they should ever again have dealings with the
Government. The department was absolutely cleaned and became one of the
very best in the Government. Several Senators came to me--Mr. Garfield
was present on the occasion--and said that they were glad I was putting
a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would avoid all scandal; that if
I would make an example of some one man and then let the others quietly
resign, it would avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party. They
were advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as possible in
my answer, but explained that I would have to act with the utmost rigor
against the offenders, no matter what the effect on the party, and,
moreover, that I did not believe it would hurt the party. It did not
hurt the party. It helped the party. A favorite war-cry in American
political life has always been, "Turn the rascals out." We made it
evident that, as far as we were concerned, this war-cry was pointless;
for we turned our own rascals out.

There were important and successful land fraud prosecutions in several
Western States. Probably the most important were the cases prosecuted in
Oregon by Francis J. Heney, with the assistance of William J. Burns,
a secret service agent who at that time began his career as a great
detective. It would be impossible to overstate the services rendered to
the cause of decency and honesty by Messrs. Heney and Burns. Mr. Heney
was my close and intimate adviser professionally and non-professionally,
not only as regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but
in many other matters of vital interest to the Republic. No man in the
country has waged the battle for National honesty with greater courage
and success, with more whole-hearted devotion to the public good; and
no man has been more traduced and maligned by the wrong-doing agents
and representatives of the great sinister forces of evil. He secured the
conviction of various men of high political and financial standing
in connection with the Oregon prosecutions; he and Burns behaved with
scrupulous fairness and propriety; but their services to the public
caused them to incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the
public, and after I left office the National Administration turned
against them. One of the most conspicuous of the men whom they had
succeeded in convicting was pardoned by President Taft--in spite of the
fact that the presiding Judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the
evide