f
party apportionment whose effect is to give an insurgent faction of the
majority the balance of power, and this opportunity for mischief was
unsparingly used by the silver faction.

Such a situation could not be successfully encountered save by a policy
aimed distinctly at accomplishing a redress of popular grievances. But
such a policy, President Cleveland failed to conceive. In his inaugural
address, he indicated in a general way the policy pursued throughout
his term when he said, "I shall to the best of my ability and within
my sphere of duty preserve the Constitution by loyally protecting every
grant of Federal power it contains, by defending all its restraints
when attacked by impatience and restlessness, and by enforcing its
limitations and reservations in favor of the states and the people."
This statement sets forth a low view of governmental function and
practically limits its sphere to the office of the policeman, whose
chief concern is to suppress disorder. Statesmanship should go deeper
and should labor in a constructive way to remove causes of disorder.

An examination of President Cleveland's state papers show that his
first concern was always to relieve the Government from its financial
embarrassments; whereas the first concern of the people was naturally
and properly to find relief from their own embarrassments. In the
last analysis, the people were not made for the convenience of the
Government, but the Government was made for the convenience of the
people, and this truth was not sufficiently recognized in the policy
of Cleveland's administration. His guiding principle was stated, in the
annual message, December 3, 1894, as follows: "The absolute divorcement
of the Government from the business of banking is the ideal relationship
of the Government to the circulation of the currency of the country."
That ideal, however, is unattainable in any civilized country. The only
great state in which it has ever been actually adopted is China, and the
results were not such as to commend the system. The policy which yields
the greatest practical benefits is that which makes it the duty of the
Government to supervise and regulate the business of banking and to
attend to currency supply; and the currency troubles of the American
people were not removed until eventually their Government accepted and
acted upon this view.

Not until his message of December 3, 1894, did President Cleveland make
any recommendation