opinion, matured by the thought and experience of many generations, and should always prevail over that momentary opinion, which comes and goes like an exhalation, and springs more from caprice than from judgment. When the opinions of a party or of a community run for the moment counter to the commandments of the Constitution, a statesman should remember that, however clamorous may be the voices of his party or his time, he may safely reason from the experience of the past, and appeal from the present to the future.

The great maxims of free government are the fruit, not of one generation or of one century, but of many generations and many centuries: they have been fought for and suffered for; they have been established and consecrated by blood and fire. If we would preserve them and profit by them we must remember them, teach them, and stand by them. It is an accepted article of the political creed of every free country that the military is and must be subject to the civil power. Whoever teaches that any military officer, from the highest to the lowest, from the Commander-in-Chief to the sergeant of a guard, can lawfully command his soldiers to enter any place or do any act which the law-making power of his country forbids, should be accounted, as he is in fact, the enemy at once of his country and his race.

If it were true that, when an army is once raised, the President can use it as he will, without other check than his liability to impeachment, then indeed it were better that an army should never be raised again. But it is not true. The people of this country have not been left in that unhappy dilemma. They can have an army, a small one it should ever be, but an army nevertheless, and their Congress can make laws for its government and employment which their President must obey.

MUNICIPAL OFFICERS.

Address to the Young Men's Democratic Club of New York, March 13, 1879.

GENTLEMEN: The text of this discussion is the "City Record" of January 31, 1879, purporting to contain a list of the "officers and subordinates in the departments of the city and county government, with their salaries and residences, together with the judges, clerks, and attendants of the several courts held therein." It here appears that the amount paid in 1878 for services in the Police Department was $3,315,948; in the Fire Department, $1,023,557.10; Public Works, $513,100.50; Public Parks, $310,711.40; Docks, $208,191.42; Finances, $235,894.60; Charities and Corrections, $310,782; Taxes and Assessments, $109,000; Health, $104,056; Law, $101,359; Legislative, $107,000; Executive, $37,200; Building, $64,392; Excise, $60,425; District Attorney's office, $68,311.20; County Clerk's office, $40,725; Coroner's office, $20,500; for other miscellaneous services, $40,000; and for the courts, $1,069,000. This is exclusive of fees paid to the sheriff, register, and city marshals. The sum paid for salaries in the Department of Education is not included in the list. Taking as a guide the sum paid in 1877, we may infer that the payment for salaries in 1878 was about $2,800,000, and that the whole cost of the department was about $3,500,000. These figures would make the total amount paid in this city and county, for official services in 1878, to be $10,540,153.22, or in round numbers ten millions and a half.

You will have observed that this list embraces only the city and county officers, and the State Judges sitting in New York. The other State officers are not mentioned, nor the Federal officers. It is computed that there are a hundred thousand Federal officials in the country. Taking our whole population to be 45,000,000, and that of New York as one ninth, the proportion of Federal office-holders in this State would be eleven thousand, of whom at least seven thousand must be in this city. The State

has perhaps a thousand officials here, and the city from eight to ten thousand. The total number of persons now drawing pay from the public Treasuries, Federal, State, and municipal, or from the people in the shape of fees, may be roughly estimated at seventeen thousand, exclusive of notaries, referees, and commissioners, whose numbers can only be guessed at, but they may be at least three thousand. These figures give a total of twenty thousand persons, in the city of New York, occupying official positions and receiving official compensation, or about one in every fifty persons, counting men, women, and children.

This is the present outcome of our institutions and our civilization. It is the price we pay for government. What do we get for it? Do we get good government? We know that we do not. Let us examine particularly the several departments, legislative, judicial, and executive.

