provide for a more efficient government of the department of parks in the city of New York.'

"This bill provides that the terms of office of the present commissioners of the department of public parks, in the city of New York, and any of their successors who may be appointed by the present mayor, shall cease on the first day of February, 1885, and that in their place the mayor shall appoint, within ten days thereafter, three commissioners, one of whom shall serve for two years, one for four years, and one for six years; and that 'biennially thereafter the mayor shall appoint one commissioner of the department of public parks who shall hold his office for two, four or six years, as the term of the office becoming vacant shall require or until removed.'

"I confess I am utterly unable, after considerable study, to determine when the terms of any appointees after the first would terminate, or how the department could be long continued with three members, under the provisions of this bill.

"In 1887 the shortest term of these officers would expire and a commissioner should be appointed. What length of time for the new commissioner does the office becoming vacant 'require?' I think the language of the bill can be most reasonably answered by making another appointment for two years. If this was done, the new appointee's term would expire in 1889. But at that time the four years' term of an original appointee would also expire, making two offices to be then filled, while the mayor, by the bill, is limited to the appointment of one commissioner in that year.

"If it was intended to create a commission of three members, it is entirely evident that the term of all appointees, after the first, should have been for six years.

"Appreciating the litigation and the sacrifice of rights and interests which result from defective laws, I have earn

estly tried, during my official term, to enforce care in their preparation. I am importuned every day to allow laws to go upon the statute book which are mischievously imperfect, but which are deemed good enough to promote the purposes of interested parties. It is not pleasant, constantly, to refuse such applications, but I conceive it my duty to do so.

"Though the purposes of these bills are supposed to be in the public interest, and though their failure may be a disappointment to many, I do not see that I should allow them to breed dispute and litigation touching important public offices, and to be made troublesome precedents to encourage careless and vicious legislation.

"GROVER CLEVELAND."

These reasons were so conclusive that the author of these bills, Mr. F. M. Scott of New York, wrote to the Times of that city, saying:

"As the draughtsman of the original tenure of office act, and one of its most ardent supporters, I am constrained to agree with Governor Cleveland that in the shape in which it reached him it was a very shabby piece of legislation, quite unfit to find a place in the statute-book. As to the park commissioners' bill, too, it was hastily and inconsiderately amended in the course of its passage through the Legislature, and was thereby quite as effectually spoiled as was the tenure of office act."

It will thus be seen that not only was Governor Cleveland a tower of strength to the reformers in the Legislature of 1884, but he was able to save them from their own mistakes.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Grover Cleveland's Miscellaneous Addresses.-His Power as an Orator.-Strong Thought rather than Rhetoric.-Address before the Irish Land League.-Protest against Minister Lowell's Treatment of American Citizens Imprisoned Abroad.—At the Oswegatchie Fair.-At the Albany High School.-At the New York Bar Association.-Before the Grand Army.

Governor Cleveland is not distinguished as an orator. The flowers and ornaments of rhetoric do not embellish his writings or his addresses. But the clear, strong thought that is found in all his utterances makes them valuable and has always commanded public attention.

While his State papers are models of strength and clearness, as well as of sound sense and honest purpose, his miscellaneous addresses are notable also for the exhibition of the same qualities. Governor Cleveland is an easy speaker and a pleasant one. He gives his audience ideas rather than figures of speech or elaborate expression; and while his style in speaking has grace and elegance, it is neither meretricious nor bombastic.

It was because of his well-known sympathy with the patriotic purposes of the Irish Land League that he was asked to introduce to the audience in St. Stephen's Hall, at Buffalo, the eloquent lecturer, Rev. Father Sheehy, on the fifth of December 1881. In presenting the lecturer, Mr. Clevelend said:

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.-I desire to acknowledge the

honor you have conferred upon me by this call to the chair. My greatest regret is that I know so little of the conditions that have given birth to the land league. I know, in a general way, that it is designed to secure to Ireland those just and natural rights to which Irishmen are entitled. I understand also that these are to be obtained by peaceful measures and without doing violence to any just law of the land. This should meet with the support and countenance of every man who enjoys the privilege of American citizenship and lives under American laws. Our sympathy is drawn out by a bond of common manhood. We are here to-night to welcome an apostle of this cause, one who can, from personal experience, recount the scenes of that troubled isle; who can tell us the risks that are taken and the pains that are suffered by those who lead the van in this great movement. I congratulate you upon having Father Sheehy with you to-night, and I will not delay the pleasure of his presentation to you."

In the following year, when the pusillanimous conduct of Minister Lowell in relation to the imprisonment of American citizens in Great Britain was so indignantly resented by our people, Mayor Cleveland was chosen to preside at a mass meeting held in St. James' Hall, Buffalo, to protest against the course of the representative of the United States in England. His address on this occasion was all fire and fervor. On taking the chair he said:

"FELLOW-CITIZENS.-This is the formal mode of address on occasions of this kind, but I think we seldom realize fully its meaning or how valuable a thing it is to be a citizen.

"From the earliest civilization to be a citizen has been to be a free man, endowed with certain privileges and advantages, and entitled to the full protection of the State. The

defense and protection of personal rights of its citizens has always been the paramount and most important duty of a free, enlightened government.

"And perhaps no government has this sacred trust more in its keeping than this-the best and freest of them all; for here the people who are to be protected are the source of those powers which they delegate upon the express compact that the citizen shall be protected. For this purpose we chose those who, for the time being, shall manage the machinery which we have set up for our defense and safety.

"And this protection adheres to us in all lands and places as an incident of citizenship. Let but the weight of a sacrilegious hand be put upon this sacred thing, and a great strong government springs to its feet to avenge the wrong. Thus it is that the native-born American citizen enjoys his birthright. But when, in the westward march of empire, this nation was founded and took root, we beckoned to the old world, and invited hither its emigration, and provided a mode by which those who sought a home among us might become our fellow-citizens. They came by thousands and hundreds of thousands; they came and

Hewed the dark old woods away,

And gave the virgin fields to-day;

they came with strong sinews and brawny arms to aid in the growth and progress of a new country; they came and upon our altars laid their fealty and submission; they came to our temples of justice and under the solemnity of an oath renounced all allegiance to every other state, potentate and sovereignty, and surrendered to us all the duty pertaining to such allegiance. We have accepted their fealty and invited them to surrender the protection of their native land.

"And what should be given them in return? Manifestly, good faith and every dictate of honor demand that we give them the same liberty and protection here and elsewhere