This proved to be practically the end of the cipher despatch explosion. The men who plotted it had succeeded in disturbing the peace and domestic relations of an infirm old man for several months; they had sent forth reports vitally compromising the private as well as public character of the most eminent statesman of the country, which reports would leave their impression upon the minds of millions, of whom the evidence of his innocence would reach only thousands and an impartial posterity, to whose judgment, however, they were indifferent. Their object was accomplished. They had impaired Mr. Tilden's health; they had persuaded many that he was as unscrupulous in his political methods as Mr. Hayes had been, and to that extent fancied they had rendered him less formidable as a candidate for the presidency.

Dante, who had been one of the priori or six first men of Florence, was summoned to answer a malicious charge of peculation; he was not allowed sufficient time to appear and defend himself; was condemned, as contumacious, to a heavy fine, and banished forever from his native city upon which he had conferred its greatest glory. In such company political persecution confers distinction.

I will venture to close what it has seemed proper for me to say of this barbarous effort to degrade Mr. Tilden in the estimation of the world, with an entry made in my diary on Thursday the 13th of February, and four days after the examination of the Fifth-avenue hotel.

"Went around yesterday to Tilden's and found him in a state of unusual irritability. He had heard that Ellis, the president of the Third National Bank, had said that Tilden and Smith Weed passed an hour in close conversation at their bank between ten and one o'clock of the day previous to Weed's departure for the South. This, if true, would convict both Tilden and Weed of perjury, for both had sworn that they did not see each other between the day before the election and some time after Weed's return from the South. Weed was sent for, and this morning I met

him there. Meantime the papers of the day in question were looked over and both the World' and 'Herald' show that Tilden did not go down town that day, by accounting for all his time elsewhere. Weed also has documents to show that it was impossible for Ellis to be correct. After getting these proofs arranged and the papers marked, Tilden got into his coupé and went down to the bank. He returned about 4.30 P.M. to get me to go with him to an art reception given by the late William H. Vanderbilt, and on our way told me that if he had been a half-hour later Ellis would have been gone; that when shown the papers, Ellis decided to write Cox that he had been mistaken, and that he had since been satisfied that neither Mr. Tilden nor Mr. Weed were in the bank that day. Tilden saw that letter and then came off.

"It is curious what devices are resorted to, to destroy this poor man's character. I was thinking this morning that no one but a man of large fortune ought to think of running for the presidency as an independent man. Had Tilden been a man of moderate means he would have been ruined in character long ago. But for his having files of all the daily papers for years back, and clerks to assist in searching them, he would not have been able to collect the proofs of his whereabouts on the day in question in time to stop Ellis going on to Washington; still less the wider range of proof requisite to undo Ellis' erroneous testimony after it had been given.

"The whole of Tilden's time, and the services of several eminent and costly lawyers and a number of clerks, have been constantly required by him since the election to defend him against the prosecutions and the persecutions of the administration. There is no prominent candidate for the presidency at present, nor ever was there one, whose income is or ever was sufficient to provide for these expenses alone.

"The men who will run with the machine,' who will form combinations with rings and treat with the baser elements of society, have no such friction to contend with. Those baser elements stand ready to provide all the means necessary for their instruments. But when a man antagonizes rings, refuses to make bargains or to give promises, provokes the hostility of all the selfish interests which thrive under a corrupt government only, he has to contend

with an amount of feebleness and acquiescence on the part of the class who profess to desire good government and a hostility from those who prefer a bad one, which will crush any one who cannot at a moment's notice put his hand upon almost unlimited resources."

Early in 1877 a report was put into circulation in Washington that Mr. Tilden or his friends had been negotiating for the exemption of his bank account from inspection by the Investigating Committee of Congress. Justly indignant at such an imputation, he addressed the following letter to Senator Kernan, the last sentence of which betrays the perfidious origin of the report:

GOVERNOR TILDEN TO SENATOR KERNAN.

"NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 1877.

"THE HON. FRANCIS KERNAN, Washington, D.C.: "A telegram to the Associated Press, published this morning, states that a harmonious agreement has been brought about between the Senate committee, of which you are a member, and a committee of the House, by which it has been decided not to go into an examination of my bank account on the one hand, or the accounts of the chairman of the Republican National Committee on the other hand.

I repudiate any such agreement, and disclaim any such immunity, protection, or benefit from it. I reject the utterly false imputation that my private bank account contains anything whatever that needs to be concealed. Under the pretence of looking for a payment in December, the demand was for all payments after May and all deposits during nine months.

"The bank was repeatedly menaced with the removal of its officers and books to Washington.

"A transcript of entries of private business, trusts, and charities, containing everything but what the committee was commissioned to investigate, but nothing which it was commissioned to investigate, because nothing of that sort existed, has been taken, with my knowledge, to Washington. Of course there is no item in it relating to anything in

Oregon, for I never made, authorized, or knew of any expenditure in relation to the election in that State or the resulting controversies, or any promise or obligation on the subject.

Mr. Ellis, the acting president of the bank, himself a Republican, some time ago told the chairman of the committee and several of its members, that there is nothing in the account capable of furthering any just object of the investigation. I am also informed that a resolution was passed to summon me as a witness, but have received no subpoena. I had written before this telegram appeared, requesting you to say to the committee that it would be more agreeable to me not to visit Washington if the committee would send a sub-committee or hold a session here, but that otherwise I should attend under the subpoena. As to this arrangement now reported, I have only to say that I can accept decorum and decency, but not a fictitious equivalent for a mantle of secrecy to anybody else. "S. J. TILDEN.”

Income-tax returns

CHAPTER VII

New persecutions by the administration - The capitulation of the administration - The ignominious end of seven years' persecution Letters of Edwards Pierrepont, special counsel for the government; S. L. Woodford, United States District Attorney; Green B. Raum, United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue; Charles J. Folger, Secretary of the Treasury; and Benjamin H. Brewster, AttorneyGeneral of the United States.

THE INCOME-TAX SUIT.

THE administration at Washington, not content with violating the sanctity of private correspondence for material with which to discredit the candidate of the Democratic party, did not scruple to avail itself of other resources. exclusively within its own control, and with despotic recklessness.

In the latter part of August, 1876, an article appeared in the "New York Times," the favorite New York organ of the administration, charging Mr. Tilden with having sworn to false returns of his income; and giving various specious statements of his sources of income purporting to show a substantial discrepancy between its amount and the amount which Mr. Tilden returned. The time selected for this assault betrayed the unworthy motives which inspired it. It was in the high noon of the presidential canvass, in which, of course, all of Mr. Tilden's energies were enlisted; his brother Moses was lying on what in a week or two proved to be his death-bed; Mr. Tilden had not found time to complete his letter accepting the nomination of the St. Louis convention, to which his spare moments, usually taken from hours that should have been given to repose, were devoted. It was under these peculiarly trying condi