Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1889 — EDGERTON'S TART TALK. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EDGERTON'S TART TALK.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT —ACCUSED OF PLAYING FALSE. The Deposed Civil Service Commissioner Accuses Cleveland of Piaying False with the Mugwumps in Order to Please the Democrats. [Washington special telegram.] • Judge A. P. Edgerton, who was recently removed from the office of Civil-Service Commissioner, has written an open letter to the President. He says among other things : “I was indebted to yon for the only appointive office 1 ever held. Yon now declare by your own action that you regret the appointment." I with equal right can say that I regret the acceptance. Your regret was never mode known to me by you in any word or utterance or action until now, at the close of your administration and on the day b fore my removal. Of course, if you believed me unfit for ihe position or neglectful of duty, you should have removed me long ago, but I presume there were prudential political reasons why you did not make the removal until after the election. In this regard it would

almost seem as if you wore willing to plav false with the mugwumps to enable you to win with ti e Democrats. And here permit me to define the term mugwump as referring to a class of 1 o.itical reformers who have the spirit of leformation without the common sense and good judgment to reform, as rof< rms are not effected by unjust personal denunciation, hut by reason. “The result of the election placed you in a dilemma from which lew people would have known how to extricate themselves. You found a man on > our hands whom the mugwumps had declared war upon, an enemy to their civilservico reform theories, and your plan of becoming their representative in the future would be weakened or defeated if an assurance of your fidelity to their cause could not be secured. Accordingly, it appears that you decided upon the removal of the head of the commission, and, deeming Mr. Thompson a good enough mugwump for them, you therefore demand: d my resignation that you might appoint him, apparently as an atonement for your previous inaction. “Mr. President, with duo couriesy to tho high office you hold, allow mo to say lhat you are a very peculiar man, a positive man; positively wrong or positively right, and therefore an unsafe man to trust; and that element in your character I believe Jed to your defeat. Pope says: 'Tho most positive m» n are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves and advise moßt with their fellow-flatterers und worst enemies.’ Being one of that kind of positive men yourself, you have kep. some men of like character arouud you who aie positive only in their malace and c’oncoit. They flatter you and have the conceit that would minify themselves and the malignity that would detract Irom others. Juvenal says; ‘There is nothing a man will not believe in his own favor.’ You were credulous enough to believe that you were e ected President by the mugwumps, and, therefore, you permitted them to malign your real friends and to flatter jou into a policy which led to your defeat. You are a man who would not permit your real friends to admonish you with ireedom and confidence, and as a result you have suffered for the want of friends, and your wrecked an» wretched greatne-s has discovered that there is no true success in life without the power and blessing of friendship. You beiiove that your wdl anil power to enforce it was above all powers, but the will of the people expressed in a constitutional w r ay has 1 aught you that there was a wiser and better way than that chosen by you. “Having sworn to support the civil-service law it has .been my constant eflort to do so; but I never did swear to support a mugwump interpretation of it, based on a monstrous ussnmtion that the commission was independent of law. How many poor unfortunates have been denied the advantages and beueftts of the law by questions never contemplate by it, nnd how many expenses have been incurred through unnecessary and devious requirements and practices, it is not my purpose at this time to stale. “You will be censured and condemned because you put no trust in your own party, but Believed yourself to be better than your own and greater than all parties. You have ascertained that the' many are not made for the one. You can find as many reasons for removing me as the Democratic party, through an indifference which was simply retaliatory, had for removiug you. I shall be quite willing to remain with you in the gloom of defeat." The Judge then gives his understanding of the civil-service law, and alluding to his removal Bays;

“I dcynot ask you to give any reason for this act. X know, and so do you. that the only one you could give would be that it was your will, for if you attempted to give any other your own previous words would prove it to be untrue. In my interviews with you before the remo ai you expressly disclaimed having any reason for it except my refusal to resign to enable; you to make Mr. Thompson’s nomination. “I can point to another removal than mine, beyond a parallel, to go down through history when I shall be forgotten. Before Ido so, let me refer, as pToof of your ignorance of public opinion and not of your indifference to it, to what you say in the Sun article of Mr. Burnes, of Missouri, as one not guilty of the annoyance to which you were subjec ed by the country members of Congress introducing to you tbeir constituents, beoause he alwavs presented his constituents at public receptions. If Mr. Burnes were living he could tell you another reason, which he often told to others, that he had been rudely treated by you, and nad no respect for you personally, and ascr.bed the defeat of the Democratic party to your ignorance of it. it was qeccssary that you should make some such explanation for your attack upon the ‘wayback ’ members, but you were unfortunate in the selection of your witness—one of the ablest and noblest legislators in Congress. “But to the case of removal, which must become an important part of the history of the country. 1 was on tbo floor of the House of Representatives during the time the votes of the Electoral College were counted and heard the announcement of tho result—that Beniamin Harrison was duly electod President of the United States ; but ibe Xvords that burned deep through the empty boxes of the administration could not be officially added, though known to be true, in place of Grover Cleveland, removed.’ By whom, and for wlmt cause removed? The answer is now being made in every home, in every business in the" land, ana history will inscribe it upon all its records.” Judge Edgerton criticises the conduct of one of the other Commissioners, without mentioning his name, and concludes us follows: “I am justified in stating one single fact of mischievous distrust and wrong-doing on the part of a‘commissioner in charge.' Collector Magone, of New York, addressed to me a ‘ personal ’ letter, thus marked ou the envelope, the postage paid, no indication mat it could be official, on the inside also marked ‘ personal,’ and this letter was opened and read by tho ‘ commissioner in charge’ and forwarded to the other commissioner, then in Boston, and by him answered before the letter was sent to me, then at home in the West. Erom such sources as this have come nearly all of the attacks upon me, and, I doubt not, most of the misrepresentations of my opinions made to you. Whether they had any influence is questionable.”