I do not believe in the establishment in this country of the German bureaucratic system, with its permanent staff of office-holders who are not responsible to the people, and whose tenure of place knows no variation and no end except the end of life. In my judgment a genuine reform of the evils complained of is reached by the vigorous simplification of the machinery of government, by the repeal of all superfluous laws, the abolition of every needless office, and the dismissal of every needless officer. The true American doctrine on this subject consists in the diminution of government, not in its increase. For all of its opposition to Cleveland, whom it dubbed the “stuffed prophet,” the _Sun_ preferred him to General Harrison in the campaign of 1888. It feared a return to power of the influences which it had combated during the administrations of Grant and Hayes. Four years afterward, however, the _Sun_ was strongly against the third nomination of Cleveland. In Mr. Cleveland’s second term the _Sun_ supported his course when Dana believed it to be American. While at first it considered the President too mild and conciliatory in matters of foreign policy, it praised him and his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, for their stand against Great Britain in the Venezuela boundary dispute; praised them just as heartily as it had condemned Mr. Cleveland’s earlier action in the Hawaiian matter, when the President withdrew the treaty of annexation which his predecessor had sent to the Senate. The _Sun’s_ most deadly weapon, ridicule, was constantly in play in the years of the Hawaiian complications. It found vulnerable spots in Mr. Cleveland’s re-establishment of the deposed Queen Liliuokalani and in the President’s sending of a commissioner--“Paramount” Blount, as the _Sun_ called him--without the advice and consent of the Senate. As jealous then as it is to-day of any raid by the Executive upon the Constitution or the powers of Congress, the _Sun_ had the satisfaction of a complete victory in the Hawaiian matter. On the other hand, the _Sun_ applauded Mr. Cleveland’s attitude on the money question and his brave stand against the mob in the Chicago railway strikes of 1894, when the President used troops to prevent the obstruction of the mails by Eugene V. Debs and his followers. Dana was seventy-seven years old when William J. Bryan--whom the _Sun_ had already immortalized as the Boy Orator of the Platte--was nominated for the Presidency in 1896, but the veteran editor went at the task of exposing the free-silver fallacy with the same blithe vigour that he had shown twenty years before. His opinion, printed in the _Sun_ of August 6, 1896, is a good example of Dana’s clear style: