as to embrace "offensive partisanship" during tenure of office, the phrase itself remained open to the construction that the many displacements of office-holders that had taken place had been carried into effect for other reasons than merely because the tenant of an office differed in his political opinions from the Executive then in power. The President was thus caught on the horns of a dilemma. If he honestly confessed that he removed. Republican officials solely because they were Republicans, in order to give the places thus rendered vacant to clamorous and hungry members of the Democratic party, he was exposed to the attacks of the party of CivilService Reform—the party whose defection from the Republican ranks had, beyond question, contributed largely to his election to his high office. If, on the other hand, his early declarations-that merely political differences in opinion ought not to be made the basis for removals of competent officials -were to be taken to express and define his course of action, it was a fair inference-fair enough and quite legitimate in political warfare-that these removals were rendered necessary for reasons that reflected more or less on the character of the displaced officer. This inference the Senate adopted, and when a large batch of new nominations were sent into the Senate in March, 1886, they were not acted upon by that body, but a demand was made on the President to furnish the Senate, for its guidance during its executive sessions, all information on file in regard to suspensions from office. The real object was, of course, to compel an acknowledgment that these removals had been made for political reasons.

The immediate nomination which led to this outbreak of hostilities between the Executive and the Senate was, of course, one of little importance, relating merely to the dismissal of a District Attorney in one of the Southern States. To the demand of the Senate, the Attorney-General replied that "the President of the United States directed" him not to transmit these papers. The Senate replied by resolutions, "condemning the refusal of the Attorney-General, under whatever influence, to send to the Senate" the papers called for, and declaring that it was the duty of the Senate to refuse its advice to removals of officers when the information on which such removal was supposed to be based was withheld. Then the President joined in the fray, and on March 1st sent a message to the Senate, in which he confirmed the statement that it was by his direction that the Attorney-General had acted, adding that the papers called for were purely unofficial and private, and referred to the performance of a duty exclusively the President's, and that he, therefore, denied the right of the Senate, as far as it is based on the claim that these papers are official, and that he unequivocally disputed the right of the Senate, "by the aid of any documents

CHAP. XXXV. THE PRESIDENT AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

1829

whatever, or by any way, except by impeachment," to review or reverse the acts of the Executive. Finally, he boldly declared "the pledges as to civil service reform were made to the people, and to them I am responsible. I am not responsible to the Senate."

In this message the President made use of a phrase which soon became widely current. He spoke of the whole of the tenure of office legislation having been left for the last twenty years in a state of "innocuous desuetude."

The dispute ended with both parties holding their original positions. The papers demanded were not furnished to the Senate, and the nominations of the President were held over or rejected by the Senate.

The President, indeed, during the whole of his term of office was placed in a most embarrassing position, for, in addition to open enemies in Congress, he had to contend against the lukewarm support or scarcely disguised hostility of the rank and file of the Democratic party. To them the principle of civil service reform, to which he had pledged himself, was in every respect distasteful. It was denounced as un-American, stigmatized as Chinese and British, and declared to be the first step towards creating a bureaucracy, the members of which, neither hoping for promotion nor fearing dismissal from the people, or the chosen representatives of the people, or the Chief of the State, would form an arrogant, exclusive, almost independent body, able, if not entirely to thwart, at least to embarrass the execution of the popular will. The principle of rotation in office was proclaimed as the true American and Democratic principle, and it was urged that, as all offices since the war, during all the successive Republican administrations, had been filled by Republicans, so now, when a President elected by the Democratic party occupied the White House and administered public affairs through a Democratic Cabinet, all offices ought to be filled by Democrats.

"Turn the rascals out!" had been for years a rallying cry for the Democracy, and its fulfillment was demanded. Nor would the public service, it was argued, suffer by such changes in its personnel, for the offices in which they took place were such as any intelligent citizen could discharge satisfactorily; while in the present state of affairs a substitution of Democratic for Republican officials was especially desirable, in order to give the party that had been so long excluded from every share in the administration some training in the official routine of public office. Above all, the managers of the Democratic party insisted on the doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils," and that the only way by which the party could be held together, or those who had worked zealously for its triumphs be rewarded, was the bestowal of office, if only as an acknowledgment of services rendered and

an encouragement of services to come. Great as was the pressure thus put on the President, and often as he was compelled to give way to it, on the whole he endeavored to the best of his ability to carry out the pledges on which he had appealed to the people when a candidate for their suffrages.

But whatever political troubles environed President Cleveland from open foes or doubtful friends, he had found time to win a wife; and although the matrimonial alliances of our Presidents have no such political bearings as

those of European potentates, the event deserves mention, for thereafter the President acquired a temporary and sentimental popularity.

The ceremony took place in his official residence, the Executive Mansion, and had this much of a public function about it, that it was attended by all the Cabinet officers, except the Attorney-General, and this much of royal tradition about it, that it involved an inversion of the customs of plain

CHAP. XXXV.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S MARRIAGE.

1831

people, for the bride came to be married at the bridegroom's house, the bridegroom did not go to bring home his bride. The lady who was thus, on June 2d, united to Grover Cleveland, was the daughter of his old partner, Miss Frances Folsom, a lady of youth, beauty, and accomplishments, who presided thereafter most admirably over the social functions which even a Republican President has to discharge. There is no doubt, strange as it may seem, that this marriage, utterly unromantic as it was, gave to the President for the moment immense popularity, and certainly averted a renewal of the attacks on his private character, which had been so rife before his election.

The foreign relations of the United States were as uneventful as usual. A new extradition treaty between Great Britain and this country had been for some time under discussion. It was considerably wider in its terms than the existing one, but one of its clauses, stipulating for the surrender of persons who should have inflicted injury by the use of dynamite, gave rise to great opposition. It was maintained that the clause was inserted, if not avowedly, at least probably, to cover the cases of the dynamite explosions by the Fenians in London and elsewhere, and that, in actual effect, therefore, it could be easily turned by the foreign government into a means of procuring the extradition of political offenders. It was from no sympathy for the perpetrators of outrages of the class above named, that the treaty was held over in the Senate for a long time and finally rejected, but from the fear that it might, under some circumstances, become an instrument for wreaking political vengeance.

On the Mexican frontier the usual condition of affairs continued. Lawless men from both countries crossed and recrossed the frontier, but without any acts involving any international question. In the month of August, 1886, however, a new and curious controversy arose between the Mexican and American governments. At the frontier town of El Paso, in Texas, there lived an American citizen, Cutting by name, who published a newspaper there. For some reason or other he moved from the American side to the Mexican side of the boundary line, and there, in pursuit of his calling, he began the publication of a paper in the Spanish language. With true American journalistic enterprise, he set out to make his paper popular by making it sensational, and he made it sensational by violent attacks on the local government. He was arrested for libel, but released on signing a retractation. On his release he at once crossed into Texas, had the original libel republished there in Spanish in an American newspaper, and taking copies of this paper with him, returned to Mexico and sold them. He was rearrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment. The American

Government took up the position that the offense was committed within the jurisdiction of the United States and could not be punished in Mexico, and demanded peremptorily his immediate release. Mr. Bayard, Secretary of State, declared that "the safety of the citizens and of all others lawfully within our jurisdiction would be greatly impaired, if not wholly destroyed, by admitting the power of a foreign State to define offenses and apply penalties to acts committed within the jurisdiction of the United States." President Diaz, on the other hand, said that the Mexican Government was acting in good faith, being only desirous of having justice done; that he felt that the matter was one for calm consideration on the part of the two governments, uninfluenced by popular clamor. Señor Rubio, the Mexican Minister of the Interior, had defended the arrest, which was in proper legal form. Mr. Cutting had been treated with more consideration than Mexican criminals, and the Mexican Government considered that he had not only infringed the code of the State of Chihuahua, making offenses against its citizens committed in foreign territory punishable, but that, in evincing contempt of court, he had violated the national laws. The affair was temporarily adjusted by the Mexican Government making a proposition, through the United States Minister at Mexico, that the American Government should send a special envoy to confer with the Mexican attorney-general as to the proper interpretation of the law in the case. The proposition was acted upon, and Mr. Arthur G. Sedgwick was deputed to act in behalf of the United States, but without diplomatic powers or authority to effect a settlement. The upshot of the affair was that the Mexican court released Mr. Cutting on a technical plea.

For many years past the drift of population has been towards an urban life. Taking the town of 8,000 inhabitants as the lower limit of urban population, we find that 3.3 per cent. of the population was to be classed as urban in 1790, and that the percentage had risen to 22.5 in 1880. If towns of 4,000 inhabitants had been taken as the lower limit, the urban population in 1880 would have been 13,000,000, or more than 25 per cent. It may be thought that the policy of protection had something to do with this tendency, but it is noteworthy that the increase during the generally free-trade period of 1840-60, from 8.5 to 16.1, was the greatest of any twenty years, unless we take the period 1850-70, half free-trade and half protective, when the percentage rose from 12.5 to 20.9. Whatever may have been the cause, the tendency is indubitable, and its effects in increasing the facility of organization among the employees of corporations, whose fields of operation are generally urban, are as easily to be seen.

Some of these corporations are controlled by men who were believed, in