He retired from public life in 1891, at
the age of sixty-three.
From the standpoint of the public welfare, it is to be noted that
the issue turned on the maintenance of privilege rather than on
the discharge of responsibility. President Cleveland contended
that he was not responsible to the Senate but to the people for
the way in which he exercised his trusteeship. But the phrase
"the people" is an abstraction which has no force save as it
receives concrete form in appropriate institutions. It is the
essential characteristic of a sound constitutional system that it
supplies such institutions, so as to put executive authority on
its good behavior by steady pressure of responsibility through
full publicity and detailed criticism. This result, the Senate
fails to secure because it keeps trying to invade executive
authority, and to seize the appointing power instead of seeking
to enforce executive responsibility. This point was forcibly put
by "The Nation" when it said: "There is only one way of securing
the presentation to the Senate of all the papers and documents
which influence the President in making either removals or
appointments, and that is a simple way, and one wholly within the
reach of the Senators. They have only to alter their rules, and
make executive sessions as public as legislative sessions, in
order to drive the President not only into making no nominations
for which he cannot give creditable reasons, but into furnishing
every creditable reason for the nomination which he may have in
his possession.
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