The thundering echoes of this Convention announcing the nomination of Grover Cleveland will not have died out over the hills and through the valleys of this land before you will hear and see all our leaders rallying to the support of our candidate.
They will begin their efforts for organization and success and continue their work until victory crowns their efforts. All Democrats will fight for victory, and they will succeed because the principles of the party enunciated here are for the best interests of the country at large and because the people of this land have unquestioning faith that Grover Cleveland will give the country a pure, honest and stable government and an administration from which the great business interests of the country and the agricultural and laboring interests of the masses will receive proper and due consideration.
The question has been asked, Why is it that the masses of the party demand the nomination of Grover Cleveland? Why is it that this man who has no offices to distribute, no wealth to command, should have stirred the spontaneous support of the great body of Democracy? Why is it that with all that has been urged against him the people still cry “Give us Cleveland?” Why is it, though he has pronounced in honest, clear and able language his views upon questions upon which some of his party may differ with him, that he is still near and dear to the masses?
It is because he has crystallized into a living issue the great principle upon which this battle is to be fought out. If he did not create tariff reform he made it a Presidential issue; he vitalized it and presented it to our party as the issue for which we could fight and continue to battle until upon it victory is now assured.
There are few men in his position who would have the courage to boldly make the issue and present it so clearly and forcibly as he did in his great message of 1887. I believe that his policy then was to force a national issue which would appeal to the judgment of the people.
We must honor a man who is honest enough and bold enough under such circumstances to proclaim that the success of the party upon principle is better than evasion or shirking of true national issues for temporary success. When victory is obtained upon a principle, it forms the solid foundation of party success in the future.
It is no longer the question of a battle to be won on the mistakes of our foes, but it is a victory to be accomplished by a charge along the whole line under the banner of principle.
There is another reason why the people demand his nomination. They feel that the tariff reform views of ex-President Cleveland and the principles laid down in his great message, whatever its temporary effect may have been, give us a live and a vital issue to fight for, which has made the great victories since 1888 possible. It consolidated in one solid phalanx the Democracy of the nation.
In every State of this union that policy has been placed in Democratic platforms and our battles have been fought upon it, and this great body of representative Democrats have seen its good results.
Every man in this Convention recognizes the policy of the party. In Massachusetts it gave us a Russell. In Iowa it gave us a Boies. In Wisconsin it gave us a Peck for Governor and Vilas for Senator. In Michigan it gave us Winans for Governor and gave us a Democratic Legislature, and will give us eight electoral votes for President.