Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1873-03-20

The Louisville CoWier-Jouraok
(Democrat) in a carefully prepared ar
ticle upon the connection of Vice Pres
ident Colfax with the Credit Mobilier
swindle, says:
1--WE have taken the trouble to re-
view carefully the case of Mr.. Coifax.
as recorded in the Congressional inves-
tigation, and compare it with the
elaborate defense delivered by the late
Vice President at South Bend last
Saturday. The result of our researches
is that he has given a successful and
satisfactory. explanation of the entire
matter. 1t will require closer analys-
is than that which we have made, or
are capable of making, to alter our
opinion that, in this business, Mr.. Col
fax has been very much abused and
wronged; and we are the reader to
allow this, since We have never been
tempted, and could not be induced, to
sacrifice the private character of any
man to a partisan interest or prejudice.
In doing what we believe to be an act
of personal justice, we desire to be full,
explicit and ungrrdging, and there.
fore We shall not shadow the congratu-
lations which we have to offer a con-
spicuous political adversary by any
of those minor disparagements which
might be sanctioned by less generous
criticism"
May we not hope that other jour-
mails, which, grasping at mere shadows
of evidence, made haste to blacken the
character of man whose whole life
proclaims bis unblemished honor and
integrity, will have the goodness 10
confess their error and make repara-
tion for the evil they have done.
No fault is to be found with the press
for denouncing a public man really
guilty of the offense with which Mr..
Colfax was charged. But common
fairness as well as common decency
and self-respect enjoined the utmost
care in weighing the evidence on
which so infamaus charge was made
against so high functionary of the
government, and in examining the de-
fense by which the charge was met
And yet it is manifest that nothing
but determined purpose to accept the
charge as already proved, could have
kept many of the newspaper men re-
fered to from perceiving the force of
the evidence and argument by which
Mr.. Colfax has been vindicated. In
the first place, the speech of Septem-
Der at South Bend in which the first
denial that Oaks Ame5 had girea him
shares of the Objectionable stock had
been and is still Systematically and
persistently misrepresented. The de-
nial was almost universally understood
at the time in true sense. In the sec
Ond place, these newspapers utterly
ignore the overwhelming presumption
in favor of Colfax's truth-speaking
when he first gave testimony before
the Poland Committee. Even assum-
ing him to be rogue, unless we as
sumo him to be fool also, we must
take it for granted that in the presence
of Ames he did not intend to deny
having received the money, if he really
remembered the fact, as any one but
an idiot would feel sure that Ames, a
shrewd and experienced man of busi-
ness, would be able to produce over
whelming evidence that he had given
Colfax the money. Then Ames, hav-
ing heard Colfax's statement, declared
to several other persons as well as to
the witness himself that the statement
was substantially correct. And now
Mr.. Dillon, the cashier who paid the
writes q letter to express his
almost confident recollection of having
paid it to Ames himself. As to that
point Colfax's vindication could hardly
be more complete or satisfactory.
The suspicion attached to C6lfax's
reception Of large sums of money from
Mr.. Nesbit, a government contractor,
of New York, evidently sprang in the
first place from the other transaction,
and by itself is of no Importance. II
is perfectly well attested that -Nesbit
neither received nor expected any,
thing from the Vice Presidents inhu-
ance, and it is equally well known that
the Vice President made no secret of
the favors he had received from Nes-
bit. By the historian writing fifty or
twenty years hence the whole affair,
20 far as Colfax is concerned, will be
represented as an example of mole
lill magnified into mountain by The
Inamiable human propensity to pull
lown the high placed and to convert
actions good or Indifferent into evil.
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