The Bay State Monthly, Volume 2, No. 2, November, 1884 | Page 5

the influence of the old rings, and more intent upon preventing the mayor from winning public favor which might, perchance, inure to the benefit of his party (though standing himself entirely beyond party in his relations to the public welfare), than upon the faithful discharge of their own duties, he succeeded, by the force of his own earnest personality, by searching investigation into the workings of all the departments of city affairs, by the ruthless exposure and denunciation of various corrupt schemes of jobbery and plunder, and by the persistent recommendation of measures and methods which commended themselves to his judgment, in accomplishing much in the way of the reform for which his election had been sought. He used the veto power with a vigor and a significance which had characterized the action of no predecessor in the office, and often regardless of the fact that its exercise might be distorted by designing enemies, personal or political, to insure him at least the temporary disapprobation of large classes of citizens; but he used it only when fully satisfied, through patient research and careful deliberation, that duty and obligation imperatively required it. It is conceded that in his brief year's administration he saved a million of dollars to the city treasury, stamped out numerous abuses, and stimulated the spirit of faithful devotion in various branches of the municipal service. Men of all parties unite in saying that the city of Buffalo was never favored with the services of a more faithful, conscientious, and thoroughly impartial executive head.
But he was not to continue the work of administrative reform in that particular field of labor. The people had called him "up higher." His reputation as a true Democrat, an honest reformer, and a faithful public servant, had spread abroad through the State, and when the Democratic State Convention assembled in the early autumn of that year it was clearly apparent that the nomination of Grover Cleveland, the reform mayor of Buffalo, as the candidate of the party for the supreme magistracy of the Empire State, was the one certain guaranty of overwhelming Democratic victory at the polls. That nomination was promptly made, and the result which followed was without parallel in the annals of American political history. He was elected governor by a majority of nearly two hundred thousand, and, although internal dissensions in the Republican party, then existing, contributed largely to the general result, the most significant feature of the election is found in the fact that the largest relative Democratic gain was made in his own county of Erie, where he received upwards of seven thousand majority against more than three thousand majority for Garfield in the last presidential election, showing him strongest before the people where his personal character and attributes, as well as his qualifications for positions of high public trust, are most thoroughly known.
As governor of New York, which position he has occupied for the last twenty months, first with a Democratic and later with a Republican legislature, Mr. Cleveland has followed the same rule of official conduct adopted for his guidance in other positions. Mindful of all proper obligations to his own political party, he has never permitted party demands to stand in the way of his duty to the public and the State. Believing, to quote his own language, "in an open and sturdy partisanship which secures the legitimate advantages of party supremacy," he also believes that parties were made for the people, and declares himself "unwilling, knowingly, to give assent to measures purely partisan which will sacrifice or endanger the people's interests." In the office of governor, as well as in that of mayor, he has made vigorous but discriminate use of the veto power, and in the one case, as in the other, it has invariably been found, upon candid investigation, that his action has been taken under a profound sense of the binding authority of the fundamental law, and with an unflinching regard for the rights and interests of the whole people,--however violent, at times, may have been the denunciation of demagogic opponents, or clamorous the protests of those who sought merely temporary advantages in particular directions, regardless of ultimate results upon the general welfare. In this, as in other positions, his general line of action has been such as to command the hearty approval of patriotic men of all parties; and if he has incurred the hostility of any, it has been through his opposition to the schemes of corrupt rings and the purposes of selfish individuals, which he regarded detrimental to the public good; or through his support of wholesome measures, calculated to protect the body politic, and thwart their illegitimate designs in other directions.
And now, Grover Cleveland stands before the people of the whole country the duly nominated candidate of