room for another chief, and thus, by a process of successive degradations, a complement of unexamined clerks be obtained. As an artifice that is impossible. As a violation it is entirely improbable. An administration firmly and fully committed to the enforcement of the law would have two summary and facile methods of suppressing such non-observance of its plain prescriptions: the removal of the official transgressor, or the elimination from the list of excepted positions the one with which the jugglery had been executed.

One important component of a symmetrical merit system in the civil service would have relation to the methods of promotion. It may be readily appreciated why no proper formulas have been thus far devised. The Presidents have promulgated no rules controlling the matter, because the execution of the laboriously-wrought details has engaged for them all the time possible of devotion. Now that the smooth working of the various provisions has been attained, it is probable that the subject of promotion will be attacked, and within a reasonable time proper regulations be framed. Whether or not injustice is practiced in the promotion of employés need not be discussed. The disappointment of all expectant employés over the success of a single one is inevitable, and the ascription of the choice to unfairness and favoritism is in ordinary harmony with human nature. If a system were arranged of invariable procedure, the service would be improved by preventing that depression of spirits in an unpromoted employé, the resultant of which is less efficient work.

Many elements must be considered in the invention of such a system. Seniority of appointment possesses apparent fairness as one determinative element, and yet promotions following in such order would not be invariably just. There must manifestly be always left some remnant of discretion with the immediate official head. It may transpire that the ambition of an applicant cares not to leap higher than the barrier at the entrance. After the display of sufficient capacity to justify his appointment, contentment with a permanent, though mediocre, position bounds his desire. The faithful performance of the minimum of daily work required marks his career. No disposition is evinced to strive toward the maximum, and with enthusiasm to signalize by active interest in his work. Clearly, mere seniority of service should not entitle him to promotion,

A distinct examination for promotion seems to be necessary, and yet again the candidate who passes it, even with brilliant success, would not inevitably merit advancement. Capacity to do the higher work should be always considered in connection with the industry and spirit manifested while engaged upon lower grades. A willingness to work without studious measurement of the minimum amount must be coupled with the qualification that capacity furnishes. The central thought of the reform is to obtain the best of competing merit for governmental

service. It would not be wise, or consistent, to abandon the research for the most efficient employé, after entrance has been once gained, and to promote all in a rigid order. If exceptional talent by one whose first step is on the lowest rung, his merit should not be held in check, while successive justice be done each intervening employé. The higher equity is with the government, and its constant and fair demand for the best service should, in proper time, inure to the benefit of the well-equipped, though most recent, enterer. The subject might be further pursued, but a few of the conditions that surround are now apparent. While some system is requisite, it is not a matter admitting of regulation by undeviating rules. The personal equation must not be neglected.

If the direction in which the reform procedure could be most profitably extended were subject of discussion, that of the consular service would first suggest itself. It has long been recognized by leading minds that this branch of the administrative functions was neither systematic in its true work, nor productive of the best commercial results. While legal routine connected with shipping regulations and estate settlements are arduous duties of the consul, the fostering of trade relations has been the imaginary superior duty. The preparation of reports to become a part of any propagandism of tariff theories has been an unnecessary labor. Consular reports are valuable, and their making enforced in due degree, only when devoted to facts, and devoid of theoretical deductions. It is an odious comparison, in some quarters, to examine any condition of governmental business in comparison with that of its correlative in Great Britian. Besides the antipathy inoculated in the days of revolution and the hatred cherished by the Irish-American, there are the divergent views of the tariff, and the essential opposition to royalty. Yet into a consideration of the disciplined and effective consular service of Great Britian, none of these differences of national thought fairly enter. The means of increasing trade and commerce are vital subjects of inquiry, and anxious objects of promotion. After allotment of their respective influences in gaining England's vast trade to all other elements, the not inconsiderable remainder must be credited to the directed efforts of her trained consuls. Entrance into no branch of the service in England is more coveted. The fall of ministries, and all the selections of political subordinates, do not dislodge the capable consul. He has stood the test of competition. His special adaptability to the peculiar duties has been displayed. He has been, most probably, an agent promoted to his higher office. The whole conception of the consular place, implanted, has been that of a commercial agency, with strictly prescribed duties, disconnected from party activity.

In the United States there have been recent improvements in the system of foreign representation, but no permanent advance will be

had until business places are conducted by business methods, until consulates cease to be the most luscious plums awarded for partisan service. Politics, in a party sense, should not dominate in the selection of skilled mercantile agents. A tentative step toward a more perfect system was made in the establishment of the consular corps in 18641873. The President was empowered to appoint thirteen men, whose tenure should be disturbed only upon specific charges. An examination is provided for these appointees, but it is merely the old Parliamentary pass examination system renewed. The designation of the applicant is the main preliminary. His appointment insures a successful endurance of the educational test. There is no competition of merit, though the non-partisan character of the service demanded might well permit this additional recognition of broad Democracy by affording to any applicant the chance which his individual merit discloses.

