The condition of the civil service of the United States is deplorable. Even in the early days of the Republic although great care was taken to select for office only men of respectable character and qualifications, the need of a system of competitive examination was felt. But no such system was established, and, as far as the holders of office were concerned, a change for the worse took place in proportion to their increasing numbers and the vast increase of public business consequent upon the rapid strides of our progress. Nothing was done to adapt the civil service to the exigencies of the new times. Everything, on the contrary, combined to encumber its natural complications with abnormal difficulties growing out of partisan animosities.

There is hardly a civilized country without a system of examination and promotion in the dispensation of its public offices. Ours is probably the only country in the world where it does not exist in the civil service, though it exists in our military and naval service, the stringent discipline and efficiency of which are well known to all Americans. No doubt, the so-called localization of offices and political influences have heretofore impeded reform, nor do we desire to disregard this influence. Illinois, for instance, or Wisconsin, would be justified in complaining if their citizens were studiously kept out of all public offices, so that they might be filled exclusively by citizens of Massachusetts or of New Hampshire. The proper theory of the matter is, that all States should have the same right to competition, and that rejection should not take place upon any other ground excepting that of disqualification. Mr. Jenckes strikes the key-note in basing his bill upon the principle of admission open to all.

Another argument against the reform of the present chaos is the fear of a permanent bureaucracy, and of the anti-republican tendencies of such permanent institutions. We entertain no such apprehensions. A permanent bureaucracy is only dangerous when it is incompetent and practically irresponsible. We have already shown to what a great degree our service is now practically irresponsible, and we will proceed to show that it is a permanent institution, that we actually now have a permanent bureaucracy.

In the absence of a qualification test, it matters very little whether the incumbents of public offices represent the outgoing or the ingoing administration. If Jones, appointed in 1857, is of the same calibre as Smith, nominated in 1861, and Brown, in 1865, the fact of permanency is not in the least impaired by Jones being superseded by Smith, and by Brown supplanting Smith. Jones, Smith, and Brown, though three different persons, are, in point of fact, one and the same individuality as far as their unqualified office-holding and their unfitness are concerned. This, indeed, is the worst of all permanent bureaucracies, when the hydra-headed brood of office-holders has positively one head, as far as qualification is concerned,- and that head a dead-head. Unfitness is consequently perpetuated to such an extent that, although Jones is removed, and Smith dies, and Brown resigns, and White is promoted, the permanency of stupidity is more and more consolidated as time passes on and generation succeeds generation. The spectre "Red Tape," which we all imagined to have been buried amidst the rubbish of antediluvian monarchies, is thus actually haunting the public offices of the Republic. The American citizen, buoyant with capacity, impatient of pedantry, finds himself, on crossing the threshold of government offices, suddenly transferred from the nineteenth century of steam and telegraphs, to "the good old times of King George the Fourth." Red-tape Jones of 1857 left a tradition of routine behind him, which is cherished by red-tape Brown of 1861, which is still more enthusiastically adored by red-tape Smith of 1865, and which becomes the official gospel of red-tape White of 1867.

Mr. Jenckes's bill ... deserves the warmest support, as much for the improvements which it actually proposes to enact by the introduction of open competitive examinations in the subordinate branches of the home civil service, and by the abolition of the system of irresponsibility and patronage, as for the way in which it prepares for the adoption of reforms in the foreign service and in all other administrative branches of the government.

The United States have gone through a formidable convulsion, the outbreak of which was fomented to a great extent by wrong men in wrong places; by faithless and reckless public officers at home and abroad; by a demoralization of the public service, which was at the same time the cause and the effect of treasonable practices and debasement of appointments to public offices to the vilest uses. The moral atmosphere of the land is now gradually clearing up. The destructive era is drawing to a close, and the constructive era is beginning to dawn. We have purged our civilization from the degrading system of slavery. We are now impelled, by all the considerations which are sacred to the lover of his country's fame, to complete this task by reforming those evils in the public service of the country that grew up to a great extent under the fatal influence of sham-Democratic and Slave-State supremacy.

Source: Julius Bing, "Civil Service of the United States" in The North American Review Vol 105 No. 217 (October 1867), 478-91.