The nomination of Grover Cleveland by the Democratic Convention makes the way perfectly plain and simple for all friends of good government who are for any reason dissatisfied with the Republican candidate. This time the Democrats have made no mistake. If Cleveland had no other claim to the confidence and support of those to whom parties are simply the means of promoting the national welfare, he would have a strong one in the character of the opposition he encountered in the Convention. As General Bragg finely and happily said in seconding his nomination "We love him most of all for the enemies he has made." The hostility of Tammany and Butler, and in fact of whatever is basest and most demagogic in his own party, is of itself a tribute of which any public man might well be proud.

But he is by no means dependent on this negative kind of testimony. The enmity of corrupt intriguers might mean after all simply that his intentions were good, and that they merely feared that he would, if put in power, fail to answer their purpose. Cleveland has happily something far stronger than the promise of a strong character to commend him to the suffrages of good men of all parties. He is a tried administrator. One of the Blaine organs in its great agony has tried to relieve itself by calling him a man destitute of experience." Of one kind of experience experience in political trickery and manipulation, and in the art of making money for himself and his friends out of politicshe is indeed destitute. But the present extraordinary political crisis is due to the profound and growing popular belief that this kind of experience is too common among our statesmen, and that the Republican candidate in particular is too rich in it either for his own or his country's good. Of the kind of experience which the present situation in national affairs most imperatively calls for, experience in administration, Cleveland has more than anyone who has entered the White House since 1860, more than any man whom either party has nominated within that period, except Seymour and Tilden - more than Lincoln, more than Grant, more than Hayes, more than Garfield, more than Arthur.

He laid at the start the best of all foundations for American statesmanship by becoming a good lawyer. He began his executive career by being a good county sheriff. He was next intrusted

as severe a

with the administration of a great city [Buffalo] test of a man's capacity in dealing with men and affairs as any American in our time can undergo. In both offices he gave boundless satisfaction to his fellow-citizens of both parties. His nomination for the Governorship of this State came in due course, and at a crisis in State affairs which very closely resembled that which we are now witnessing in national affairs. His election by an unprecedented majority is now an old story. It was the beginning of a revolution. It was the first thorough fright the tricky and jobbing element in politics ever received here. It for the first time in the experience of such politicians gave reform an air of reality. But it might, had Cleveland proved a weak or incompetent man, have turned out a very bad blow for pure politics.

Luckily, he justified all the expectations and even all the hopes of those who voted for him. No friend of good government who, in disregard of party ties, cast his vote for him, has had reason to regret it for one moment. We owe to his vigorous support a large number of reformatory measures which people in this State for forty years had sighed for with little more expectation of seeing them enacted than of seeing the Millennium. In other words, he has arrested the growth of political despair among large numbers both of young and old voters in this State. His Messages, too, have been models of sound common sense and penetrating sagacity clothed in the terse and vigorous English which shows that there is a man and not a windy phrasemonger behind the pen. Though last, not least, his best work has been done in utter disregard of the hostility of that element in his own party which for so many years has been an object of mingled hate and fear to the best part of the American people. He is in truth a Democrat of the better age of the Democratic party, when it was a party of simplicity and economy, and might almost have put its platform into the golden rule of giving every man his due, minding your own business, and asking nothing of government but light taxes and security in the field and by the fireside. No one who has entered the White House for half a century, except Lincoln in his second term, has offered reformers such solid guarantees that as President he will do

his own thinking, and be his own master in the things which pertain to the Presidency. . .

The true question for a voter to ask himself about a Presidential candidate, especially in crises like the present, . . . are, In what way will he probably behave in the sphere of Presidential duties? What kind of nominations to office will he send to the Senate ? What considerations are likely to prevail with him in making removals? What sort of men are likely to surround him and be listened to by him at the White House? What is likely to be his attitude toward the moral and intellectual currents of the day, and toward the upward movements in American politics and society? How does he feel about money and rich men, and about the money-making enterprises which are the great snare and temptation of modern life? Has he the sobriety of judgment, the steadiness of temper, the maturity of character and the patient deliberativeness which high places and great cares imperatively call for? Is he a sound and prudent man of business, and has he a keen eye for the remoter consequences of legislation? Will he deal with foreign nations with the quiet and manly self-respect which becomes the representative of an industrious commercial people, among whom swashbucklers and military adventurers are despised or unknown?

These questions can, we believe, be answered as regards Mr. Cleveland in a way with which every friend of good government may be fully satisfied, and we commend him especially to the younger voters all over the country who long for a better era in politics, as a man to be trusted and worked for. Even those whose Republican traditions are most deeply rooted may rest assured that they can render no better service to the party they have long loved and supported than by securing his triumph. For this time a Democratic victory will arrest peremptorily, and, we believe, finally, the insolence and hopefulness of the corrupt and freebooting element among Republicans, which has found its final expression in the Blaine nomination, and has at last destroyed that dream of "reform within the party" which has for so many years sustained the patience of tens of thousands of its best members.

CHAPTER XIX

THE CLEVELAND DEMOCRACY

A PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT

tariff message of 1887

[537]

There is no more conspicuous example of President 110. The Cleveland's courageous fidelity to the avowed principles of the Democratic party or of his patriotic indifference to his own political preferment than his third annual message, of December 6, 1887, devoted entirely to the discussion of the reduction of the tariff.

Washington, December 6, 1887

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:

You are confronted at the threshold of your legislative duties with a condition of the national finances which imperatively demands immediate and careful consideration.

The amount of money annually exacted, through the operation of present laws, from the industries and necessities of the people largely exceeds the sum necessary to meet the expenses of the Government.

When we consider that the theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him, it is plain that the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. This wrong, inflicted upon those who bear the burden of national taxation, like other wrongs, multiplies a brood of evil consequences. The public Treasury, which should only exist as a conduit conveying the people's tribute to its legitimate objects of expenditure, becomes

a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder. . . .

On the 30th day of June, 1885, the excess of revenues over public expenditures, after complying with the annual requirements of the sinking-fund act, was $17,859,735.84; during the year ending June 30, 1886, such excess amounted to $49,405,545.20, and during the year ending June 30, 1887, it reached the sum of $55,567,849.54. . . the excess for the present year amounting on the first day of December to $55,258,701.19, and estimated to reach the sum of $113,000,000 on the 30th of June next, . . will swell the surplus in the Treasury to $140,000,000.

...

I have deemed it my duty to thus bring to the knowledge of my countrymen, as well as to the attention of their representatives charged with the responsibility of legislative relief, the gravity of our financial situation. . . . If disaster results from the continued inaction of Congress, the responsibility must rest where it belongs. . . .

Our scheme of taxation, by means of which this needless surplus is taken from the people and put into the public Treasury, consists of a tariff or duty levied upon importations from abroad and internal revenue taxes levied upon the consumption of tobacco and spirituous and malt liquors. It must be conceded that none of the things subjected to internal revenue taxation are, strictly speaking, necessaries. There appears to be no just complaint of this taxation by the consumers of these articles, and there seems to be nothing so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people.

But our present tariff laws, the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unnecessary taxation, ought to be at once revised and amended. These laws, as their primary and plain effect, raise the price to consumers of all articles imported and subject to duty, by precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of duty measures the tax paid by those who purchase for use those imported articles. Many of these things,