The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-03-22
The State Department.
The New Secretary and His Policy.

Mr.. E. V. Smalley, the well-known Wash
ington correspondent, writes as follows to the
New York Tribune:
Z The pressure of visitors at the State Depart
ment is almost as great as at the White House.
Mr.. Bla inc has now chance to realize that
the possession of great number of personal
friends has its disadvantageous side. Every
one OF his ten thousand enthusiastic admirers
seems to think he ought to show his attachment
by coming to Washington and asking for an
office; or, If he wants no office, insisting at
least on having good square talk with the
new Premier If the applications for place
winch are pressed upon the Secretary were
limited to his own Department, he would be
fortunate, but people who want postmasterships,
collectorships, marshalships, and other Off
ces with which he has nothing to do, appeal to
him on the ground of personal friendship, as
though he were, like the President, a general
dispenser of all sorts of patronage. / am
bound to say that he bears up wonderfully
we'll under these continuous raids upon his
good nature. He can get rid of an importu-
nate and unreasonable office-seeker without
offending him or cooling the ardor of his
personal liking better than any man in the
Cabinet He moves about his great recep-
ton room with as much ease and tact as
though he had been years in the place,
weighing the importance of his visitors at
glance, taking five minutes with one and
half minute with another, but having
for each cordial hendshake and pleas
ant word. His oldest son, Walker Blaine, has
come from Minnesota to be his chief adjutant
"a quiet, modest, well-poised and sagacious
young gentleman, who occupies desk in the
reception room, and between his correspond
ence and the calls upon him to act as interces-
sor in securing audiences with his father, is up
to his ears in work. His brother Emmons
who has shown good deal of taste and apti-
tude for public life in the political campaigns
In Maine. has gone into railroad office in
Chicago, wisely concluding to let politics alone
until he has made foothold for himself in ac-
tive business life.
People who care little for the personalities of
politics, and who look over and beyond the
squabble for place to discern the tendencies of
the new government, expect something strik-
ing, pointed and progressive to come from Mr.
Blaine's direction of the State Department.
He Is not man, they say, to sit four years in a
cushioned chair and do nothing but commits
sion few ministers and consuls and exchange
compliments with the members of the foreign
legations He comes from State that is wedged
in between two British provinces, and will be
sure to have definite and thoroughly American
ideas on the questions arising from the proximi-
ty OF the anomalous ssemi-independent Canadian
Dominion. He has carefully studied the 18th
mus question; he knows the great importance
to our commercial and manufacturing inter-
ests of the movement for binding Mexico to us
with iron bands, and making with our capital
and industry peaceful and friendly conquest
of her rich mines and fruitful fields. He does
not, like Jefferson, wish the Atlantis Ocean
were sea OF ire, but sees that the United
States, as the strongest and best of the great
family OF nations, has interests and duties all
around the world. He is not going to initiate
the filibustering policy of Marcy. There is no
fear OF that; but 1 venture to predict that the
credit, commerce, prestige and influence of
the Great Republic will steadily grow under
this management of its foreign relations.