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 question, and who now, although they had to admit the reasons compelling the dismissal, yet assailed me with remonstrances, threats, supplications, and even tears, to move me to a violation of my obvious duty. And I do not remember an instance of such appeal when, on the part of the supplicant, the matter of the public interest was in the least drawn into consideration. But I do remember more than one case in which the member of Congress demanding the revocation of such a removal, went so far as to threaten that unless I complied, the appropriations for my Department would have a hard time in passing the House.

It was in a magazine article written by Gen. Jacob D. Cox, ex-Secretary of the Interior, that I first found a description of Senators and members of the House of Representatives personally introducing to a Cabinet minister constituents of theirs as candidates for certain places, extolling the merits of those constituents in the warmest language, and with apparently earnest eloquence urging their appointment, while the Cabinet minister had in his desk notes from the same statesmen cautioning him not to pay any regard to their recommendations. I must confess that this startled me. Being at that time a member of the Senate myself, I inquired of two Cabinet ministers then in office whether any instances of such duplicity had ever come to their own personal notice. The answer was that indeed they had, and they were by no means infrequent. But I have not to depend upon other men’s testimony; for a few years later I,