ARTHUR, CLEVELAND, AND ELAINE -1881 -1884 197 



of the present State Senate, and favored by Colonel Roose- 

 velt, the governor. 



It was upon a civil-service errand in Philadelphia that 

 I met, after a long separation, my old friend and classmate 

 Wayne MacVeagh. He had been minister to Constanti- 

 nople, Attorney-General in the Garfield cabinet, and, at a 

 later period, ambassador at Rome. At this period he had 

 returned to practise his profession in Philadelphia, and at 

 his hospitable table I met a number of interesting men, 

 and on one occasion sat next an eminent member of 

 the Philadelphia bar, Judge Biddle. A subject happened 

 to come up in which I had taken great interest, namely, 

 American laxity in the punishment of crime, and especially 

 the crime of murder, whereupon Judge Biddle dryly re- 

 marked: ""'The taking of life, after due process of law, as V 

 a penalty for murder, seems to be the only form of taking 

 life to which the average American has any objection." 



In the autumn of 1882 came a tremendous reverse for 

 the Republican party. There was very wide-spread dis- 

 gust at the apparent carelessness of those in power regard- 

 ing the redemption of pledges for reforms. Judge Folger, 

 who had been nominated to the governorship of New 

 York, had every qualification for the place, but an opinion 

 had widely gained ground that President Arthur, who had 

 called Judge Folger into his cabinet as Secretary of the 

 Treasury, was endeavoring to interfere with the politics 

 of the State, and to put Judge Folger into the governor 's 

 chair. There was a suspicion that "the machine" was 

 working too easily and that some of its wheels were of a 

 very bad sort. All this, coupled with slowness in redeem- 

 ing platform pledges, brought on the greatest disaster the 

 Republican party had ever experienced. In November, 

 1882, Mr. Cleveland was elected governor by the most 

 enormous majority ever known, and the defeat extended 

 not only through the State of New York, but through a 

 number of other States. It was bitter medicine, but, as it 

 afterward turned out, very salutary. 



Just after this election, being in New York to deliver an 



