Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/273

Rh Caldwell's interest, of which the Speaker of the House was so anxious to acquire a part, consisted only of the privilege of buying Little Rock securities at “precisely the same rates which others paid”? Did it mean that Mr. Caldwell should graciously concede to him some right which “all applicants in the Boston market” possessed? What an audacious farce such an assertion would be! If there is anything evident from Mr. Blaine's own letters it is that the Speaker of the House wanted to be—and, according to his gush of gratitude to Mr. Fisher, was—if not the favored one in that railroad enterprise, then one of the favored few, on the “bottom floor,” in the “inside ring,” who skim the cream before the public get at the milkpan. And when in the investigation he hinted at his being situated in the enterprise no better than the public generally, he was confronted by Mr. Mulligan with a memorandum book in Mr. Blaine's own handwriting, showing that Mr. Blaine had received as a gratuity or commission about $130,000 in bonds and $15,150 in money. Thereupon there was dead silence on the part of Mr. Blaine. He had nothing more to say than that he did not want his private affairs inquired into. It is painfully evident that here again Mr. Blaine stands convicted, not by his enemies and defamers, but by his own pen, of having made solemn explanations of his conduct before the House of Representatives which were obviously untrue.

These are the things referred to when I said that Mr. Blaine, in the issue of veracity between him and Mr. Mulligan concerning that famous interview, had put him self at a decided disadvantage by untruthful statements about other parts of this business.

The third point urged in extenuation is that there was no subsequent legislation concerning that railroad, except, as Mr. Blaine said, an act “merely to rectify a previous