Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/19

Rh suggestion as to committee work. Mr. Colfax placed me upon the Judiciary Committee, which, in the end, was the best place to which I could have been assigned.

Mr. Colfax was made of consequence in the country by the newspapers, and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post-office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the country over-estimated his ability. He was a genial, kind man, with social qualities and an abundance of information in reference to men in the United States and to recent and passing politics. He had newspaper knowledge and aptitude for gathering what may be called information as distinguished from learning. He was a victim to two passions or purposes in life, that are in a degree inconsistent—public life and money-making. Instances there have been of success, but I have never known a case where a public man has not suffered in reputation by the knowledge that he had accumulated a fortune while he was engaged in the public service. As a speaker of the House, Colfax was agreeable and popular, but he lacked in discipline. His rule was lax, and there can be no doubt that from the commencement of his administration there had been a decline in what may be termed the morale of the House. Something of its reputation for dignity and decorum had been lost.

A young man from New York, Mr. Chanler, made a speech in the Thirty-eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress, which seemed to favor the Confederacy. This phase of his speech was due to the fact that he was a transcendental State Rights advocate. He did not believe in secession, as a wise and proper policy,