In harmony with this cry is the appointment of a Civil-Service Commission, which has proposed mild measures looking to purity and independence in office-holders.
Amidst these transactions, occupying the attention of the country, certain facts are reported, tending to show abuses in the sale of arms at the Ordnance Office, exciting at least suspicion in that quarter; and this is aggravated by a seeming violation of neutral duties at a critical moment, when, on various grounds, the nation was bound to peculiar care. It appeared as if our neutral duties were sacrificed to money-making, if not to official jobbers. The injunction of Iago seemed to be obeyed: “Put money in thy purse.” These things were already known in Europe, especially through a notorious trial,[1] and then by a legislative inquiry, so as to become a public scandal. It was time that something should be done to remove the suspicion. This could be only by a searching investigation in such way as to satisfy all at home and abroad that there was no whitewashing.
In proportion to the magnitude of the question and the great interests involved, whether of money or neutral duty, was the corresponding responsibility on our part. Here was a case for action without delay.
Under these circumstances I brought forward the present motion. Here I acted in entire harmony with that movement, now so much applauded, which overthrew Tammany, and that other movement which has exposed the Custom-House. Its object was inquiry into the sale of arms. This was the objective point. But much of this debate has turned on points merely formal, if not entirely irrelevant.
More than once it has been asserted that I am introducing “politics”; and then we have been reminded of the Presidential election, which to certain Senators is a universal prompter. I asked for reform, and the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Morton], seizing the party bugle, sounded “To arms!” But I am not tempted to follow him. I have nothing to say of the President or of the Presidential election. The Senator cannot make me depart from the rule I have laid down for myself. I introduce no “politics,” but only a question which has become urgent, affecting the civil service of the country.
Now, Sir, I have been from the beginning in favor of civil-service reform. I am the author of the first bill on that subject ever introduced into Congress, as long ago as the spring of 1864.[2] I am for a real reform that shall reach the highest as well as the lowest, and I know no better way to accomplish this beneficent result than by striving at all times for purity in the administration of Government. Therefore, when officials fall under suspicion, I should feel myself disloyal to the Government, if I did not insist on the most thorough inquiry. So I have voted in the past, so I must vote in the future. Call you this politics? Not in the ordinary sense of the term. It is only honesty and a just regard for the public weal.
Then it has been said that I am a French agent, and even a Prussian agent,—two in one. Sir, I am nothing but a Senator, whose attention was first called to this matter by a distinguished citizen not named in this debate. Since then I have obtained such information with regard to it as was open to me,—all going to develop a case for inquiry.
I should say nothing more in reply to this allegation but for the vindictive personal assault made upon a valued friend, the Marquis de Chambrun. The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz] has already spoken for him; but I claim this privilege also. Besides his own merits, this gentleman is commended to Americans by his association with the two French names most cherished in our country, Lafayette and De Tocqueville. I have known him from the very day of his arrival in Washington early in the spring of 1865, and have seen him since, in unbroken friendship, almost daily. Shortly after his arrival I took him with me on a visit to Mr. Lincoln at the front, close upon the capture of Richmond. This stranger began his remarkable intimacy with American life by several days in the society of the President only one week before his death. He was by the side of the President in his last visit to a military hospital, and when he last shook hands with the soldiers; also when he made his last speech from the window of the Executive Mansion, the stranger was his guest, standing by his side. From that time down to this day of accusation his intimacies have extended beyond those of any other foreigner. His studies of our institutions have been minute and critical, being second only to those of his late friend De Tocqueville. Whether conversing on his own country or on ours, he is always at home.