Year: 1873

SOUTH BEND, Ind, March 8.-Ex-Yice
President Colfax arrived here at half-past
II this afternoon. AT she depot vast con-
course of citizens met him with music and
cheers. Upon entering the carriage three
chesrs were given him, when Mr.. Colfax
said: Twill speak to you at the courthouse.
My heart thanks you all


At the courthouse Hon. William Miller,
Mayer, read an address of welcome, saying,
Neither the insinuations of insidious foes
nor the charges of open enemies can change
it, nor can calumny or detraction rob you
of the well deserved esteem of your friends
and neighborss


Mr.. Colfax responded at length. He
said: Here you have known me from child
hood; my goings out and my comings in
have been before your eyes; my character
has been formed in your midst, and you
know whether for psltry sum of money l
could be induce to shipwreck 1t
feel it due to you as well as to myself to
express the utter injustice of the cruel
charges in which / have been arraigned
during the past winter. He quoted from
his speech of last fall as follows:


81 claim the right 10 purchase stock in
the Credit Mobilier, or Credit Immobilier,
if there is one, nor do know of any law
prohibiting it. Do l need TO add that
neither Oakes Ames nor any other person
ever gave or offered to give me one share,
or twenty shares, or two hundred shares in
the Credit MobiIier or any other railroad
stock, and that unfortunately | have never
seen or received the value Of farthing out
of the 2T0 per cent dividends, or the 80 per
cent dividends in cash stock, or bonds you
have read about the past month, nor 100
per cent, nor the tenth of one per cent?


Although thus accepted all the odium
there could attach to purchasing the stock,
l have been charged with prevarication be-
cause did not go on and state that l had
withdrawn years before fIom an incom-
plete contract to buy twenty shares. losing
what | had paid on account.


Suppose any one of you had been charged
with having been given shares in woOlen
factory, that from these shares you had re-
ceived enormous dividends, and that as
payment for these gifts and dividends you
had aided corruptly in carrying through
legislation in regard to the duties on wool,
would you not regard it as sufficient an
swer to such charges to tell the public that
you had been all your life publicly advo-
eating the scale of duties alleged
to have been carried by cor
ruptiop; that besides this their enact
ment had been a year before these
alleged gifts; that you had never owned aDy
stock in wooden factories or anything else
that you have not paid for; that your shares
had never received any such dividends.
Now, if you had voluntarily withdrawn, as
[ had, at pecunisry loss, over four years
before, from an agreement to buy such
stock in a woolen factory, you would regard
what had supposed as a sufficient refuta-
ton of a charge that you had been bribed
by gifts Of stock and enormous
dividends; but if you added
to all these the frank statement that you
had said you would buy this very factory
stock at par, and to hold it if it would no.
involve yCu in litigation, would you not
think your answer TO be full and thoro ugh
on every practical point that the wanton
calumny required you to state? No Cne
could have been misled by my speech in
the vital point.


THE telegraph is burthened with about
four columns of this speech, and proceeds:


at the close Col. Humphrey presented
Colfax with letter with 1900 signatures
of bis fellow citizens attached, expressing g
the confidence of the;signers in him, after
which the following resolution Was ffoered
and unanimously adopted: Resolved, that
In welcoming S. Colfax home to-day after
his 20 years of arduous publi service in
which he has been excelled by none as a
model statesman, temperate, judicious and
faithful to principles, and we do so with
undiminished confidence n his honor and
integrity both as public man and private
citiZaD