Acts of the Cleveland Administration.

Evening Star, Issue 6913, 28 May 1885, Page 2

Acts of the Cleveland Administration.

-I ke diplomatic appointments under the new Administration (writes the correspondent of the ‘ Argus ’), show that Mr Cleveland made no mistake in putting Mr Bayard at the head of the State Department. The missions to England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Turkey have been filled, and well filled. Mr Lowell’s successor is the Hon. E. J. Phelps, of Vermont. He is about sixty-five, the leader of the Bar in his State, and has held important judicial posts. For some years he has been chief lecturer on law at Yale College, He is a man of close training and of stainless reputation, is a radical Freetrader, a Conservative in politics and in the interpretation of the Constitution, an excellent speaker, and a sound, thorough, b)il)lant tajker: His Wife is an accomplished, and gifted lady; Mr Phelps will have a hard task to follow, Mt Lowell, but He will nieet its requirements, I tljink, with modesty j candor, and dignity. There is not about him the trace of demagogy; he is singularly independent in judgment, and he will pay no heed to the Irish element in his jp&rty; Ex-Senator George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, goes to Germany. He is a man of intelligence and high social position, and has for a number of years been on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate. He won much reputation as «ie author and advocate of the Civil Sendee reform law, though, owing to the spoil-hunters in his party, his course cost him his re-election to the Senate. His appointment to a first-class mission is a renewed pledge of respect for reform by the Cleveland Administration. Mr M'Clane, of Maryland, who goes to France, is an excellent man of the old-fashioned type. He is a ripe scholar, and held important diplomatic posts a quarter of a century since under Mr Buchanan, and before under Mr Pierce. Mr S. S. Cox, of New York, Minister to Constantinople, is a gifted and witty author, and, as member of the House, has been a strong member of the minority party (usually) for nearly thirty years. Mr Waller, of Connecticut, is named as ConsulGeneral to London, and is an able and upright man. Mr Bayard has begun a good reform by sending able German-Americans as Consuls-General to Vienna and Berlin, and a Scandinavian to Copenhagen. Mr Cleveland has given signal evidence of the good faith and firmness of his attachment to reform principles by the reappointment of Mr Henry G. Pearson as postmaster at New York. The office is the most important one in the service. Its force numbers nearly 1,700 men, and it has heretofore been regarded as the most valuable bit of political patronage in the gift of the party in power. So late as 1880 over 40,000d0l was raised by assessment for the Republican party in this office. Mr Pearson became postmaster the following year, and immediately put the office under strict reform management. Politics were excluded, appointments and promotions were made solely by competition, admission to the office was allowed only in the lowest grade, all demands for assessment were resisted, severe discipline was enforced, and the office brought to an almost perfect state of efficiency. Mr Pearson, who has been in the office from boyhood, entering it twenty-five years ago as a messenger, is a man of forty years of age, of rare administrative ability, and stainless character. He is the author of many improvements in the postal service, national as well as local. The new Post Office handles nearly all the foreign mail, a great part of the mail to and from the east, west, and south, and is the clearinghouse of the money order business for the whole country. Its great revenues and its far greater money order receipts and disbursements have been managed without a cent’s discrepancy for the last four years. Mr Pearson’s energy and tact have frequently saved the trans-American mail to Australia from England, or vice verm, several days’ delay. He has been a Republican, but in the last canvass resolutely declined to say what his vote was, insisting on his independence of party as a public officer, and even when urged to say whether ho voted for Mr Cleveland, with the assurance (though not from the President, of course) that it might secure his re-appointment, he refused to answer, though there is no doubt in my own mind that he did so vote. There was strong opposition to the nomination, and much dirty intrigue on the part of the Blaine politicians in the same direction, but Mr Cleveland was firm.