When the greatest railroad of the world,
binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas
which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national
triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the
unanimous reports of three committees of Congress--two of
the House and one here--that every step of that mighty enterprise
had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the
shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office
that the true was by which power should be gained in the Republic
is to bribe the people with the offices created for their
service, and the true end for which it should be used when
gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification
of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the
footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.
"These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the
Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals
of our time will record them with his inexorable pen. And
now when a high Cabinet officer, the Constitutional adviser
of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption,
shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand
of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce,
and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and
jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the
petty political calculations as to the effect on one party
or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape
of the great public criminal? Or, on the other had, shall
he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected,
reformed and punished by Constitutional processes which the
wisdom of our fathers devised for us, and the virtue and purity
of the people found their vindication in the justice of the
Senate?"
This passage was quoted very extensively by the Democratic
speakers all over the country, and was circulated as a campaign
document.
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