Year: 1876

circular which Attorney General Pierrepont
sent to the Western district attorneys Mr..
Pierrepont has not yet thought fit to publish
the 'facts" on which he told our readers that
he rests his vindication for writing and send
ing that strange instruction forbidding the
prosecuting officers to secure testimony
against the whiskey thieves by promising
lenity to accomplices who turn States evil
dence. We hope he will not much longer
withhold those alleged ''facts, for they must
be of a most astounding character if they JUS
tify the Attorney General in overstepping the
law to intrude into the province of other Off
GERS and attempting to Illustrate justice by
sealing up one of the ordinary sources of
evidence in criminal prosecutions. The new
point raised by Mr.. Nordhof relates, how
ever, to matter which the Attorney Gene
raj may not yet be able to explain, but which
it is his clear duty to investigate.


Mr. Pierrepont declared in his communica-
ton to the HERALD that his circular was a
confidential communication to the district
attorneys, Exposed by gross impropriety."
Mr.. Nordhoff makes it evident that in investi-
eating that breach of confidence the inquiry
lies within narrow compass There were
only five persons who had any legitimate
knowledge of that confidential circular
namely, the Attorney General, who prepared
and sent it; the President, who prompted
and inspected it, and the three district at
torneys to whom it was addressed. The
district attorneys are exempt from suspicion
by the fact that it was first divulged in
Washington at a period so close upon its
date that it could not have come back from
either ST. Louis, Chicago or Milwaukee.
Being a confidential communication, requir-
ing no haste, it was sent by mail and not by
telegraph, and time enough had not elapsed
before correct copy was given to the Wash
ington correspondent of thu Chicago Times
for it to have been sent from the West. The
district attorneys are further protected from
suspicion by the accompanying history of its
origin, of which they could have no knowl-
edge Those officers are therefore outside
the field of inquiry, and the range of suspi-
cion is narrowed from five persons to two,
those two being the Attorney General him
self and the President. Of course it was not





nounced the 'gross impropriety," and we
thus arrive, by process which logicians
call 'the method of exhaustion" " to q con-
clusion which should fill the Attorney Gen
'eral with dismay. 1t may be said that there
is one other possible source of the leak in
the confidential clerk who prepared the
copies. In the first place the clerk would
4 4. I
in the second place the most he could have
done would have been to furnish copy of
the circular without the history of its origin,
which would not have been communicated to
a copyist and could have been known only
to Mr.. Pierrepont and the President. 1t is
inconceivable that the Attorney General
meant to denounce himself for "a gross
impropriety !" and SO we are again brought
by the method of exhaustion to the only in
dividual who had either means or motive for
divulging the secret


We are thus brought by strict logic to the
edge of field in which we feel great reluc-
tance to tread. But the extreme delicacy of
the inquiry must not arrest our steps SO far
as they can be taken on basis of fact Mr..
Nordhoff asserts-and he is not man to
commit his name to such an assertion with
out proof-that the circular and the history
of its origin were furnished to the press by
Mr.. Emory Storrs, one of General
Babcocks counsel. But where did
Mr.. Storrs procure them? This is
question which Mr. Nordhoff does not
undertake to answer and it is no wonder
that he shrinks on the threshold of such an
inquiry. We feel some hesitation ourselves
in pursuing the inferences to which his
facts seem to point but the thing is so seri-
GUS that investigation cannot be evaded, and
the press must not recoil from o painful
duty. Mr.. Storrs could not have received
his information from Mr.. Pierrepont, who
denounces its exposure, nor from the clerk
in the Attorney Generals office, who could
only have supplied the circular, but not the
information, and there was only one other
person in Washington who could have
been Mr.. Storrs' informant This state
of facts and this inevitable infer
ence show how necessary il was for
Mr.. Pierrepont to have denied that the
President prompted or had any knowledge
of the circular if he could have done SO with
truth. Under such circumstances the failure
to deny was a confession, and n confession
which involves consequences of the most
painful delicacy 1t establishes the fact that
the President had it in his power to supply
one of General Babcock's counsel with n
piece of information which he thought so
important to his client that he hastened to
give it to the press in order that it might
have its natural effect in frightening away
witnesses. The whole country will agree
with us that the parties chiefly concerned
cannot afford to let this transaction rest in
its present aspect