there was violence all other questions had to drop until order was restored.  This is a democracy, and the people have the power, if they choose to exercise it, to make conditions as they ought to be made, and to do this strictly within the law; and therefore the first duty of the true democrat, of the man really loyal to the principles of popular government, is to see that law is enforced and order upheld.  It was a peculiar gratification to me that so many of the labor leaders with whom I was thrown in contact grew cordially to accept this view.  When I left the Department, several called upon me to say how sorry they were that I was not to continue in office.  One, the Secretary of the Journeyman Bakers’ and Confectioners’ International Union, Henry Weismann, wrote me expressing his regret that I was going, and his appreciation as a citizen of what I had done as Police Commissioner; he added:  “I am particularly grateful for your liberal attitude toward organized labor, your cordial championship of those speaking in behalf of the toilers, and your evident desire to do the right thing as you saw it at whatever cost.”

Some of the letters I received on leaving the Department were from unexpected sources.  Mr. E. L. Godkin, an editor who in international matters was not a patriotic man, wrote protesting against my taking the Assistant-Secretaryship of the Navy, and adding:  “I have a concern, as the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief that in New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American to-day is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the country the spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of high character in the most efficient way amid a thousand difficulties.  As a lesson in politics I cannot think of anything more instructive.”

About the same time I had a letter from Mr. (afterwards Ambassador) James Bryce, also expressing regret that I was leaving the Police Department, but naturally with much more appreciation of the work that was to be done in the Navy Department.  This letter I quote, with his permission, because it conveys a lesson to those who are inclined always to think that the conditions of the present time are very bad.  It was written July 7, 1897.  Mr. Bryce spoke of the possibility of coming to America in a month or so, and continued:  “I hope I may have a chance of seeing you if I do get over, and of drawing some comfort from you as regards your political phenomena, which, so far as I can gather from those of your countrymen I have lately seen, furnish some good opportunities for a persistent optimist like myself to show that he is not to be lightly discouraged.  Don’t suppose that things are specially ‘nice,’ as a lady would say, in Europe either.  They are not.”  Mr. Bryce was a very friendly and extraordinary competent observer of things American; and there was this distinct note of discouragement about our future in the intimate letter he was thus sending.  Yet this was at the very time when the United States was entering on a dozen years during which our people accomplished more good, and came nearer realizing the possibilities of a great, free, and conscientious democracy, than during any other dozen years in our history, save only the years of Lincoln’s Presidency and the period during which the Nation was founded.