to say to you, Joseph E. McDonald is worthy of your consideration as the candidate for President of the United States. [Loud applause.] What is Indiana, and what is the Democracy of Indiana? This mighty State, that is neither of the East nor of the West, but sitting midway between the East and West, resting upon Ohio, associating in commerce, in trade, in good neighborship with adjoining States, this great State has said to us: Present the name of Mr. McDonald to the greatest Convention the world has ever seen' [applause], and for Indiana I make my appeal to you to-day. What heed will you give to Indiana? For twenty-five years, during which I have had some responsible connection with this great party, she has been without strife or discord in her ranks. [Applause.] She acted always as one man; and when the election days have come, the tread of her Democracy has been as the tread of one regiment when the hour of battle is at hand. [Applause.] You know very well, gentlemen, that Indiana makes no question whether your candidate shall live in New York, or Delaware, or Kentucky. You know very well that when the crisis comes. Indiana will give him her vote. Are you going to make it against Indiana because she is so faithful, because she will not hesitate? Are you going to say from election to election, from Convention to Convention: We need not trouble about that solid State. She is all right. Her vote will go well at the election. We must take careoh, just by the way of illustration-we must take care of New York.' [Great laughter and applause.] Is that where, as a representative of the Democracy of Indiana, these thirty gentlemen and myself have to stand in your presence? We ask not a favor because Indiana is true. always, but we ask that that shall not come in judgment against her. [Applause.] When many of your States hesitated, when war had passed, when the smoke of battle had blown away, and the sour of guns upon the plains

and among the mountains had ceased, and you struggled and we struggled, Indiana was the first State to carry the banner of Democracy to the front.

And now, gentlemen, a man of good attainments, of high character, indorsed by my State-I present his name to you, and all I ask is justice. The humblest of us may ask that much; and when it shall come to be that in a Democratic Convention justice may not be asked, then perhaps I would better review the practices of the past and not come to Conventions at all. [Laughter and applause.] I thank you, brother Democrats, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the attention you have given me while I have spoken for a friend. [Great and continued applause; a great number of the delegates rising to their feet and swinging their hats, etc.]

XVIII. THE KEY NOTE OF EIGHTY-FOUR.

SPEECH AT THE IMPROMPTU RATIFICATION MEETING,

Governor's Circle, Indianapolis, July 12, 1884.

My Fellow Citizens: You are almost as mad as they were in the Convention at Chicago. I thought they would not let up there at all; and I thought there was no limit to the crowd of people there, but I find there is a larger, almost, here. I am very much encouraged and delighted to meet you on this occasion. You come to celebrate and to express your approval of the nominations that were made at Chicago. I am glad that you are cordial in this expression. This is a great year with us. Every fourth year we elect two great officers of the Government. This is our great year, and every man, whatever his party association is, is called upon to reconsider all questions upon which he is disposed to act,

and having reconsidered, to cast his vote in favor of what he believes to be right.

The Democracy of Indiana appointed me one of the delegates to the Convention at Chicago. I spent nearly a week in attendance in that city, and I now return to say a few things to you, and only a few things, in regard to that Convention. It was the largest Convention ever held in America. Never has such an assemblage of people been seen before. It was a Convention marked in its character for sobriety, deliberation and purposes. It selected two men to carry the banner; and leaving that Convention and going out before the people, the question is, will you help carry the banner? I do not expect—I have no right to expect-that I will escape criticism, and it may be slander, of the opposite party. I have not in my life suffered very much from that; but I come before you, Democrats, Conservatives, Independents, all men who wish to restore the Government to the position it occupied before these corrupt times, and to all such men I make my appeal for your support for the high office for which I have been nominated by the Democracy at Chicago.

Governor Cleveland is the nominee for President; a man promoted to that office by the largest majority ever deciding an election in that State. He is a man of established honesty of character, and if you will elect him to the Presidency of the United States you will not hear of star route frauds in the postal service of the country under his Administration. I will tell you what we need. Democrats and Republicans would alike agree upon that. We need to have the books in the Government offices opened for examination. Do you think that men in this age never yield to temptation? It was only two weeks ago that one of the Secretaries at Washington was called before a Senate Committee to testify in regard to the condition of his Department, and in that Department was the

Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. In that Department an examination was being had by a committee from the Senate, and it was ascertained by the oath of the Secretary that sits at the head of that Department that the defalcation found during last year, as far as it had been estimated, was $63,000; and when asked about it, he said that he had received a letter a year ago informing him of some of these outrages, and a short time since somebody had come to him and told him there were frauds going on in the service, but members of Congress had recommended the continuance of the head of the Bureau with such earnestness that he thought it must be all right. And now it turns out that the public is $63,000 out-and how much more, no man, I expect, can now tell. But what is the remedy? To have a President who will appoint heads of Bureaus who will investigate the condition of the books, and bring all the guilty parties to trial.

My fellow citizens, I believe for such duty as this, for the purpose of maintaining the United States Government for the people of this country, I can commend to your confidence Grover Cleveland, of New York. Not long since there were troubles in the local government of the city of Buffalo, and the conservative people of that city nominated Governor Cleveland as their candidate for mayor, not upon a party ticket, but upon a citizens' ticket, with the duty assigned to him of correcting the evils that prevailed in the government of the city of Buffalo. He was elected, and entered upon the duties of the office, and made corrections in the management of the affairs of that city so clearly, so well defined, that the people of New York took him up and made him Governor of the State, and that is the way he comes before you now. He who corrects all evils in a badly administered city, and who goes from that service into the affairs of State government and makes corrections

there, will then step into the national Government and bring about reforms there.

My fellow citizens, I did not intend to speak this long to you. The Convention at Chicago did not realize all that we expected. For myself, I had no expectations. In no sense was I a candidate for any office whatever. We did not realize all that we expected, but I believe that is the fate of humanity most everywhere and under almost every circumstance. But have we realized that which should encourage us to make an effort for good government? Not that I want the office to which I was nominated, for you know that I did not desire that, but somebody must be nominated for Vice President to run on the ticket with the candidate for President; and when a ticket is presented to you, you are called upon to pass judgment upon it in respect to its merits throughout. That is the question-will you support it? And in asking that question, I want to ask you another. Do you not, all of you, Democrats and Republicans, believe that the affairs of the Government have been long enough in the hands of one set of men? And do you not all believe that we have reached a period when there ought to be a change?

I do not ask that all shall be turned out; that is not the idea. If a man has done his duty well and faithfully, if he has not used the powers of his office to disturb the rights of the people, if he has not furnished money to corrupt elections, if he has simply confined himself to the duties of his office, I am not clamoring for his official blood; but, my fellow citizens, of all these one hundred and twenty thousand men that now fill official positions in the country, we have no right to suppose, from all that has taken place, that they are all honest; and the only thing that we can do now is to make a change. A month ago everybody supposed that all the employes in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were honest; and now, at the very first examination, it turns out that they are not. But