When the representatives of Mr. Platt and of the corporations affected found they could do no better, they assented to this proposition.  Efforts were tentatively made to outwit me, by inserting amendments that would nullify the effect of the law, or by withdrawing the law when the Legislature convened; which would at once have deprived me of the whip hand.  On May 12 I wrote Senator Platt, outlining the amendments I desired, and said:  “Of course it must be understood that I will sign the present bill if the proposed bill containing the changes outlined above fails to pass.”  On May 18 I notified the Senate leader, John Raines, by telegram:  “Legislature has no power to withdraw the Ford bill.  If attempt is made to do so, I will sign the bill at once.”  On the same day, by telegram, I wired Mr. Odell concerning the bill the leaders were preparing:  “Some provisions of bill very objectionable.  I am at work on bill to show you to-morrow.  The bill must not contain greater changes than those outlined in my message.”  My wishes were heeded, and when I had reconvened the Legislature it amended the bill as I outlined in my message; and in its amended form the bill became law.

There promptly followed something which afforded an index of the good faith of the corporations that had been protesting to me.  As soon as the change for which they had begged was inserted in the law, and the law was signed, they turned round and refused to pay the taxes; and in the lawsuit that followed, they claimed that the law was unconstitutional, because it contained the very clause which they had so clamorously demanded.  Senator David B. Hill had appeared before me on behalf of the corporations to argue for the change; and he then appeared before the courts to make the argument on the other side.  The suit was carried through to the Supreme Court of the United States, which declared the law constitutional during the time that I was President.

One of the painful duties of the chief executive in States like New York, as well as in the Nation, is the refusing of pardons.  Yet I can imagine nothing more necessary from the standpoint of good citizenship than the ability to steel one’s heart in this matter of granting pardons.  The pressure is always greatest in two classes of cases:  first, that where capital punishment is inflicted; second, that where the man is prominent socially and in the business world, and where in consequence his crime is apt to have been one concerned in some way with finance.

As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask.  Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him.  If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that