American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1881-07-16

iicaii party than Speakhr Sharpe were
engaged in the conspiracy {" dsfeat
Depew by suborning Bradley to swear
falsely that money had been paid HIM
to vote for Depew. That il to say, 1t
is almost certain either that a Republic
an candidate for the United States
Senate and Republican State Senator
conspired to commit bribery, and that
the Republ can State Senator perjured
himself rather than confess the bribery;
or that Republican candidate for
United States Senator and the RkpBb-
lican Speaker of the Assembly con-
spired to suborn a Republican Assem-
blyman to commit perjury. As the
latest development of party of great
moral ideas this splay is equally edify-
ing, whichever theory we adopt.
| AS p matter of evidence the proba.-
bilities are in favor Of Bradley's story
as against the story of Sessions. Brad
lev, appears to be a decent sort of man
as Republican, Assemblymen go: Nov
| Barabbas was a robber.' Moreover,
| Bradley is not at all the sort of man wild
would be put forward to carry out a
conspiracy OF the kind of which he is
! accused. He is not a hardened politician,
and it would seem quite out OF the
question that he could or would be re-
| lied upon to take a false story before
committee and mainta n it under cross
examinat on. OF Speaker Sharpe also 1t
is bare justice to say that there is nothing
in his career which gives any color to
the charge that he would be guilty of a
conspiracy, not merely to defeat Depew
for the Senate which he would no
doubt conspire to the limits of the
statutes aud the Decalogue to debut
to de eat him by bringing false &C.
cusation of bribery indirectly against
him and directly against Senator on
the State. The improbabilities against
the theory that Bradley story was con-
cocted between Speaker Sharpe and
himself amount to flat incrediblities.
The attempts to show that the Speakers
testimony ic unlikely to be true are
simply silly cavils. The 90 ections are.
first, that it is unlikely that such a story
could have been told, for the first time,
in five minutes, and next, that it was
unlikely that the Speaker should have
taken memorandum of the number CT
the notes unless there had been some
previous collision between himself and
Bradley Neither of these objections
has any weight. Much less than five
minutes would have sufliced to put the
Speaker in possession of the facts and
to enable him to count thirteen bank
notes. The making of the memoran-
dunn was an ordinary precaution such
as any honest person of business habits
would have taken on receiving a depos-
it of the amount which Bradley handed
to Sharpe. for whatever purpose it had
been handed to him.
On the other side there are no such
difficulties. In the first place there is
no difficulty whatever on the score of
character. Nobody has suggested that
Mr.. Sessions is an unlikely person to
bride his fellow legislators. His famil-
iarity with the verb Ito bribe' both in
the active and the passive voice is not
disputed. In fact. the argument that
is most relied upon is that it was pre-
cisely because his familiarity with
bribery was SO great that he would not
have been likely either to bride the
wrong person or to pay a bride before
the delivery of the vote which he had
bought. There is no doubt some
weight in this argument. 1t is surpris-
ing that such an expert should so have
buhgled such job. But the evidence
that he did bungle it is SO complete
and conclusive that an antecedent i'm
probability that he should have
bungled it cannot be pleaded
against such evidence. Painful as it is
to have to impute perjury either to
Bradley or to Sessions, it is proper to
bear in mind which~of them is appar-
emily the more likely person to commit
perjury. 1t is also proper to bear in
mind the difference between perjuring
yourself in order to injure another, and
perjuring yourself in order to get your
self out of scrape, and how much
stronger temptation would be requir-
ed to the former offense than to the lat
ter. The conclusion of all impartial
men who read and consider the testi-
mony that has been taken must be that
Bradley told the truth. =
All these things increase the moral
pressure upon decent and ,self-respect-
ing members of the Legislature, who
wish neither to bride nor to be bribed,
to go home and leave the Senatorial
vacancies to be filed by the people of
the State. Only in this way can they
make sure that any candidate who may
have tried to bride his way into the
Senate of the United States shall not
secure the VOTES which he has purchas-
ed.-M. Y. World.