CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



ay other member of the Home should not 

 bold fifty shares of tht stock or any < 

 kind of property, although there would be a 

 good reason why, if a member held an inter- 

 est in stock or property of this kind, he should 

 very carefully exercise bis influence with this 

 House in all matters pertaining to that prop- 

 erty. I bare refrained generally from giving 

 a vote at all in this House upon any question 

 in which I was personally interested. I do 

 not remember that I ever cast a vote upon 

 any question affecting the Union Pacific Kail- 

 road since I was a director of the road or had 

 any pecuniary interest in its welfare. I be- 

 lieve I have refrained from voting, though I 

 have not examined the record, for whatever 

 measures may have come up here connected 

 with that railroad; not because I had not a 

 right to vote, a moral, religious, and constitu- 

 tional right to vote, but because, as a matter of 

 perhaps over-delicacy, I preferred not to do it. 



It is generally said, and I expect upon 

 pretty well-informed authority, that there are 

 over eighty members of Congress directly or 

 indirectly connected with the banking institu- 

 tions of the country. I cannot, for one, see 

 th.it it is any thing to their discredit that they 

 are so connected. I know of nothing cal- 

 culated to damage or destroy their individual 

 character or influence in the fact that they 

 have received honors at the hands of their 

 fellow-citizens at the same time that they were 

 engaged in the management of the property 

 institution* of the country. 



" Sir, during the darkest hour of the civil 

 war, the firm with which 1 am connected in- 

 vested from thirty to one hundred thousand 

 dollars in United States stocks. That money 

 was the result of twenty or thirty years' hard 

 labor on my part and on the part of my 

 brother, during which we often worked from 

 fourteen to sixteen hours a day. We made 

 this investment at a time when the prospects 

 of peace wore uncertain and doubtful, when 

 the foundations of all property seemed to be 

 fluctuating under our feet It was at a time 

 when gold was 280 and United States stocks 

 only of the value of thirty-two cents on the 

 dollar in gold. I then mustered all the re- 

 .-.nrres of my office and invested them in 

 United States stocks. 



Hut you all know how boldly and vigor- 

 ously I denounced the war. I believed it was 

 nnwise. I thought it ought to have been 

 closed much sooner by conciliation and com- 

 promise. I do not believe now that it hss 

 resulted in any benefit to the country. Hut I 

 had such confidence in my country nnd my 

 countrymen that I believed that, although 

 there might be a temporary separation, yet 

 null must and would come back to the 

 'ii, and I knew that, if it did never come 

 back, in the great North and greater North- 

 west there was ample security for the $100,000 

 whioh. In that darkest hour of the war, we 

 1 in United States stocks. 



"1 make this preface in order to remark, 

 that when an honorable member from Penn- 

 sylvania, from the Lancaster district, now dead 

 and gone, proposed something very like repu- 

 diation, who certainly proposed to pay in pa- 

 per what the country had promised to pay in 

 gold many members on the other side of the 

 lln'iM- will* recollect it I denounced it us re- 

 pudiation. And when an honorable member 

 from Ohio, not now in this Congress, proposed 

 a like or similar repudiation, I attacked it. and 

 associated a large majority of the Democratic 

 members of this House together, and invoked 

 them to act with me, and they did act witli 

 me, and resolved that we would never let tho 

 stamp of repudiation rest on the Democratic 

 party. My honorable friend from tho Brook- 

 lyn district of New York (General Slocum), 

 whom I see before me. and who voted with 

 me, remembers our consultation, and he urged 

 on tho instant that we must repudiate all re- 

 pudiation. 



" What was I to do ? Because I held United 

 States bonds, was I to sit silent here and seo 

 the debt of my country repudiated, its promise 

 and faith broken f No; I did right to exercise 

 whatever influence I had with my Democratic 

 associates, to put the stamp of disapprobation 

 upon that proposition, whether it came from 

 that side of the House or from t his. and I thank 

 God that a large majority, a very large major- 

 ity, of the Democratic members of this body 

 voted with me. 



"I have laid down this general chart of 

 my action to say that, while claiming the right 

 to own Credit Mobilier or any other stock, I 

 have never owned directly or indirectly a sin- 

 gle dollar or share of the Credit Mobilier, and 

 the records of the company will show that fact, 

 despite tho testimony of this perjurer before a 

 committee of this House, and will prove that 

 his story is made out of whole cloth, and is 

 as a figment, a fiction of his own villainous im- 

 agination. 



" The reason why I did not own it, associ- 

 ated as I was with those gentlemen connected 

 with it, was because, as Government director, 

 I could not own any stock in the Union Pacific 

 Railroad Company, and I did not feel it right 

 or proper, when the laws of the country forbid 

 me to own stock in the Pacific Railroad Com- 

 pany, to own indirectly, in another form, tho 

 stock of the Credit Mobilier. I supposed there 

 was money in it, and I with others might have 

 bought any number of shares in it, and made 

 a most profitable investment. But, from an 

 over-sense of delicacy respecting the law, and 

 not because I was a member of Congress, I re- 

 frained from owning a sixpence in the stock 

 of tho Credit Mobilier. 



" But this man will not rest content with 

 this statement, and will wriggle in more insinu- 

 ations, if not charges, respecting me. if I leave 

 the issue here. I will leave him nothing to 

 make a stand on. I have a daughter who is 

 married. I am sorry to bring these family 



