Lay siege to the patronage of Government, engrossing the time of public officers with their importunities, spreading abroad the contagion of their disappointment, and filling the air with the tumult of their discontent.
Rather florid, rather oriental phrase, but in its exactness mathematical; a demonstration in geometry could not be more explicit and satisfactory than that description by President Cleveland of the occupation and the lamentations of the Democratic party. It will bear repetition.
Lay siege to the patronage of Government, engrossing the time of public officers with their importunities, spreading abroad the contagion of their disappointment, and filling the air with the tumult of their discontent.
A besieging, importunate, contagious, tumultuous, discontented organization.
There is more to the same effect in this document that I should like to read, but time does not serve, nor is it material, because there are other independent utterances to which I must pass; and I do this for the purpose of showing the consistent and persistent adhesion of the President of the United States to the declarations with which he started out when he commenced to administer the Government.
On the 30th day of January, 1886, the ordinary avenues of communication with the public being inaccessible, President Cleveland availed himself of the interviewer, and in the Boston Herald was printed a long letter detailing in quotations a conversation with President Cleveland, the many points of which will be found below. This was after this controversy, if you call it so, between the President and Senate, had begun to develop and there were some indications of approaching misunderstanding or disagreement:
He next spoke of his position toward the Senate in the matter of confirmations to office. He said it gave him some anxiety, for the Senate had been a good while in disclosing what it meant to do. “They seem”—
He says plaintively—
“to distrust me,” said he, “if I am to accept what I hear from others. But I hear nothing from them. They have not called upon me for information or for documents.”
That complaint no longer exists.