in their supremacy.

It is too late for complaints, and complaints were vain when the causes
were transpiring, but there were delegates who appeared in the
convention as opponents of General Grant who had been elected upon the
understanding that they were his friends. Upon this fact I hang a
single observation. If there is a trust in human affairs that should be
treated as a sacred trust it is to be found in the duty that arises
from the acceptance of a representative office in matters of government.
When a public opinion has been formed, either in regard to men or to
measures, whoever undertakes to represent that opinion should do so in
good faith.

To this rule there were many exceptions in the Republican Convention of
1880, and it was no slight evidence of devotion to the party and to the
country when General Grant and Mr. Conkling entered actively into the
contest after the fortunes of the party had been prostrated, apparently,
by the disaster in the State of Maine.

Of the many incidents of the convention no one is more worthy of notice
than the speech of Mr. Conkling when he placed General Grant in
nomination. Whatever he said that was in support of his cause,
affirmatively, was of the highest order of dramatic eloquence. When he
dealt with his opponents, his speech was not advanced in quality and its
influence was diminished. His reference in his opening sentence to his
associates who had deserted General Grant: "In obedience to
instructions which I should never dare to disregard," was tolerated even
by his enemies; but his allusion to Mr. Blaine in these words: "without
patronage, without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus,
without telegraph wires running from his house to this convention, or
running from his house anywhere," intensified the opposition to General
Grant.

In many particulars his speech is an unequaled analysis of General
Grant's character and career, presented in a most attractive form. An
extract may be tolerated from a speech that can be read with interest
even by those who are ignorant of the doings, or it may be, by those
who have no knowledge of the existence, of the convention:

"Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm,
simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he
has seen not only the high-born and the titled, but the poor and the
lowly, in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him."

Mr. Con