ess to secure an honorable and fair
settlement of this most dangerous question. We all recall how our
hopes revived, and how gladly we hailed the introduction of the
bill recommended by a joint committee of conference of the Senate and
House of Representatives. It was welcomed as the harbinger of
peace by the entire people of our country.

"I gave that bill my earnest support. It had in the House no friend
more ardent in its advocacy than myself. I believed it to be a
measure in the interest of peace. I believed that those who framed
it, as well as those who gave it their support upon the floor, were
honest in their statements, that no man could afford to take the
Presidency with a clouded title, and that the object of the bill was
to ascertain which of the candidates was lawfully entitled to
the electoral votes of Florida and Louisiana. I never mistrusted for
a moment that statesmen of high repute could in so perilous an
hour, upon so grave a question, palter with words in a double sense.

"We who are the actors in this drama know, and history will record
the fact, that the Conference Bill became a law, and the Electoral
Commission was organized, not for the purpose of ascertaining which
candidate had _prima facie_ a majority of the electoral votes; not
for the purpose of ascertaining that the Governor of Florida,
and the _de facto_ Governor of Louisiana, had given certificates
to the Hayes electors. It was never dreamed that a tribunal,
consisting in part of five judges of the highest court on earth,
was to be constituted, whose sole duty was to report a fact known to
every man in the land, that the returning-board of Louisiana had
given the votes of that State to the Hayes electors. The avowed
object of that bill was to ascertain which candidate had received a
majority of the legal votes of those States. The avowed object of
the bill was the secure the ends of justice; to see that the will of
the people was executed; that the Republic suffered no harm; to
see that the title to this great office was not tainted with fraud.
How well the members of this tribunal have discharged the sacred
trust committed to them, let them answer to history.

"The record will stand that this tribunal shut its eyes to the
light of truth; refused to hear the undisputed proof that a majority
of seven thousand legal votes in the State of Louisiana for Tilden
was by a fraudulent returning-board changed to eight thousand
majority