Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-07-25
An Organizer of Biackguards.

With characteristic frankness Don
Piatt writes to New York paper con-
cerning the Arthur Richmond" letters:
81 have no objection to telling you that
the name of Arthur Richmond covered
a syndicate of blackguards organized by
the late Thorndyke Rice. l was, as near
as could make out, one-sixth OF Arthur
Richmond. ~ Exchange.
1t is not an altogether regrettable cir
cumstance that Allan Thorndyke Rice is
deceased. Don Piatt writes of him as
the organizer of a syndicate of black
guards, and that is what he really was
himself, and he was thoroughbred
sneak, as we'll. How he came to be en-
deared to the heart of Jim Blaine, except
from his undoubted possession of i'm
mense wealth, which from Carnegie on
wards captivates the heart of the
Plumed knight, no ordinary man can
discover. Nearly ten years ago the Hon.
jeremiah S. Black, the most consum-
mate master of the English language in
the prose department ever known, with
the exceptions of Junius, Edmund Burke
and Macaulay, contributed, by request OF
Rice, an article to the North american
Review on Edwin M. Stanton. 1t was
scintillant, brilliant and reminiscent of
history of which Judge Black himself,
as Mr.. Buchanan's Attorney General and
Secretary of State, was an abounding
reservoir. For q time it psralyzed the
Republican party; but, conscious that a
supreme effort was needed, Mr.. Edwin
M. Stoughton, of the New York bar, was
trotted out to make feeble sem blance
of an answer. 1t was an imbecile effort
and Judge Black assured the writer in
the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, that
Mr.. Rice, with infinite finesse and con-
fusion, declined to afford him space for q
rejoinder. The deceased Rice did this
with the knowledge that the feeble card
board edifce erected by Stoughton
would be demolished beyond
recognition by the great Demo
cratic statesman. This Stoughton
was the came man who, as Visiting
statesmen at New Orleans, assisted 80
materially in counting in Rutherford B.
Hayes, the fraudulent President, over
Samuel J. Tilden, the rightfully elected
President, and who was made by Hayes
minister to Russia as a reward OF his
shameful completely. 1t was Stoughton
who, when the certificates were pre-
sented that threw out certain up coun-
try paris hes of Louisiana, whose returns
ought to have been counted months be.
fore hundreds of miles from New Or
leans, and which, through the bungling
# calculating but self-disconcerting vii
lainy, were dated at the Crescent City
the day before. got up and said to the
commission which WAS organized to
count out Mr.. Tilden, "the date
attached to these certificates is undoubt-
edly "a clerical error,'" and so the board
accepted it, and Mr.. Tilden went by the
board. How we'll we remember this
beautiful Edwin M. Stoughton, with his
florid face and his flowing name of white
and venerable hair as he walked down
Broadway. He was an exact reproduc.
ton of Dickens's Mr.. Casby. And now
Rice himself has gone to join the great
band of hypocritss who undoubtedly
crowd Fiddler's Green, which, by Irish
is said to be five miles beyond
Sheol. And we risk nothing in saying
that the world is none the worse for the
absence of both of them-of Stoughton
who preceded and of Rice who followed.