Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/270

236 Blaine did not permit the letters which he read to pass into the hands of the officers of the House so that their contents might have been verified. He promptly put them into his own pocket again and carried them away. And, secondly, in reading them to the House he dexterously mixed letters of different periods and about different subjects together, so that no listener could on the spot make head or tail to them.

Thus Mr. Blaine could prevent the House from verifying the letters and from at once understanding their full import. But he could not prevent the letters as actually read from being subsequently arranged according to dates and subjects and compared with the testimony. Then their connection became clear, and with it their meaning. What is that meaning? What does it signify when a Speaker of the House of Representatives writes to a business man that he (the Speaker) wants a profitable interest in an enterprise the value of which has been, and may again be, affected by acts of the same legislative body over which that Speaker presides, and in which he exercises great power; when that Speaker says he feels that he shall not prove a deadhead in the enterprise if he once embarks in it, and that he sees various channels in which he knows he can be useful, and when finally, the desired profitable interest not being forthcoming, he points to an exercise of his power as Speaker by which, even “without knowing it,” he did a great favor to the party from whom he asks that profitable interest, thus pointing directly at the field upon which he can make himself most useful? What does this mean? On its very face it means one of the highest and most powerful officers in the Government marketing his official power for private gain. It means official power offering itself for prostitution to make money.

I say this is its meaning on the very face of it. Still,