CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



229 



rity of the bonds ? Fonr years ago the road 

 was opened, without local business, with no 

 considerable through traffic, and in tjje dawn 

 of the friendly relations between the United 

 States and those Asiatic nations which now 

 bid fair to prove the source of its largest and 

 most lucrative business. The conservative 

 capitalists of the country believed it would 

 bankrupt any organization which undertook 

 to operate it. Four years have reversed that 

 opinion, and now the same men are putting 

 forth their best efforts to secure the benefit 

 of a close traffic connection, and perhaps ulti- 

 mate ownership. Twenty -four years ago there 

 was scarcely a mile of railroad west of Lake 

 Erie, and no connecting line west of Buffalo. 

 Let him who would rightly estimate the future 

 of this company go back to the year 1848, 

 and, thenceforward to the present time, trace 

 the growth and development of that portion 

 of the United States lying west of the great 

 lakes, and he will be able to approximate the 

 coming history of the region through which 

 this road stretches for a thousand miles, and 

 of the trade and products and commodities of 

 which it i* to be the great commercial artery. 

 There is but one power that can destroy its 

 ability to perform all its obligations to the 

 Government ; there is but one agency that can 

 render it incapable of paying all its indebted- 

 ness to the last dollar, namely, the Congress of 

 the United States. It alone can so cripple, 

 weaken, or destroy the company as to make 

 the loan of the Government to it a total loss. 



" These, then, are my offenses : that I have 

 risked reputation, fortune, every thing, in an 

 enterprise of incalculable benefit to the Gov- 

 ernment, from which the capital of the world 

 shrank ; that I have sought to strengthen the 

 work, thus rashly undertaken, by invoking the 

 charitable judgment of the public upon its ob- 

 stacles and embarrassments ; that I have had 

 friends, some of them in official life, with 

 whom I have been willing to share advanta- 

 geous opportunities of investment; that I have 

 kept to the truth through good and evil re- 

 port, denying nothing, concealing nothing, 

 reserving nothing. Who will say that I alone 

 am to be offered up a sacrifice to appease a 

 public clamor or expiate the sins of others? 

 Not until such an offering is made will I be- 

 lieve it possible. But if this body shall so 

 order that it can best be purified by the choice 

 of a single victim, I shall accept its mandate, 

 appealing with unfaltering confidence to the 

 Impartial verdirt of history for that vindication 

 which it is proposed to deny me here." 



[Mr. Brooks, of New York, made no remarks 

 during this debate. But on a previous occa- 

 sion, on December 17th, he obtained the privi- 

 li'-'i' of the floor. The speech then delivered 

 is inserted here, although it was spoken pre- 

 vious to the report of the committee and is not 

 n part of this debate, that the statements of 

 Mr. Brooks may appear. EDITOR.] 



Mr. Brooks : " Mr. Speaker, I rise to a ques- 

 tion of privilege, and, in order to make myself 

 understood, I must say that I hold in my hand 

 several newspapers, among them the New York 

 Herald and the New York World, which state 

 that, before a committeeof investigation created 

 by this House, a person by the name of Henry 

 McComb, of Delaware, has sworn that the 

 company of Credit Mobilier gave me fifty 

 shares of Credit Mobilier stock, in order that I 

 might control or influence the Democratic side 

 of this House to sustain the Union Pacific Rail- 

 road Company in whatever demands it might 

 make upon Congress, and that I accepted this 

 gift of the Credit Mobilier thus to control the 

 Democratic side of the House. This is the sub- 

 stance of many statements which are circulated 

 in the press as the testimony of Henry McComb 

 with reference to myself. It is upon this 

 ground that I claim the attention of the House 

 as a matter of personal privilege. 



" Mr. Speaker, I have been in public life now 

 more or less for a quarter of a century, and 

 this is the second time in all that long public 

 life in which I have felt it a matter of public 

 duty to reply to a personal charge of this na- 

 ture. But as a member of Congress, and as 

 a member of one of the most important com- 

 mittees of the House, in which millions of 

 dollars are directly or indirectly pending, if 

 what Mr. McComb says of me is true, I am 

 unfit to be a member of this House, and ought 

 to be expelled, not only from this House but 

 from all association with decent men here or 

 elsewhere. It will be recollected that in Au- 

 gust last, during the presidential campaign, 

 and when it was uncertain in the public mind 

 whether Greeley or Grant would prevail, there 

 appeared in the New York Sun a certain charge 

 or record in which it was affirmed that a mem- 

 ber of this House connected with the Union 

 Pacific Railroad had made out a list including 

 many of the most distinguished members of the 

 Republican party here and elsewhere, including 

 not only the honorable Speaker of this House 

 but the Vice-President of the United States, 

 the Secretary of the Treasury, and many other 

 distinguished men on the Republican side who 

 had been long in public life and bad hitherto 

 borne good characters ; and the allegation fur- 

 nished directly or indirectly to the New York 

 Sun by Mr. McComb was, that these gentlemen 

 had been guilty of fraud in the acceptance of 

 bribes of certain shares of stock in the Credit 

 Mobilier, to be used in this House and else- 

 where, and even to influence such a high officer 

 of the Government as the Secretary of the 

 Treasury. The publication, as furnished by 

 Mr. McComb, stated positively that Oakes 

 Ames made up and furnished the list of Repub- 

 licans to be bribed, whereas when confronted 

 in committee he swears, as I understand, that 

 he himself (McComb) made up the list at the 

 suggestion, however, I hear, he adds, of Ames. 

 The public were thus made to credit for months 

 that Oakes Ames himself furnished the list of 



