Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1901 — Origin of a Famous Phrase. [ARTICLE]

Origin of a Famous Phrase.

It was Judge Thomas M. Cooley of Michigan, instead of Grover Cleveland, who first gave utterance to the famous phrase, “A public office is a public trust.” Governor Durbin of Indiana is to blame for dispelling the illusion. In a speech recently he attributed the authorship of the saying to Judge .Cooley, and upon being called upon to give his authority he sent to Clerk Hopkins of the supreme court, who had no difficulty in finding the words in a copy of Cooley’s “Principles of Constitutional Law,” published in 1880, several years before the words were made famous by President Cleveland. There is, however, no claim that President Cleveland believed he was coining a phrase when he employed the words. He simply expressed an established truth.— Detroit Free Press.