hey naturally turned to Cleveland, and he was elected by a plurality of
two hundred thousand.

He found the same condition of things on a larger scale at Albany as at
Buffalo--a corrupt machine paying political debts with public money--and
here, again, he showed the same astonishing regard for pre-election
pledges, the same belief in his famous declaration that "a public office
is a public trust," and bill after bill was vetoed, while the people
applauded. And with every veto came a message stating its reasons in
language which did not mince words and which all could understand. He
showed himself not only to be entirely beyond the control of the
political machine of his own party, but also to possess remarkable moral
courage, and he became naturally and inevitably the Democratic candidate
for President, since the Democratic platform was in the main an
arraignment of Republican corruption and moral decay. The campaign which
followed was a bitter one; but Blaine had estranged a large portion of
his party, he made a number of bad blunders, and Cleveland was elected.
The old party founded by Jefferson, which, beginning with Jefferson's
administration, had ruled the country uninterruptedly for forty years,
was returned to power, and on an issue which would have delighted
Jefferson's heart.

Much to the dismay and disappointment of the politicians, the new
President made no clean sweep of Republican officeholders. He took the
unheard-of ground that, in the public service, as in any other, good
work merited advancement, no matter what the politics of the individual
might be. He made some changes, as a matter of course, but he was from
the first sturdily in favor of civil service reform. It is worth
remarking that a Democratic President was the first to take a decided
stand against the principle of "to the victors belong the spoils," first
put into practice by another Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, over
fifty years before.

His stand, too, on the pension question was startling in its audacity.
The shadow of the Civil War still hung over the country; the soldiers
who had served in that war had formed themselves into a great,
semi-political organization, known as the Grand Army of the Republic,
and worked unceasingly for increased pensions, which Congress had found
itself unable to refuse. More than that, the members of Congress were in
the habit of passing hundreds of special bills, giving pensions to men
whose claims