There have been recently several commendable promotions in the foreign service by which the new reform tendencies were again signalized. In a few instances retentions were decided upon as rewards for meritorious labor. No criticism, covert under innuendo, is intended for any of the numerous substitutions in the consular service. The country cheerfully bears witness to the solicitous investigations which have attended these efforts toward improved results. It is the system, past and present, which might with decisive advantage be radically changed. If the consuls of the United States were selected in an open competition, where the special training requisite for the best public service was the test, the foreign establishments would hold higher rank among the nations and this republic would reap vaster benefits in trade. No function of citizenship could be thus abridged. No individual and proper effort for the dominance of party doctrine could be restrained. Then every official duty would be prescribed, as it now is, by statutes, in the enactment of which party supremacy in the legislative, and not in the consular branch, is concerned. And the government would gain a trained administrator.

LEROY D. THOMAN.

WESTERN JOURNEYS: NEW AND OLD.

In the summer and autumn of 1879 I had occasion to visit Colorado and New Mexico in search of material for a series of articles on those regions. I had previously traveled over a large part of the world and very many thousands of miles, but I never took a journey so conducive to mental and physical health, presenting so many subjects of present interest, or suggesting so many lines of investigation. It is trite to say that Americans who flock year after year to the countries of the Old World are amazingly ignorant of the attractions which they leave behind them in their own land, and painfully indifferent in this regard. This fact, however, I may adduce as a justification for the appearance of this paper in a periodical which numbers so many learned and distinguished military men among both contributors and readers.

Not only do I thus, as it were, address an eclectic audience, whom I may hope to interest, but I may also induce some of them, more competent than myself, to follow the lines of inquiry which I have opened.

The journey from the Missouri to the mountains is now, of course, an every-day affair; and yet what a wonderful thing it is! Twentyfive years ago the country traversed by the Union Pacific Railroad was known as the Great American Desert. Twenty years ago a most distinguished and experienced man pronounced the construction of this road impracticable. About fifteen years ago I passed over it with more comfort than one could find between Albany and Buffalo or between Boston and Springfield.

Having made the journey a number of times by the Omaha and Ogden route, I chose, on the journey which I have mentioned, another and in a certain sense a more interesting one. No one can gainsay the natural wonders and scenic attractions of the Laramie Plains, the Echo and Wasatch Cañons, the Humboldt Valley and the crossing of the Sierra Nevada; but they lack almost all semblance of human association or suggestion of a historical past,-the characteristics which lend such charms to the highways and by ways of Europe, and thus give our Anglo-maniacs, and Franco-maniacs, and Italo-maniacs a feeble excuse for their monotonously persistent depreciation of their own land.

Perhaps, by following my lead, even these fastidious gentry might find something to change their opinions.

In the "flush" times of railroad-building which preceded the panic of 1873, some gentlemen in Boston projected a line to start from Atchison on the Missouri, and reach the ancient city of Santa Fé. They had the option, when attaining a certain point, of going due west, and they secured a splendid land grant. When the engineers arrived at this point it is a fact that the projectors of the enterprise were in doubt as to which direction they had best take. They concluded, fortunately as it turned out, to follow the traditional "Star of Empire," and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railway reached Pueblo, Colorado, just in time to secure the cream of the trade derived from the opening of the San Juan country. Later on, as Western travelers know, a humble branch was constructed to the southward from La Junta. In 1879 it extended only to Las Vegas, New Mexico; now, thanks to the indomitable enterprise and energy of our American railroad-builders, one may pass over it to Santa Fé, the valley of the Rio Grande, by two routes to the Pacific coast, and to the city of Mexico itself! Such magnificent and speedy development of communication may well make us proud of our country, and console us in part for the sorry figure we now cut on our old field of vantage, the "high seas."

It may be pardoned to a laudator temporis acti, a lover of the good old times, to lament the romance and adventure of ancient modes of travel over these lands; none the less are the new times much better there, in all ways. In the retrospect, disagreeable features are forgotten, and pleasant ones remembered; but a Pullman car is a great improvement on an ambulance or an overland stage, and the modern. eating-house on the old station or the infrequent and squalid ranch; and one may now reach scenes of extreme interest with vitality unimpaired, and ready for the work of investigation or the enjoyment of sightseeing.

What may the traveler see who follows the valley of the Arkansas, and the routes radiating therefrom? Many strange, many curious, many grand and picturesque things. There are the wonderful Kansas farms, pushed forward hundreds of miles beyond what was long thought to be the western limit of the arable region; the steady advance of school-houses and churches; the domination, on what we used to call "the border," by civilization of wild nature. To the west are the wonders and beauties of the Sierra Madre; to the southward the Spanish Peaks, the Sangre de Cristo, the City of the Holy Faith, the Valley of the Rio Grande; all, as they are to-day, bathed in a translucent atmosphere, and invested with a rare, captivating, and growing interest. More than all these are the traces of a prehistoric, a remote, a comparatively recent past. Of the fascinating speculations in which one may here indulge (and at best no students of the subject