William L. Wilson, President Cleveland's Postmaster General, confided in his diary that he opposed Bryan on moral and ideological as well as party grounds. Wilson had begun his public service convinced that special interests had too much control over Congress and his unsuccessful tariff fight had burned this conviction deeper. He feared the triumph of free silver would bring class legislation, paternalism and selfishness feeding upon national bounty as surely as did protection. Moreover, he saw the proposed unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 to gold as morally wrong, "involving as it does the attempt to call 50 cents a dollar and make it legal tender for dollar debts". Wilson regarded populism as "the product of protection founded on the idea that Government can and therefore Government ought to make people prosperous".