The unprecedented majority which Cleveland received in this election and his excellent administration as Governor of New York secured for him the Democratic nomination for President in 1884. New York State decided the election, but the vote was so close that for some days the result was in doubt and the country was nervous lest there should be another disputed Presidency; in the end it was determined that Cleveland had carried that state by a plurality of 1149. Cleveland was the first Democratic President elected since 1856; the Democrats had been out of office for twenty-four years, and it had galled them to think that their historic party had so long been deprived of power and patronage. While many of their leaders had a good record on the question of Civil Service Reform, the rank and file believed in the Jacksonian doctrine of rewarding party workers with the offices, or, as most of them would have put it, "To the victors belong the spoils." With this principle so fixed in the minds of his supporters, it became an interesting question how Cleveland would meet it. No one could doubt that he would enforce fairly the statute, but would he content himself with this and use the offices not covered by the act to reward his followers in the old Democratic fashion? An avowed civil service reformer, and warmly supported by independents and some former Republicans on that account, he justified the confidence which they had reposed in him and refused "to make a clean sweep." In resisting this very powerful pressure from his party he accomplished much toward the establishment of the merit system in the civil service. It is true that he made political changes gradually, but his insistence on a rule which gained him time for reflection in making appointments was of marked importance. It would be idle to assert that in his two terms he lived wholly up to the ideal of the reformers; undoubtedly a long list of backslidings might be made up, but in striking a fair balance it is not too much to say that in this respect his administration made for righteousness. All the more credit is due him in that he not only resisted personal pressure, but, aspiring to be a party leader for the carrying out of a cherished policy on finance and the tariff, he made more difficult the accomplishment of these ends by refusing to be a mere partisan in the question of the offices. In his second term it is alleged, probably with truth, that he made a skillful use of his patronage to secure the passage by the Senate of the repeal of the Silver Act of 1890, which repeal had gone easily through the House. It seemed to him and to many financiers that unless this large purchase of silver bullion should be stopped the country would be forced on to a silver basis, the existing financial panic would be grievously intensified, and the road back to the sound money basis of the rest of the civilized world would be long and arduous. His course is defended as