His personal and political enemies charged that it was due to jealousy of President Grant.

Mr.
Blaine was a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination the following year.

It was a well-known fact that President Grant was not favorable to Mr.Blaine's nomination, but was in sympathy with the movement to have Senator Roscoe Conkling, of New York, Mr.Blaine's bitterest political enemy, nominated.

Mr.Blaine was afraid, his enemies asserted, that, if the Federal Elections Bill,--under the provisions of which great additional power would have been conferred upon the President,--had become a law, that power would be used to defeat his nomination for the Presidency in 1876; hence his opposition to the Bill.
But, whatever his motives were, his successful opposition to that measure no doubt resulted in his failure to realize the ambition of his life,--the Presidency of the United States.

But for the stand he took on that occasion, he would probably have received sufficient support from Southern delegates in the National Convention to secure him the nomination, and, had he been nominated at that time, the probabilities are that he would have been elected.