"The increase of power in the Federal government during the last twenty years, the creation of a vast office-holding class, with its numerous dependents, and the growth of the means of corrupt influence, have well nigh destroyed the balance of our complex system. It was my judgment in 1876 that public opinion, demanding a change of administration, needed to embrace two-thirds of the people at the beginning of the canvass, in order to cast a majority of the votes at the election. If this tendency is not arrested its inevitable result will be the practical destruction of our system. Let the Federal government grasp power over the great corporations of our country and acquire the means of addressing their interests and their fears; let it take jurisdiction of riots which it is the duty of the State to suppress; let it find pretexts for increasing the army, and soon those in possession of the government will have a power with which no opposition can successfully compete. The experience of France under the Third Napoleon shows that, with elective forms and universal suffrage, despotism can be established and maintained. In the canvass of 1876 the Federal government embarked in the contest with unscrupulous activity. A member of the Cabinet was the head of a partisan committee. Agents stood at the doors of the pay offices to exact contributions from official subordinates. The whole office-holding class were made to exhaust their power. Even the army, for the first time, to the disgust of the soldiers and many of the officers, was moved about the country as an electioneering instrument. All this was done under the eye of the beneficiary of it, who was making the air vocal with professions of civil service reform, to be begun after he had himself exhausted all the immoral advantages of civil service abuses. Public opinion in some States was overdone by corrupt influences and by fraud. But so strong was the desire for reform that the Democratic candidates received 4,300,000 suffrages. This was a majority of the popular vote of about 300,000, and of 1,250,000 of the white citizens. It was a vote of 700,000 larger than General Grant received in 1872, and 1,300,000 larger than he received in 1868. For all that, the rightfully elected candidates of the Democratic party were counted out, and a great fraud triumphed, which the American people have not condoned and will never condone. [Prolonged applause and cheers.] Yes, the crime will never be condoned, and it never should be. I do not denounce the fraud as affecting my personal interests, but because it stabbed the very foundations of free government. [Loud cheers.] I swear in the presence of you all, and I call upon you to bear witness to the oath, to watch, during the