The legislative department of the city consists of twentytwo aldermen, who are paid $89,000. Their work certainly is not well done. The judicial department consists of more persons for the population, and is paid more in the aggregate, than the corresponding service in England or France, the two countries with which we are most ready to compare ourselves. The highest English judges receive larger salaries than are paid in this country, but inferior judges less; and the aggregate of all, high and low, is less. What do we get for what we pay? Go into one of our courts in the morning, and you will probably see the Judge taking his seat a quarter or half hour after the time fixed, keeping counsel, suitors, and jurors waiting, and wasting time as valuable as his own; and when he takes his seat you will see cases postponed oftener than tried, or tried long after, and sometimes a year or two after, they were ready. And I may add that, when tried and appealed, they are nearly half the time sent back for retrial.

Coming to the executive department, we find a police under which beggars infest the streets; which is required to clean these streets, and does not clean them; under which a grave can be despoiled in a churchyard on a frequented corner, and a bank-vault robbed in broad daylight; a Department of Public Works, which, without any fault of its head, leaves the streets

scandalously paved; a Department of Building, under which an expert declares that we "build to burn"; and a Department of Charities and Corrections, which has in charge eleven thousand persons, criminal and dependent, whom it cares for in such a manner as to make the State Charities Aid Association call the place a "municipality of misery."

It is not, however, so much the manner in which the service is performed, as the compensation for it, that I am to discuss. Assuming that all the work required is done, and well done, it may still cost too much, and that is now the question. The following appear to me to be good rules for determining the just compensation for official service:

1. The best men should be employed.

2. Enough of them only should be employed to do the work. 3. They should have definite terms of service.

4. They should have a fixed compensation.

5. They should receive no fees.

6. They should receive only such compensation as they could get in other employment.

The best men, everybody will admit, should be employed. But how are we to get them? As a rule, they are not employed. The public service is mainly in the hands of an inferior class of men. Lament it as we may, it is idle to deny the fact. There are exceptions, no doubt, and many of them. In all departments there are men of a high order, and some of the highest order, of qualities, intellectual and moral. That, however, is not the common course; the average is mediocrity-an obtrusive, noisy mediocrity-which gets into office and holds it partly by chance and partly by subserviency, partly by corrup tion and all by the machinery of political caucuses and conventions. Conceal it or try to conceal it from ourselves or from others as we choose, we are governed by an office-holding class, which by low arts controls the primaries, and these control conventions, and the people blindly vote as the conventions tell them. Until this system is changed, we can not have the best men; and the system will never be changed so long as we submit to the dictation of primaries and conventions: but it can and will be changed when the people see fit to reform those bodies, or refuse to be governed by them.

The next rule is to employ only so many men as are necessary to do the work. Not long ago I asked the head of a department, one of the best managed in the city, whether, if he were managing it as he would manage his private affairs, he could not get along with two thirds the force he had. After reflecting a moment, he answered that he could. And why should not his department be managed as he would manage his private affairs? Should he not serve the public whose officer he is, as faithfully as he would serve himself? Of course, only one answer can be given to this question. If one third of the officers now living upon the public were dismissed, as they should be for they can be spared-the city would save in salaries and wages more than three millions a year, supposing the same rate of compensation that now exists were to be maintained.

But it should not be maintained. The city should as a rule pay to its servants only what the same men could obtain in other employments. I will explain more fully hereafter.

A third rule is, to give to all the servants of the city definite terms of service, so far as possible. This rule would tend to reduce the rate of compensation, because men will work for less if they can be sure of a durable service; and would also tend to make the men more attentive to their duties, because relieved of anxiety as to what is to come.

A fixed rate of compensation is inconsistent with fees. The system of compensation in this mode is injurious to the service and to the public, in several particulars. One is the temptation it holds out to exorbitant and oppressive charges. The officer and the citizen do not meet here on equal terms. The latter must have the service; the former will not perform it without the fee; and there is no judge between them at hand. Submission is the only alternative. The habit of enforcing a fee begets a lax interpretation of the right, and this leads, imperceptibly perhaps, to unlawful demands. The officer who is paid by fees is both claimant and judge, a position the most unfriendly to justice, the most tempting to the officer, and the most unjust to the citizen. This is not the only evil, for the practice of fee-taking leads to the invention of contrivances for increasing them by increasing the services.