The people must appoint all their officers, heads of departments and bureaus at regular intervals, and all under assistants, during faithful performance of duty. We want no Civil Service Commissions. Every person who shall be eligible to office under the new government will be competent; and when once familiar with the duties, will not be removed to give room for the friend of some politician belonging to the party in power, since it would be the people in power at all times.
Another matter which must have attention is the sweeping away of that _jeu d’esprit_, our courts of justice, by making all kinds of contracts stand upon the honor and capacity of the contracting parties. All individual matters must be settled by the individuals themselves without appeal to the public. Our present system of enforced collection of debts costs every year more than is realized, and besides maintains a vast army of lawyers, constables and court officers in unproductive employ. All this is wrong, entailing almost untold exactions upon the producing community, who in the end are made to pay all these things.
Further, our system of oaths and bonds must be abolished. This swearing people to tell the truth, and binding them to perform their duty, presupposes that they will lie and neglect their duty. People are always placed upon the side of force and compulsion—never upon that of personal rectitude and honor. The results are what might be expected. It plunges us into the very things we would avoid. There is a philosophy, too, in all these things; since in freedom only can purity exist. Anything that is not free is not pure. Anything that is accompanied by compulsion is no proof of individual honesty.
The new government must also take immediate steps for the abolition of pauperism and beggary. It is an infamous reproach upon this country that there are hundreds of thousands of people who subsist themselves upon individual charity. I do not care whether this is from choice or necessity. I say it is a burning shame, requiring immediate curative steps. The indigent and helpless classes are just as much a part of our social body as the protected and the rich are, and they are entitled to its recognition. Society must no longer punish and compel suffering and death for its own wrongs. It must evolve such a social system as shall leave no single member of the common body to suffer. When one member of the body suffers, the whole body sympathizes. So, also, when a member of the social body suffers, does the whole body suffer. And yet we have pretended philanthropists and Christians who have never grasped that truth.