Merit System

The merit system is the process of promoting and hiring government employees based on their ability to perform a job, rather than on their political connections. It is the opposite of the spoils system.

Famous quotes containing the words merit and/or system:

    Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
    His praise is lost who stays till all commend.
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)