New-York tribune., 1875-01-13
CONTEMPT and PERJCRY.

The Committee which is investigating the
process by which the Pacific Mail Company
obtained its last subsidy. Is being outrageOusly
laughed at. If witness says seriously that he
cannot honOrably answer question, the Com
mittee can declare him in contempt and send
him to jail, although lie may have protested
his respect for them with tears in his eyes.
But they appear to be pOwerless before hu-
morous varlet, who stands up, thrusts his
tongue in his cheek, winks at the reporters,
and lies as fast as he can speak. On Monday
they had an entertaining batch of this style of
witnesses before them, and it is safe to say,
did not get one ounce of truth out OF the
whole party. In the gradual subdivision OF
Mr.. Irwn's large checks, they had come to
the memoranda of Mr.. Abert's payments,
and had at last forced him to tell into whose
hands his money went. Being menaced with
iail. he gave up his benefciaries, and they
turn out to be a lot of cheap lobbyists on
whom no man in his senses would waste One
Hundred and Twenty Thousand Dollars of
| good money-still less a gentleman like Col
Irwin, who knows Washington as well as his
own pocket, who has been in the inside of
three or four administrations, and who is
hardly the sort of person to throw whole
| prize beef to q cur who would be made happy
by shin-bone. But when these Ten Thou
sand Dollar men were called before the Com
mittee, they each stOutly asseverated that the
entire sums they handled went to their own
particular pouches, and that they had earned
the money by reasonable service-sO help them
a Power which they evidently fear as little as
the Committee.
The services were various in kind but
equally grotesque. Ex-MayOr Berrett got seve-
raj thousand. and this may be said to have
been well expended, for the Mayor Is one of
the bandsomest men now living, and his
beauty Is of inestimable value to any cause he
espouses. There is also certain value and
efficiency in Col. Forney's support, as was
shown recently by the panic in the Admins
tration party of Philadelphis over his ru-
mored sale of his paper. But the other names
mentioned do not fit the sums attached to
them. w. B. Shaw, for instance, has length
of service in his favor, but 80 admirably has
he organized his work that he has been
able TO lower his price every year, and
during the last half century or 90 hun:
dred dollars is about the average quota
ton for his influence. Yet he is
said to have sold it TO Irwin for $4,000
The services for which he was paid this mu-
nifcent wage were unique in the history Of la
Dor. They consisted, according to his own
sworn evidence, in occasionally asking members
chow the thing lookedfr He swears he rem
dered no other service; be bribed nobody, he
tried to influence nobody. Once in a while
when he met leading statesmmn he would
ask him casually, How it looked, and would
go home and charge the Company, say $1,000
for it. He was in favor of all subsidies, he
said, because they gave him chance to speeu-
late in stocks. But If they all were as fruit
full to him as this one, he could well afford
not to speculate, but pass q peaceful old age
in putting remunerstive Sonundrums to lead
ing statesmen.
But the cases of Boyd and Hersey were still
more exacting in their demands on the cre-
dulity of the Committee. The one was an
assistant dsVykeepeg and the other a messep-