Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/371

Rh by those party leaders who had long disliked Mr. Cleveland for the very qualities which gave him his popular prestige. In addition to the old grudge, they now resented his election over their heads. His success, owing to popular favor, had only served to embitter their hostility to him.

They found, of course, willing aid among the Republicans of both Houses. Many of these, indeed, carried on their legitimate party opposition against the Democratic President in a wholly honorable spirit. But there were not a few extreme Republican partisans who saw in Mr. Cleveland only the one Democrat who, since 1861, had been able to wrest the Presidency from Republican hands; whom, because of his peculiar standing in the popular confidence, they had most to fear, and whom it was, therefore, most desirable, by any available means, to destroy. This was considered “good party politics.”

The President thus found himself confronted by an extraordinary combination of hostile forces, and this at a time when the general situation he had to deal with was peculiarly perplexing. The preceding Administration had left a Pandora box of trouble as its legacy behind it. Among Republicans it is the fashion to attribute all the financial disturbance happening under the Cleveland Administration to that Administration itself. No fair-minded student of recent events will accept this view. The first causes of that disturbance will be found in one of those periodical business prostrations characteristic of our times. The ten years preceding 1890 had been years of great prosperity. That prosperity had produced the usual effect of inciting recklessness in borrowing and lending, and of stimulating the spirit of venturesome enterprise. With the year 1890 the reaction set in. Cautious men began to sell securities and to restrict their credits. Values shrank and creditors became apprehensive. In