New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1888-12-06
IN TNSOLEVT EGOTTST

One of the easiest and cheapest Of rhetorical
tricks consists in the use of resonant phrases
which fall upon unreflecting minds with a GER
tain grave and awesome emphasis, and which
often impress even the author with pleasing
sense of his own profundity. The conscientious
man who finds that the temptations OF extern
pore speech or fluent composition have be-
trayed him into this weakness becomes his own
severest critic and learns valuable lesson for
the future, while he whose favoritc emotion is
self-complacency remains entanced with his
performance II is in this mood, we may sup
pose, that President Cleveland pcruseS the
printed copy Of his latest Message. lie gances
casually at the routine panegyric Of his Adj
ministration with which the document con-
cludes, but he reads and reads again with ever
increasing admiration the ponderous phrase
ology Of the introduction. He had abundant
opportunity to prune away his s, tdy epithets
and unwieldy vocables, but it never entered his
head to be ashamed of them; and SO they stand,
an irrevocable discredit to bis party and him.
self.
II sometimes happens that the only defect of
cheap phrases is their cheapness-that the ler-
mel of meaning in them is the truth. But
Mr.. Cleveland has repeatedly taken the pains
to hang his rhetorical gewgaws upon frame
work of falsehood. 1t is not true-and it was
never further from the truth than it is to-day
that "the citizen is struggling far in tho
rear, or is tramplcd to death beneath an iron
heel" The President has merely started a
procession of unmeaning words, nothing more
1t is not true that the great captains Of indus
try and the vast body of employers which Is
constantly recruited from the ranks OF the en-
ployed are the opponents Of selfish greed and
grasping avarce." The effrontery Of the EX-
ecutive who gave 1900 to re-elect himself
and $40 to the Charleston sufferers becomes
unbearable when he thus seeks to put stigma
upon men who have redeemed the wilderness,
called into existence thousands on thousands of
happy homes and poured their millions into
every channel of charity and progress. While
such splendid monuments to their enlightened
berality dot the continent they can perhaps
AFT ord to smile at the arrogant upstart who
taunts them with ga sordid disregard of all
but personal INTERESTS but the country cannot
afford for hundred years to choose another
such sanderer for its Chief Magistrate.
Denunciations like these are largely the Off
spring Of a clustering and ignorant egotism
provoked to bitterness by a humiliating dis
appointment. They did not exhaust the Presi-
dents peculiar resources. He was not salts
fed until he had impeached the loyalty Of
those who presume to condemn his economic
doctrines, aud had declared that " all patriotic
love of country was stihed in their breasts.
If what is grotesque could ever be sublime,
Mr. Cleveland would have achieved the COM
bination in that sentence 1t is scarcely too
much to expect that even the Southern con-
tingent Of Democracy will stand aghast at the
audacity Of the man who sought the cheapest
market when he went to hire the substitute
whom he lately left TO die in the poor-house
who after that frugal investment is not known
to have expended so much az desire for the
preservation Of the Union, and who now de-
MES the patriotism Of the party whose tn