New-York tribune., 1879-11-27
"EVERYBODY HAD A CIPHER.p

So they all had clphers. SAID MT. neWltu
in reply to a question of THE TRIBUNE re-
porter whether he knew Mr.. Smith Weed had
a cipher, "Oh, yes, everybody had a cipher"
" hen asked If he had one himself, he an
swered; No. had none, except when was
cat Washington. When n message came 1t
/" had to be deciphered by a clerk. l received
" ten cipher messages and sent ten at Wash
"ington the only ones ever had anything to
L" do with personally" But everybody else, 1t
seems, had ciphers and everybody who had
anything to do with running the Til
den campaign in 1876 had a pocket
full of signs and symbols and hero
glyphs and complicated word jumbles
with keys to all sorts, and was using them In
communicating with headquarters and with
committees and purchasing agents all over the
country. But there was time when they all
denied any knowledge of cIphersj when the
ciphcrers and decipherers took the mysterious
dispatches and turned them over wOnderingly
and tried to spell them out, and could make
nothing of them. and then solemnly averred
that they could not understand them at all.
But some Of them must have been lying.
For Mr.. Hewitt says they all had ciphers.
1t was a queer way to conduct political
campaign whose main object was admins
trative reform and the publication OF poll
tics. What are we to think of the sin
cerity of men who adopt such methods
in political management, who clOthe all
their movements in such mysterious secrecy,
and who lie and prevarcate about them
when they ale brought homef Is that
the way honest men manage public affairs
Mr.. Hewitt's answer seems to sweep In all
the prominent Democrats, including the WIS.,
iting statesmen. But we cannot believe
that the gifted Leverett SaltOnstall, who,
1t will be remembered, went to Florida
in that strange company led by Noses"
either had any cipher himself or was aware
that his associates had. For Mr.. SaltOnstall
hurried into print shortly after The TRIBUNE
exposures began last year, with not only
vigorous denial that he had any part in the
rogueries undertaken by the "M0ses" gang, but
a very positive assertion of his conviction that
nobody had any ciphers that if there were
any, they had been stolen and that no de-
pendence whatever could be placed on The
TRIBUNE translations. All the rest may have
had-indeed, many of them have been proved
to have had-ciphers but we do not believe
Saltonstall did. He was evidently innocent.
That was not his part IN the play. He was
simply the respectable fgure-head for the
rest. But it must be pleasant for him to
think that while he was stalking around with
the coparceners. trusting their professions and
believing 1t was a square game. "Moses" and
the rest were delugng the wires with ciphers
that he knew nothing about.
1t may be that, spite of all the evidence, he
has clung to the belief that he avowed origi-
nally, that the cipher dispatches were TRIB-
UNE foreeries. He has never made any pub
lie recantation of it that we know of; nor
has he ever had the decency to apologize
for his shameiully libellous false charge
Perhaps in tho light of Mr.. Hewitt's
frank admission that everybody" had
ciphers, he will feel like coming forward and
confessng that he might have been wrong in
charging that The TRIBUNE invented them.
Or, considering how sweeping Mr.. Hewitts
statement is, he may desire to deny once more
that he had any cipher.