Lancaster Daily Intelligencer

The Making of that Cabinet.

The Grant crowd have been to Mentor and have come back with smiling countenances, although the current belief had been that their noses had been put entirely out of joint and that Mr. Blaine had Mr. Garfield in his pocket. Senator Conkling went out "for to see" after he had been long and cordially begged to come, according to the Philadelphia Press, which always knows what Mr. Conkling wants to be said about Mr. Conkling; and by the same authority we were forbidden to imagine for a moment that the great man was asked and went on a bootless mission. Senator Dorsey, too, went out to grind some axe of his own, after he had been perfumed sufficiently for the Mentor atmosphere by that dinner in New York given to his order and in his honor. He returns saying that everything is lovely for the Conkling side and letting us understand that Morton is to be the secretary of the treasury. But after all these missionaries have returned authentic intelligence from Mentor reaches us that Mr. Garfield peremptorily refuses to appoint Morton, because he is a Wall street speculator; and a very good reason it is. And the Sunday papers say that Chief Justice Folger has now gone to Mentor, and what has he gone for, they ask, but to get the treasury plum? From Washington we hear that Mr. Blaine lets it be known that he will not take the secretaryship of state if the treasury goes to New York: and that he has withheld his resignation of his senatorial seat because of Garfield's notorious indecision of character. Those who have the last word with him are the most potent, as this is perhaps the secret of the jubilation with which visitors to Mentor successively leave its portals. Our good Mr. Hayes has this same faculty of dismissing his office-seeking friends with happy faces: it seems to be quite an Ohio talent. If Mr. Blaine waits to resign his seat until the cabinet is fixed he will be likely to hold it beyond the fourth of March. Mr. Garfield is even more given to indecision than was Mr. Buchanan, with whom it was a very notable failing. It will be remembered that Mr. Buchanan did not announce his cabinet for some time after the inauguration, and the country was in a great state of wonder at the delay. It was just because it had not yet been formed; the president could not make up his mind about it. We know, on the authority of a gentleman who was then in his household and his confidence, that he was very much troubled to decide upon the membership, exclaiming, on one occasion, as he walked in visible agitation the apartment in the White House before our informant, "What shall I do about Pennsylvania?" the appointment from which state was the last and greatest of his troubles, as it was his own state and there was no one to dictate it to him. The gentleman he addressed named and urged Judge Black, and the suggestion was favorably received by the president, who at once sent in his cabinet nominations to the Senate. Mr. Blaine will not be safe until he reads the names sent in executive session, and prudence will keep him in the Senate until the voice of "the last man" has been heard and heeded by the president. He will not have the excuse for his vacillation that Mr. Buchanan had, who was then suffering from the National hotel disease; but there is no failing more difficult to resist than indecision, and as it is bred in Mr. Garfield's bone, it is likely to show itself till the last hour comes for his cabinet selection.