political writers are unable to recognize their identity with the two factors which, in the west of Europe, have peacefully built up the complex fabric of our civilization.

I introduced into my last sentence two words denoting two new ideas, to which I am now conducted by the course of my remarks, the idea of equilibrium, and the idea of progress. For at least five centuries, progress in the western states of Europe has been worked out by the collision and the balance of these two opposite principles-innovation and persistence in the old. It is unnecessary to say that persistence alone could not generate progress. The two things are incompatible. But it is not selfevident that progressive civilization is not the result of a single force, viz., the spirit of improvement. A little reflection, however, will show us that no improvement whatever in art, in science, in government, in manufacture, or in any process of any kind, can be made except by one who is in complete and practical possession of the old method which is to be improved upon.