The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 2, November, 1884Various
History
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 2, November, 1884
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
But he was not to continue the work of administrative reform in that
particular field of labor. The people had called him "up higher." His
reputation as a true Democrat, an honest reformer, and a faithful public
servant, had spread abroad through the State, and when the Democratic
State Convention assembled in the early autumn of that year it was
clearly apparent that the nomination of Grover Cleveland, the reform
mayor of Buffalo, as the candidate of the party for the supreme
magistracy of the Empire State, was the one certain guaranty of
overwhelming Democratic victory at the polls. That nomination was
promptly made, and the result which followed was without parallel in the
annals of American political history. He was elected governor by a
majority of nearly two hundred thousand, and, although internal
dissensions in the Republican party, then existing, contributed largely
to the general result, the most significant feature of the election is
found in the fact that the largest relative Democratic gain was made in
his own county of Erie, where he received upwards of seven thousand
majority against more than three thousand majority for Garfield in the
last presidential election, showing him strongest before the people
where his personal character and attributes, as well as his
qualifications for positions of high public trust, are most thoroughly
known.
As governor of New York, which position he has occupied for the last
twenty months, first with a Democratic and later with a Republican
legislature, Mr. Cleveland has followed the same rule of official
conduct adopted for his guidance in other positions. Mindful of all
proper obligations to his own political party, he has never permitted
party demands to stand in the way of his duty to the public and the
State. Believing, to quote his own language, "in an open and sturdy
partisanship which secures the legitimate advantages of party
supremacy," he also believes that parties were made for the people, and
declares himself "unwilling, knowingly, to give assent to measures
purely partisan which will sacrifice or endanger the people's
interests." In the office of governor, as well as in that of mayor, he
has made vigorous but discriminate use of the veto power, and in the one
case, as in the other, it has invariably been found, upon candid
investigation, that his action has been taken under a profound sense of
the binding authority of the fundamental law, and with an unflinching
regard for the rights and interests of the whole people,--however
violent, at times, may have been the denunciation of demagogic
opponents, or clamorous the protests of those who sought merely
temporary advantages in particular directions, regardless of ultimate
results upon the general welfare. In this, as in other positions, his
general line of action has been such as to command the hearty approval
of patriotic men of all parties; and if he has incurred the hostility of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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