and determine the durability of popular government--whose outcome is to
decide whether political parties are to be the mere instruments through
which the people express their will, and whose relations can be changed
as the public good may seem to require, or whether the government itself
shall be subordinated to party, and its functions prostituted for the
perpetuation of party ascendency and the aggrandizement of corrupt and
selfish individuals--the leader in whom the hopes of those who contend
for the supremacy of the popular will, the surbordination of party-power
to public welfare, and the administration of the government in the
interests of the whole people, are now thoroughly centred, is one who
has gained no distinction in shaping partisan contests, and won no
laurels in the halls of legislation or the forum of public debate. He
is, simply, the man who, in the last few years, first in one, and then
in another still more important position of official responsibility, has
demonstrated more emphatically than any other in recent times (possibly
because circumstances have more generally drawn attention in his
direction) his thorough devotion to the doctrine that public office is a
public trust; and has, therefore, been selected as the best
representative and exponent of the popular idea in the great political
conflict about to be brought to an issue.

The purpose and scope of this brief article permit no detailed account
of the private life or public career of Grover Cleveland. Those who have
cared to do so have already familiarized themselves with the same
through the ordinary channels; yet, as a matter of record, a few salient
facts may be presented.

Grover Cleveland was born in the village of Caldwell, near Newark, New
Jersey, March 18, 1837. His paternal ancestry was of the substantial
English stock.