146 FUR-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 



not fair in making so mean a suggestion to me. You certainly are not going to be 

 assailed by me, for you are in no shape to be assailed. 



Why should you allude to the canceling of my commission? I never alluded to it 

 to you or to anybody else except with satisfaction. Why, indeed, should I? You did 

 not appoint me; you had nothing whatever to do with it; and when the accident of 

 death brought you into a little spell of brief authority you exercised it; I never objected 

 and I never cared, for this is a mere personal matter that does not interest anybody 

 but ourselves. 



But the seal question is and was a public trust, and your record on that score is a 

 proper subject for investigation and fair record. 



Now to business: I am not responsible for this digression. You say that you "don't 

 remember that Healey letter"; that settles it as far as this inquiry is concerned; but 

 you are silent as to my inquiry as to where are those statements of the employees of the 

 N. A. Com. Co. Who had the right to withdraw those papers from the files of the 

 department — these papers which you told the reporter of the New York Tribune, 

 May 8, 1891, were in the department on file, distinctly contradicting my statement as 

 to decrease in seal life? These papers were, I suppose, your justification for that per- 

 mit to kill 60,000 seals, over the sworn testimony of every Treasury agent of the Gov- 

 ernment on the seal islands against it at the time you gave it out. I repeat, for your 

 own credit, that these papers be produced. 



Your order to Maj. Williams put no restrictions on the killing of 60,000 male seals 



over the age of 1 year. Had that order not been canceled, as it was by my direct effort, 



it would have permitted and directed the most shameful killing on the seal islands of 



all the shameful seal slaughter yet done on the islands or in the waters around them. 



Very truly, yours, 



Henry W. Elliott. 



Mr. Charles Foster, 



Fostoria, Ohio. 



Toledo, Ohio, January 23, 1895. 

 Mr. Henry W. Elliott, 



Washington, D. C. 

 Dear Sir: Your favor of the 19th instant reached me at this place this morning. I 

 have been troubled with an inflamed eye and have been over here for treatment sev- 

 eral days.. I wrote as I did because it seemed to me that your letter assurued an air of 

 arrogance and suspicion, and, I might add, innuendo. If I did you an injustice I beg 

 your pardon. I have no knowledge whatever of the letters and papers to which you 

 refer. No paper was removed from the files by my order or with my knowledge. If 

 they are not now on the files they have been removed clandestinely or by order of some 

 one else. My record in relation to my official conduct is open to the world; I did 

 nothing that I would not do over again to-day with the present lights I have on the 

 subject. 



Yours, respectfully, 



Charles Foster. 



Smithsonian Institution, 

 Washington, D. C, Janunry 26, 1895. 

 Dear Sir: Yours of the 2P.d instant was duly received yesterday, and I ain glad 

 that you admit that my position of "assailing" you was an assumption on your part. 

 It certainly was, and I f^an call on your own men, Stanley Brown and Maj. Williams, fai 

 bear witness to the truth of my statement that I repeatedly said to them that I was well 

 satisfied to be nut of the association that they belonged to in this fur-seal business. 



You know the act which sent me to the seal islands in 1890 was passed expressly 

 for that purpose, and as stated in both Htaises of Congress -i^hen the subject \vas up 

 before them, it coidd not have been passed had it not been as stated, and Mr. Windom 

 freelv told me so before the bill was ever introduced. 



I knew, as everybody admits here to-day, that I was right on this seal business; 

 and that vou and Mr. Blaine were wrong in giving that scandalous order to Elkins in 

 distinct violation of that offer made by Blaine to Her Majesty's Government, April 

 7, 1891. * * * you issued the order violating the faith of the department on the 

 11th of April, 1891. I exposed that fact on April 22, 1891, and you "dispensed with 

 my services" on the 25th of April, 1891. Of course we parted. We had to part. 

 Very truly, etc., 



Henry W. Elliott. 



Charles Foster, 



Fostoria, Ohio. 



