CHAPTER VII. CLEVELAND'S SPEECHES, LETTERS AND MESSAGES. FIRST IMPORTANT VETO AS MAYOR: A STINGING REBUKE TO EXTRAVAGANCE IN THE EXPENDITURE OF PUBLIC MONEY CHARACTERISTIC OF THE MAN. BUFFALO, June 26, 1882. I return without my approval the resolution of your honorable body, passed at its last meeting, awarding the contracts for cleaning the paved streets and alleys of the city for the ensuing five years to at his bid of four hundred and twenty-two thousand and five hundred dollars. himself The bid thus accepted by your honorable body is more than one hundred thousand dollars higher than that of another perfectly responsible party for the same work; and a worse and more suspicious feature in this transaction is that the bid now accepted is fifty thousand dollars more than that made by within a very few weeks, openly and publicly to your honorable body, for performing precisely the same services. This latter circumstance is to my mind the manifestation on the part of the contractor of a reliance upon the forbearance and generosity of your honorable body, which would be more creditable if it were less expensive to the taxpayers. I am not aware that any excuse is offered for the acceptance of this proposal, thus increased, except the very flimsy one that the lower bidders cannot afford to do the work for the sums they name. This extreme tenderness and consideration for those who desire to contract with the city, and this touching and paternal solicitude lest they should be improvidently led into a bad bargain is, I am sure, an exception to general business rules, and seems to have no place in this selfish, sordid world, except as found in the administration of municipal affairs. The charter of your city requires that the Mayor, when he disapproves any resolution of your honorable body, shall return the same with his objections. This is a time for plain speech, and my objection to the action of your honorable body now under consideration shall be plainly stated. I withhold my assent from the same, because I regard it as the culmination of a most barefaced, impudent and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people and to worse than squander the public money. I will not be misunderstood in this matter. There are those whose votes were given for this resolution whom I cannot and will not suspect of a willful neglect of the interests they are sworn to protect; but it has been fully demonstrated that there are influences, both in and about your honorable body, which it behooves every honest man to watch and avoid with the greatest care. When cool judgment rules the hour, the people will, I hope and believe, have no reason to complain of the action of your honorable body. But clumsy appeals to prejudice or passion, insinuations, with a kind of low, cheap cunning, as to the motives and purposes of others, and the mock heroism of brazen effrontery which openly declares that a wholesome public sentiment is to be set at naught, sometimes deceives and leads honest men to aid in the consummation of schemes which, if exposed, they would look upon with abhorrence. If the scandal in connection with this street cleaning contract, which has so aroused our citizens, shall cause them to select and watch with more care those to whom they intrust their interests, and if it serves to make all of us who are charged with official duties more careful in their performance, it will not be an unmitigated evil. We are fast gaining positions in the grades of public stewardship. There is no middle ground. Those who are not for the people either in or out of your honorable body are against them and should be treated accordingly. GROVER CLEVELAND, Mayor. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES. I. AS GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, IN THE SENATE CHAMBER AT ALBANY, JANU ARY 1ST, 1883, GOVERNOR CORNELL: I am profoundly grateful for your pleasant words and kind wishes for my success. You speak in full view of labors that are past and duty well performed, and no doubt you generously suppose that what you have safely encountered and overcome another may not fear to meet. But I cannot be unmindful of the difficulties that beset the path upon which I enter, and I shall be quite content if, when the end is reached, I may, like you, look back upon an official career honorable to myself and useful to the people of the State. I cannot forbear at this time to also express my appreciation of the hearty kindness and consideration with which you have at other times sought to make easier my performance of official duty. Fellow Citizens: You have assembled to-day to witness the retirement of an officer tried and trusted, from the highest place in the State, and the assumption of its duties by one yet to be tried. This ceremony, simple and unostentatious, as becomes the spirit of our institutions, is yet of vast importance to you and all the people of this great commonwealth. The interests now transferred to new hands are yours; and the duties here newly assumed should be performed for your bene fit and your good. This you have the right to demand and enforce by the means placed in your hands, which you well know how to use; and if the public servant should always know that he is jealously watched by the peɔple, he surely would be none the less faithful to his trust. This vigilance on the part of the citizen, and an active interest and participation in political concerns, are the safeguards of his rights; but sluggish indifference to political privileges invites the machinations of those who wait to betray the people's trust. Thus when the conduct of public affairs receives your attention, you not only perform your duty as citizens, but protect your own best interest. While this is true, and while those whom you put in place should be held to strict account, their opportunity for usefulness should not be impaired, nor their efforts for good thwarted by unfounded and querulous complaint and cavil. Let us together, but in our different places, take part in the regulation and administration of the government of our State, and thus become not only the keepers of our own interests, but contributors to the progress and prosperity which will await us. I enter upon the discharge of the duties of the office to which my fellow-citizens have called me with a profound sense of responsibility; but my hope is in the guidance of a kind Providence, which I believe will aid an honest design and the forbearance of a just people, which, I trust, will recogшze a patriotic endeavor. II. AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DELIVERED AT THE EAST FRONT OF THE CAPITOL, IN WASHINGTON, MARCH 4, 1885. Fellow Citizens: In the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am about to supplement and seal by the oath which I shall take the manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the exercise of their power and right of self-government they have committed to one of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust; and he here consecrates himself to their service. This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the people of the land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any act of mine their interests may suffer, and nothing is needed to strengthen my resolution to engage every faculty and effort in the promotion of their welfare. Amid the din of party strife the people's choice was made; but its attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the strength and safety of a government by the people. In each succeeding year it more clearly appears that our democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its fearless and faithful application is to be found the surest guarantee of good government. But the best results in the operation of a government, wherein every citizen has a share, largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely partisan zeal and effort, and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen. To-day the executive branch of the government is transferred to new keeping. But this is still the government of all the people, and it should be none the less an |