Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/275

Rh will find this Speaker of the House “controlling” a large interest in another land-grant road liable to be affected by Congressional legislation, the Northern Pacific—“a splendid thing,” which he himself “can't touch,” but which he can offer to his friend Fisher, cautioning that friend to be careful to keep the Speaker's name quiet. You find a large and mysterious sum of money passing through his hands, which he “had not in his possession forty-eight hours,” but paid over to parties whom he tried to protect from loss—a mysterious sum of money much inquired about, of which Mr. Blaine proved himself anxious to show where it had not come from, but avoided showing where it had come from. We find him mediating as a friend between different interests and organizations connected with railroads, and we begin to ask ourselves with wonder whether there was a pie in which the Speaker of the House did not have his finger.

We find something more. We find Mr. Blaine again and again protesting against any line of inquiry which might “expose his private business.” What? Here was the late Speaker of the House of Representatives, the second officer in the Government, whose official integrity was questioned, before an investigating committee of the same House over which he had presided; and he did not cry out: “Here are my books, here my bank accounts, here my letters, here my keys, here my friends, here my enemies take them all! Search, sift, question, leave no stone unturned, no dark corner unexplored; hold up every circumstance in the least suspicious to the sunlight. I have been Speaker of the House of Representatives. When my official integrity is seriously questioned I must stand before the people, not only as one who cannot be legally proved guilty, but as one whom suspicion must not touch!” No, he did not say anything of the kind. He did not remember Alexander Hamilton's