to mean
the use of money for corrupt purposes. He made a fatal mistake,
as it always seemed to me, in permitting the resignation of
President Garfield's Cabinet and filling their places with
men who, like himself, belonged to the Grant faction. If
he had said that he would not allow the act of an assassin
to make a change in the forces that were to control the Administration
so far as could be helped and that he would carry into effect
the purposes of his predecessor, wherever he could in conscience
do so, he would have maintained himself in the public esteem.
But that was not his only mistake. Inconsiderately he lent
himself to the popular prejudice against the policy of river
and harbor improvements, and, in vetoing a bill passed by
large majorities in both Houses of Congress, he sent in a
message in which he said in substance that the more corrupt
the measure the more votes it was likely to get in Congress.
When in the next winter he was asked to specify the objectionable
items in the bill he had vetoed, which appropriated about
$18,000,000, he was able to point out less than five per cent.
of all the appropriations which he could say he thought were
for purposes not required by the interests of international
or interstate commerce. And his claim was thoroughly refuted
even in regard to the items which he specified. He also
made some very bad appointments, which deeply offended the
best Republican sentiment in many of the States. It is a
little singular that the appointment of the Collector of
the Port of Boston should have cost two Presidents of the
United States a renomination. Yet so it is. The old feeling
in Massachusetts that it was not, on the whole, desirable
to nominate Mr. Blaine existed in great strength. The business
men liked Arthur. They thought their interests were safe
with him. But the honest Republican sentiment of Massachusetts
was deeply outraged by the appointment to the office of Collector
of Boston, of Mr. Roland Worthington, against the protest
of her Senators and Representatives in Congress. He had been
known only as an unscrupulous supporter of General Butler,
and as the editor of a scurrilous newspaper which bitterly
attacked the opponents of that person even where they were
honest and trusted Republicans. To give this place to Mr.
Worthington the President refused to reappoint Mr. Beard,
who had made an admirable Collector, and who was supported
by a large majority of the