Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-10-01
BLAINE AND THE CABINET.

We suppose there can be no doubt OF the
fact that Mr.. Blaine will resign his posi-
ton at the earliest possible moment. In
his case it is not matter of mere specu
lation or conjecture. His relations with
President Arthur may be sufficiently
cordial, but his relations with the most
intimate and influential friends of Presi.
dent Arthur are so unfriendly that the
President would have to choose between
them and Mr.. Blaine, and as a matter of
course the latter would never force him
into SO disagreeable a predicament. In
fact the situation is manifestly of kind
to compel the speedy resignation of the
present Secretary of State, and no doubt
he fully realizes this, and has prepared for
it. There is good reason to believe that
Mr.. Blaine anticipated the death of
President Garfield long before the at
tendant physicians gave him up.
A perusal of his dispatches to Lowell will
show that he never entertained any strong
hope of the Presidents recovery, and at
one time he was blamed somewhat by a
portion of the press for sending such gloomy
accounts of the patient. But no man
had more powerful reasons for ascertaining
and facing the truth in this regard, since
no mans political future was more entirely
dependent upon the life of the President.
Just before the assassination he had con-
cluded long and intensely bitter fight
with the very men who, in case the Presi-
dent died, would succeed to power in the
Government. He had burned his ships
and committed himself beyond recall to
the Garfield policy. Nor was this all. In
Conkling he knew he had foe whose
hostility was unappeasable. They had
been rivals and enemies for years. Conkling
and he had quarreled in Congress. He
had ridiculed the Senator from New York,
and in return the latter had twice defeated
his Presidential aspirations. At Chicago
last year Blaine, finding his own prospects
hopeless, turned the tables on his enemy
by defeating Grant and nominating Gar
field. Upon the latter, thenceforth, all his
prospects hinged, and the death of the
President was necessarily fatal blow to
his programme. Nothing remains for him,
under the circumstances, but to retire.
Destiny has been too strong for him, and
after all these years of public contention
and skillful maneuver, he finds that the
bullet of an assassin has virtually put an
end to a career which was just beginning
to prosper. Nor can the fact that Mr.
Conkling has thus far kept in the back
ground have any hopeful significance for
Blaine. He knows that it is only ques-
ton of time for the intimate relations be-
tween the President and the late Sen.
ator to be revived, and that his
position in the Cabinet is therefore an
untenable one Blaine is still measurably
young man, and many years of activity
may be before him. But the presumption
is that his opportunity has passed, and
bia1 eHouSn ne may posSiuly SECURE HIS
return to the Senate, if he desires that po-
sition, he will never again occupy promi-
nent place in the candidature for those
higher honors which he has sought so long
and so vainly. And it must be with some
bitterness in his heart that he prepares to
resign post which he attained with SO
much difficulty, and not impossibly to
make vacancy for the very foe he so
lately triumphed over. Truly the
"whirligig of Time brings about its
"revenges in very startling and un-
expected way.