Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1882 — WAYNE MACVEAGH. [ARTICLE]

WAYNE MACVEAGH.

Gariicld’s Attorney General Without Hope of Any Good Coming Out off the Republican Party. At the annual meeting of the Civil Service Reform Association, at Phila delphia, on the 13th of April, Wayne MacVeagh presided. In discussing the resolution condemning the letter of First Assistant Postmaster General Hatton, exempting postal employes from the provision of the civil-service order, MacVeagh said President Hayes had consulted him in the preparation of his celebrated civil-service order, of a portion of which he (MacVeagh) was the author. When, however, Hayes was put to the test, practically, he failed. There had been questionable political services rendered by officeholders m the South. Hayes allowed himself to be overpersuaded, and the authors of these questionable services in Louisiana and Florida were rewarded with public office. After that all hope of civil-serv-ice work was gone, and the closing days of his administration witnessed Sherman trying to elect himself President by the aid of the Treasury Department. Then came the short-lived Garfield administration. Whatever hope was in that was cut short by Guiteau’s bullet. What Arthur was in the New York' Custom House he is to-day in the President’s chair. Personally, he is a kindly, welldisposed gentleman, and my intercourse with him was of the pleasantest character, as it was with Hayes. But men rarely change their political training after arriving at the age either gentleman had attained. My party leaves me in this predicament., It has but three principles, and I find myself opposed to all three. Its first great principle is the spoils system; the second is opposition to civil-service re form ; and the third seems to consist of repudiation in Old Virginia. The “boss” system is degradation; it goes from the gutter to the White House. It subsists on the spoils of office. The duty of this association and of the country is to supplant these bosses. Until that be done your work will not be executed. You cannot pretend to be interested in the degrading spectacle of Mahoneism in Virginia—the deliberate prostitution of the Government powers to aid repudiation of a State’s obligations. If we could cnarge that upon the Bourbon Democrats it would be some relief; but, to our sorrow and humiliation, these things are clone in the name of the party of Abraham Lincoln. Instead of going forward, the Arthur administration makes a retrograde movement.