also compared the documents, as carefully as possible, with official copies, and have been enabled, by these precautions, to correct a good many errors. In some cases 1 have done this by reference to manuscript documents in my possession. Most of the later speeches have presented no serious difficulty, because the proofs were carefully read when they were first published.
Before Mr. Cleveland's retirement from the Presidency, neither he nor anybody for him had kept his speeches with anything like system. I have found it necessary to make a careful search in order to discover some of the earlier speeches, some of which I found, upon inquiry, Mr. Cleveland himself had forgotten. Since March, 1889, 1 have carefully preserved copies of speeches and letters with the purpose, now carried out, of issuing them in book form.
So, if there are faults in editing or arrangement, they are mine. Mr. Cleveland has done no more than I have said. He merely gave me absolute authority to make the collection in such way as I chose, and I have done the best I could in both gathering and arranging it in such a way as to make it effective to students of our political history.
