istration should have been glad that the Senate disfigured the bill. The Wilson Law, moreover, caused the first deficiency that had occurred in the revenue since the close of the Civil War. Every year, from that time up to 1893, there had been a surplus and a consequent reduction of the national debt.

CHAPTER XVI.

EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND PERSONALLY CONSIDERED.

The theory of his potent personality and an attempt to reveal the secret of his success through this mysterious power and other potentialities. Striking a balance between his praiseworthy acts and some of his mistakes. How he is likely to be rated by the future historian and biographer. His name stamped indelibly on the politics of his own times. - His unflinching advocacy of sound money. - He drew all shades of politics after him and was independent of party.—Why he drew so many heterogeneous elements. Comparison with Macaulay's Machiavelli. His prompt and popular action in suppressing the Chicago riots and causing the overthrow of Eugene V. Debs. His advice to the Democratic party.

IF

F anybody should happen to draw the inference, from the strictures I have made elsewhere on the errors and shortcomings of ex-President Cleveland, that he was not possessed of several elements of greatness, it would be a grave error in judgment on the part of the reader.

Mr. Cleveland has shown himself to be a great and remarkable man in many respects, and this will in all probability be the estimate of posterity.

My chief reason for this belief is that the man's potent personality in a few things that were highly important has stamped itself indelibly on the politics of his own times. For instance, he stood up for sound money, and was one of the strongest advocates of the cause against the clamor for free-silver coinage, which at one time came near carrying with it a majority. Of course the victory would have been only temporary, if such general dementia had seized the people at large, because the sober second thought of the thinking minority would have triumphed eventually after the country had perhaps passed through the ordeal of a panic worse than all former panics con

densed into one. From a calamity of this character Mr. Cleveland was one of the most potent agencies in saving us. He was unflinching in his courage in the maintenance of the gold standard, and in all probability his influence and his powerful attacks on the free-silver heresy made almost as many votes for McKinley as Mark Hanna did; and this in spite of Mr. Cleveland's deep-seated aversion to Mr. McKinley's pet theory of protection for our industries.

Cleveland has been very popular at intervals during both terms of his administration, and the secret of his popularity has been rather a mystery to both friends and foes.

The supreme test of the popularity of a President and an administration is whether during the greater part of the period of power the country has been prosperous. Beyond this test the public are no more inclined to listen to excuses or apologies than they are in the case of a general who has been vanquished in a series of battles by the enemy. That charity which is said to cover a multitude of sins is rarely, if ever, exercised in instances like these.

When Mr. Cleveland took possession of the White House, March 4, 1893, the country was prosperous. When he went out of office, March 4, 1897, the country was almost on the verge of bankruptcy, and the worst prolonged depression in business that the nation has ever experienced prevailed during the greater part of. the time. Had it not been for the agitation regarding free-trade theories, together with certain other Utopian schemes of reform, the good times which the country enjoyed during the last year of General Harrison's administration would in all probability have been continued indefinitely.

Now it seems to be the popular belief that when Mr. Cleveland ran for President in 1892, after having been defeated by General Harrison in 1888, he was the candidate of the Democratic party. He was nominally and officially so, it would appear, but he was besides a popular candidate, and did not seem to own allegiance to any party. His aim from the first was to catch the popular ear and to make the impression deep in the hearts of the people that he was their candidate irrespec

tive of party. That portion of his devotion which pertained to party he seemed to regard only as a matter of form, a kind of principle of politeness, with the formality of which political society expected compliance as mere pantomime, without putting any soul into it or having any conscientious sensations about it. Both his letters of acceptance and his speech on taking the oath of office bear out his theory, and it was the perception by the people of this feeling on his part that in large measure drew to him so many heterogeneous elements and gave him such a large majority over President Harrison.

He drew from all shades of politics and factions to swell his immense majority, from the Populists and protectionists as well as from the free-traders, and herein is revealed a part of the mystery. Careful investigation by expert politicians and journalists after the election showed the fact that even protectionists voted for him, without being able to assign a reason other than that they wanted a change and desired to experiment. Farmers and others said so, while admitting that they had enjoyed greater prosperity during the two former years of the operation of the McKinley tariff than ever before. Such instances as these only tend to deepen the mystery, and throw us back to the reflection that Mr. Cleveland, amid the discussion of a great variety of topics, never ceased to vibrate one chord wherever he had the opportunity, namely, that he was the representative of the people, always their obedient servant and ready to do their will and perform their behests at all times. Whatever derelictions there might be from these professions, they did not seem to count with the multitude either before or after the election, at least for the first year of his second term.

There could be no stronger proof of great personality, and that certain hypnotic potencies are largely developed in Mr. Cleveland. It is a proof of the attributes of generalship. Nothing drew the soldiers of Napoleon closer to him than a temporary defeat. This was true in every instance until Waterloo, and notably so after Moscow. Mr. Cleveland will have no chance of experimenting on a Moscow or a Waterloo. He re

tired peacefully and in good order, not to a St. Helena, but to a Fontainebleau at Princeton, New Jersey, where he entered into the full enjoyment of domestic happiness.

Mr. Cleveland may employ some of his leisure hours in writing the inside history of his administration, but it is questionable if he himself can satisfactorily explain the manysided traits of character which he displayed during the period of his toilsome and arduous experience in Washington. Macaulay in his review of Machiavelli says : —

"Two characters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and woof of his mind, and their combination, like that of the variegated threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever changing appearance. The explanation might have been easy if he had been a very weak or very affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other. His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen.”

Now, this is very high praise from the great English essayist, critic, and historian, bestowed upon a man who has been universally execrated on account of his politics and diplomacy; and it is curious how closely this particular characterization will apply to Mr. Cleveland, unlike the wily Italian as the downright and honest "Grover" is. Concerning one point of the comparison, however, — the last clause, "his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen," I am in doubt. If it were on record that Mr. Cleveland had laughed heartily when the Wilson Bill was sent to him with the Senate amendments, then this fragment of Macaulay's description of the great Florentine statesman might apply with some modifications to him. He appears to have been many-sided, yet without much inconsistency, paradoxical as it may seem; and possibly the multi-sided aspect of the man may have been more in appearance than in reality. It may have been the reflection of others, but, like St. Paul, he appeared at times to be "all things to all men." This was doubtless the effect of reflex action. Several political parties