But _how far_ should you carry the spirit of compromise and concession--_how far_ tolerate what you believe to be error in order to obtain an over-balancing good? This is the puzzle of statesmen, and indeed of every man, so far as he undertakes any part, even though only as a private citizen, in public concerns. There are two ways of dealing with it. One is to shirk it by an indolent abandonment of the important offices of social and public life. The other is to meet it with the best solution we can find. Tilden had little regard for the first of these methods. He accepted the second; and with his matchless ability for drawing a line up to which we must, but beyond which we must not go, he would have had little excuse for the other choice. There were several occasions when he felt obliged to draw this line and rigidly observe it, although the result might be immediately disastrous to the party to which he was attached and to his own personal ambitions. His opposition, in 1871, to Tammany Hall, already noticed, is an instance. Occupying, as he then did, the important post of chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee, he could not step out of the local organization in the metropolis and make war upon its leaders without seeming disloyalty to his party, nor without endangering its success in the next State election. But he determined, against combined solicitations and threats, to take this course, and the result showed the wisdom of his choice, even as a measure of party policy. And again, when the irredeemable paper-money delusion had to a far greater degree than the free silver coinage craze gained possession of the popular mind throughout the West and South, and in the view of many ardent politicians promised a victory to the Democratic party if that party would extend some favor to it, he compelled from the national convention of the party a repudiation of the heresy. No temporary advantage which his party might gain would in his view be worth acceptance, if purchased at the price of such a sacrifice of fundamental principle.