Political parties are social groups in the nation, allied by common purposes and kindred aspirations for the accomplishment of beneficial results. When parties perish this Government will expire, for we all understand that in this country the only government is the party in power. Here is no dynasty, no ruling family, nothing corresponding to the functions of government under other systems except the party that is for the time being intrusted by the votes of a majority of the people with the execution of their will. And, sir, when a majority of the people declare that there shall be a change of administration, it is necessarily implied that there shall be a change of those agencies through which alone political administration can be made effectual. It is useless to juggle and palter about this matter. A change of administration is a change of policies and methods, and the Chief Magistrate is entitled to the co-operation of agents and ministers who are in sympathy with his opinions and the doctrines which he is chosen to enforce and maintain.
Sir, unless the President of the United States is to be a mummy swathed in the cerements of the grave, he must have powers commensurate with his duties. He is charged to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and unless he has the power to select the agencies through which the laws are administered, through which the revenues are collected and disbursed, the post-offices conducted, the Indians supported and controlled, the glory and honor of the nation maintained, that duty imposed upon him by the Constitution is an idle phrase; it means nothing; it is an empty formula. Charged with these great duties, liable to impeachment if they are not properly performed, how can it be claimed with justice that there shall be an interpolation of novel doctrines of reform, under which while the chief is still to be held responsible, he shall be deprived of all the agencies and ministrations under the Constitution by which they can alone be so administered, in sympathy with him and the policy that he represents.
Therefore, sir, I am confident that when it was ascertained in November, 1884, that a change of the political majority in this country had been registered, there was a general faith and conviction that a change of official holdings would follow. The Democratic party desired it; the Republican party expected it, and would have been content; and had it been done the people at large would have said with one accord, amen. But this generation has witnessed the genesis of a new political gospel; a novel organization has appeared upon earth; a new school of political philosophers who announce that non-partisanship is the panacea for all the evils that afflict the Republic. Having no avowed opinions upon the great topics of the hour, they feebly decry the corruptions of the American system, and peevishly and irritably declare that the Government is degenerate and degraded, and that the true prescription to elevate, reform, and purify the public service is to prevent the clerks from being removed out of their places in the Departments. This brotherhood has not been hitherto very largely re-enforced from the Democracy. If there has been an original civil-service reformer who has deserted from the ranks of the Democracy, history does not record his name. It has been left to the party to which I belong to afford conspicuous and shining illustrations of that class of political thinkers who are never quite sure that they are supporting a party unless they are reviling the candidates and denouncing its platform, who are not positive that they are standing erect unless they are leaning over backward, and whose idea of reforming the organization in which they profess to be classified is to combine with its adversaries and vote for candidates who openly spurn their professions and depreciate the stock in trade which they denominate their principles. Standing on the corners of the streets, enlarging the borders of their phylacteries, they loudly advertise their perfections, thanking God that they are not as other men, even these Republicans and Democrats; they traffic with both to ascertain which they can most profitably betray.
Mr. President, the neuter gender is not popular either in nature or society. “Male and female created He them.” But there is a third sex, if that can sex be called which sex has none, resulting sometimes from a cruel caprice of nature, at others from accident or malevolent design, possessing the vices of both and the virtues of neither; effeminate without being masculine or feminine; unable either to beget or to bear; possessing neither fecundity nor virility; endowed with the contempt of men and the derision of women, and doomed to sterility, isolation, and extinction. But they have two recognized functions. They sing falsetto, and they are usually selected as the guardians of the seraglios of Oriental despots.
And thus to pass from the illustration to the fact, these political epicenes, without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity, chant in shrill falsetto their songs of praise of non-partisanship and civil-service reform, and apparently have been selected as the harmless custodians of the conscience of the national Executive.
Sir, I am not disposed to impugn the good faith, the patriotism, the sincerity, the many unusual traits and faculties of the President of the United States. He is the sphinx of American politics. It is said that he is a fatalist; that he regards himself as the child of fate—the man of destiny; and that he places devout and implicit reliance upon the guiding influence of his star. Certainly, whether he be a very great man or a very small man, he is a very extraordinary man. His career forbids any other conclusion.
The Democratic party was not wanting when its convention assembled at Chicago in many renowned and illustrious characters; men who had led the forlorn hope in its darkest and most desperate days; men for whose character and achievements, for whose fame and history, not only that organization but the country had the profoundest admiration and respect. There was Thurman, and Bayard, and Hendricks, and Tilden, and McDonald, and others perhaps not less worthy and hardly less illustrious, upon whom the mantle of that great distinction might have fallen; but the man at the mature age of thirty-five abandoned a liberal and honored profession to become the sheriff of Erie, without known opinions and destitute of experience or training in public affairs, outstripped them all in the race of ambition; and when but little more than a year ago he entered this Chamber as the President elect of the United States, he encountered the curious scrutiny of an audience to whom he was a stranger in feature as in fame; a stranger to the leaders of his own party as well as to the representatives of all the nations of the earth who had assembled to witness the gorgeous pageant of his inauguration.
Sir, the career of Napoleon was sudden, startling, and dramatic. There have been many soldiers of fortune who have sprung at one bound from obscurity to fame, but no illustration of the caprices of destiny so brilliant and bewildering is recorded in history as the elevation of Grover Cleveland to the Chief Magistracy of sixty millions of people.
If when he was inaugurated he had determined that the functions of Government should be exercised by officers selected from his own party the nation would have been content; but he did not so determine, and herein and hereon is founded the justification that the majority of the Senate can satisfactorily use and employ in demanding that no action shall be had in connection with these suspensions from office until there has been satisfactory assurances that injustice has not been done. If it were understood that these suspensions and removals were made for political reasons the country would be content, the Republican majority in the Senate would be content. But what is the attitude? Ever since his inauguration and for many months before, by many utterances, official and private, in repeated declarations never challenged, Mr. Cleveland announced that he would not so administer this Government. At the very outset, in his letter of acceptance, he denounced the doctrine of partisan changes in the patronage, and through all of his political manifestoes down to the present time he has repeated these assurances with emphatic and unchanging monotony.
He has declared that there should be no changes in office, where the incumbents were competent and qualified, for political reasons, but that they should be permitted to serve their terms. Like those who were grinding at the mill, one has been taken and another has been left. Some Republicans have been suspended and others have been retained. What is the irresistible inference? What is the logic of the events, except that, in view of what the President has declared, every man who is suspended is suspended for cause, and not for political reasons? It is not possible to suspect the President of duplicity and treacherous deception.