Mr. Robert M. McLane, later Governor of Maryland and Minister to France--a man of rare ability and large experience, who had served in Congress and in diplomacy, and was an old friend of Mr. Tilden--had been at a Gramercy Park conference when my New Orleans report arrived, and had then and there urged the agitation recommended by me. He was now again in New York. When a lad he had been in England with his father, Lewis McLane, then American Minister to the Court of St. James’s, during the excitement over the Reform Bill of 1832. He had witnessed the popular demonstrations and had been impressed by the direct force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers. An analogous situation had arrived in America. The Republican Senate was as the Tory House of Lords. We must organize a movement such as had been so effectual in England. Obviously something was going amiss with us and something had to be done. [Illustration: From the painting by Cordelia Adele Fassett, in the Senate wing of the Capitol at Washington. After a photograph, copyright, 1878, by Mrs. S. M. Fassett THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION TO CONSIDER THE CASE OF THE FLORIDA RETURNS, IN THE SUPREME COURT ROOM, FEBRUARY 5, 1877] NOTE TO “THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION,” ETC. (SEE THE PREVIOUS PAGE) With the purpose of making a picture typical of the sessions of the Electoral Commission, Mrs. Fassett included prominent people who were in Washington at the time, and who gave the artist sittings in the Supreme Court Room. The Commissioners on the bench, from left to right are: Senators Thurman, Bayard (writing), Frelinghuysen, Morton, Edmunds; Supreme Court Justices Strong, Miller, Clifford, Field, Bradley; Members of the House, Payne, Hunton, Abbott, Garfield, and Hoar. At the left, below Thurman, is the head of Senator Kernan who acted as substitute for the former when ill. William M. Evarts, counsel for Hayes, is addressing the Commission, and his associate, E. W. Stoughton (white-haired), sits behind him; Charles O’Conor, chief counsel for Tilden, sits at his left. Other members of counsel are grouped in the middle-ground. At the left is seen George Bancroft (with long white beard), and in the middle foreground (looking out), James G. Blaine. It was agreed that I return to Washington and make a speech “feeling the pulse” of the country, with the suggestion that in the National Capital should assemble “a mass convention of at least one hundred thousand peaceful citizens,” exercising “the freeman’s right of petition.”