In most matters of public policy, save in emergencies, Grant let matters be shaped by the men whom he had taken into his counsel--in his official Cabinet or the "kitchen cabinet"--and by the Republican leaders in Congress, of whom the controlling group, especially in the Senate, were in close touch with the White House. His affiliations were with men of material power, men who had strongly administered civil or military affairs, stout partisans, faithful friends and vigorous haters. His tastes did not draw him to the idealists, the scholars, the reformers. He was accessible to good fellowship, he was easily imposed on by men who were seeking their own ends, and he was very slow to abandon any one whom he had once trusted. Absolutely honest, the thieves stole all round him. Magnanimous at heart, the bitter partisans often made him their tool. Of the great questions of the time, the English quarrel was brought to an admirable healing, under the management of the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, in 1871, by the joint high commission, the treaty of Washington, and the Geneva award. In the long contest for a sound currency, the inflation policy received its death-blow by the President's veto in 1874, and resumption was undertaken when Sherman carried his bill through Congress in 1875. As to honesty of administration, the president's good intentions were constantly baffled through his misplaced and tenacious confidences. The vast expenditures of the war, the cheating incident to its great contracts, the speculation favored by a fluctuating currency, the huge enterprises invited by the return of peace,--had infected private and public life with a kind of fever; the treasury was an easy mark; and while the people held to Grant for his personal honesty, and re-elected him, an army of rogues throve under his lax administration.