Your letter has produced a profound impression upon me as indicating the wishes of a friend and ally who has a right to insist upon the recognition you ask.
And yet I know you would think but little of me, if convinced that I would do a wrong thing, simply because you, in ignorance of the facts involved, asked it.
I hope I shall be led in the right path.
Yours very sincerely,
TO PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
I have just received your kind note of the 23d inst. and hasten to remove a wrong impression which my letter seems to have produced. It is that it “indicated the wishes of a friend and ally who had a right to insist upon the recognition he asks.” Nothing could be farther from my mind than to insist upon a “recognition.” The practice of recognizing persons by the use of official trust for political or personal services rendered, is on the contrary one of the practices I have frequently denounced as dangerous. What I want to see recognized is not a person but the public interest. But above all, I trust there is nothing in my letter in the remotest degree open to the construction that I could possibly want you to do a wrong thing simply because I asked it. I should be sorry if such a thought has crossed your mind. I argued in favor of Mr. Pearson's reappointment only upon public grounds, believing him to be a true exponent of those principles upon which the public service should be conducted, and that by his reappointment the public interest would be greatly benefited. If there are facts in your possession showing that Mr. Pearson is not the kind of man we took him to be, or that by his reappointment the public interest will not be served, I should be the last
