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.

I. Aaron Cleveland, an early settler in the valley of the Connecticut.  He was liberally educated, and, ardently devoted to the interests of the Church, he determined to take holy orders, and returned to England for confirmation therein.  Coming back to America he settled in the ministry at East Haddam, Conn.  Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, who spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as “a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and above every species of meanness and dissimulation.”

II.  Aaron Cleveland, born at East Haddam, Conn., February 9, 1744.  He was a hatter by trade and located in Norwich, which town he represented in the Legislature, where he introduced a bill for the abolition of slavery, of which institution he was a determined opponent.  Subsequently he became a Congregational clergyman, and a power in that denomination.  He died at New Haven in 1815.

III.  William Cleveland, second son of the above, a silversmith by occupation, also dwelt in Norwich.  His wife was Margaret Falley.  He was prosperous in business, respected in the community, and deacon of the church of which his father had been pastor for a quarter of a century previous to his decease.