The malice of personal and party hostility, working upon this natural tendency, has found an easy acceptance of its calumnies. But, beside this, Governor Tilden was a practical leader in affairs, both of business and politics; and although he was all openness and candor in his public discussions, yet in his methods of action he could not, any more than other men, dispense with secrecy and reserve; and as he was apt to excel others in whatever methods he adopted, he perhaps excelled them in secretiveness as well. A good share of another quality which does not tend to secure admiration for the possessor fell to Mr. Tilden. It was not unnatural that a man so conscious of superior powers should be somewhat vain. Men do not like to have "I told you so" flung into their ears at every turn in the course of events, and Mr. Tilden had a habit of doing this. But he was by no means wanting in the sense of moral earnestness, and he had a just perception of the occasions demanding the exercise of that faculty. He was well aware that fraud and corruption could not be successfully combated with the weapons of reason, and that they did not deserve to be reasoned with. When he found himself confronted by the powerful Canal Ring, which had fattened for a generation upon fraudulent contracts for repairs and pretended improvements to the canals, a ring which had founded wealthy and influential families, and had its stipendiaries among the able lawyers of the State, he perceived that it was a warfare in which no quarter could be given, and which could not be carried on by the weapons of facts and figures alone. He courageously determined to invade, single-handed, the strongholds of his enemies, and to arouse against them the moral indignation of the people. Using a vacation from pressing official duties, he made a series of speeches in a tour along the line of the canals from Buffalo to Albany. Flinging aside his customary temperance and moderation, he denounced his adversaries--men of wealth and the highest social standing--as criminals, and summoned the people to stand by his side in an effort to enforce against them the criminal law. Speaking at Syracuse, in the midst of the men he was condemning, he said: "Here, under your own eyes and your own observation, these transactions have been carried on in open day, by a combination that has sought to rule the State.... I was called upon this morning to speak some words of encouragement and hope to four hundred little boys in the Western House of Refuge. During all my journey I have been frequently followed by persons asking for their friends and those in whom they were interested a pardon from the penitentiaries and State-prisons. I have been compelled to look into such cases to see who are the inmates of these institutions, and of what they have been accused, and to ascertain what it is that constitutes the wrong to society of which they have been convicted.