"In the four years which have since elapsed, nothing has occurred to weaken, but everything to strengthen, the considerations which induced my withdrawal from public life. To all who have addressed me on the subject, my intention has been frankly communicated. Several of my most confidential friends, under the sanction of their own names, have publicly stated my determination to be irreversible. That I have occasion now to consider the question is an event for which I have no responsibility. The appeal made to me by the Democratic masses, with apparent unanimity, to serve them once more, is entitled to the most deferential consideration, and would inspire a disposition to do anything desired of me, if it were consistent with my judgment of duty. "I believe that there is no instrumentality in human society so potential in its influence upon mankind for good or evil, as the governmental machinery for administering justice, and for making and executing laws. Not all the eleemosynary institutions of private benevolence to which philanthropists may devote their lives are so fruitful in benefits as the rescue and preservation of this machinery from the perversions that make it the instrument of conspiracy and crime, against the most sacred rights and interests of the people. "For fifty years, as a private citizen, never contemplating an official career, I have devoted at least as much thought and effort to the duty of influencing aright the action of the governmental institutions of my country, as to all other objects. I have never accepted official service except for a brief period, for a special purpose, and only when the occasion seemed to require from me that sacrifice of private preferences to the public welfare. "I undertook the State administration of New York because it was supposed that in that way only could the executive power be arrayed on the side of the reforms to which, as a private citizen, I had given three years of my life. "I accepted the nomination for the Presidency in 1876 because of the general conviction that my candidacy would best present the issue of reform which the Democratic majority of the people desired to have worked out in the Federal government as it had been in that of the State of New York. I believed that I had strength enough then to renovate the administration of the government of the United States, and at the close of my term to hand over the great trust to a successor faithful to the same policy. "Though anxious to seek the repose of private life, I nevertheless acted upon the idea that every power is a trust, and involves a duty. In reply to the address of the committee communicating my nomination, I depicted the difficulties of the undertaking, and likened my feelings in engaging in it to those of a soldier entering battle; but I did not withhold the entire consecration of my powers to the public service.