“ He openly condemns and, in effect, defies them. He declares in an act more telling than any words that under his Administration, as under every other since 1883, whatever change is made in the merit system shall be to strengthen and extend it. To those of us who have been, as The Times has been, earnest in the support of this system since Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island first took up its advocacy a generation since, this latest of its triumphs is particularly gratifying. It is another proof that the sober good sense and love of decency in the American people are, in the long run, invincible. ”

“ Our own judgment has long been that the best practicable restraint upon the abuse of the power of removal, apart from the fact that vacancies cannot be filled for political reasons, would be a rule requiring the reasons for removal to be placed on record, and, at the option of the person removed, to be made public. ”

“ McKinley is the deadly blow it deals to the spoils reactionists in his own party. He not only refuses their demand that they shall again be admitted to the favors they so greedily seek and so shamelessly insist upon. ”