Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1883 — DORSEY’S STOLEN LETTERS. [ARTICLE]

DORSEY’S STOLEN LETTERS.

A ‘D'sappolMtmenti for Those Who Expected Damaging Revelations. ** [From the Chicago Tribune.] The publication of the letters addressed to Mr. Dorsey and Got.. Jewell by several prominent Republicans during the Presidential campaign of 1880 will only serve to deepen the public regret that the ei-star-youte thief, through the mistaken clemency of a Washington jury, escaped the imprisonment which he richly deserved in some congenial penitentiary. Persops who have read these letters hoping to find in them an exposure of campaign secrets will be severely disappointed. The letters are not of such a character that anybody need be ashamed of them or regret seeing them in print. The most noteworthy circumstances connected with their publication is, that but one or two of them were addressed to Dorsey himself. The rest of them were directed to Governor Jewell, and came into possession of the star-route thief through his accidental connection with the national committee. He had them under the seal of sacred confidence. The use he has made of them in their publication by a BoUrbbn Democratic newspaper will make him politically and socially an outcast for all time to come. A man who is capable of stealing and delivering to the press for publication personal letters addressed to another is morally in a position of a robber of the mails. It is easy to believe that one who can be guilty of such conduct would not be restrained by any nice principle of honor from engaging in the star-route conspiracy for which Dorkey was tried and queerly acquitted. It will bo found; on ex am in ationof the letters in detail, that none of them is damaging or even discreditable to any person prominently identified with the campaign on the Republican side. Garfield’s letters to Dorsey were perfectly innocent. They related to matters that he might with propriety dis•cuss with any person actively concerned in the management of his political affairs. The worst that can be said of them is, that they show a tdo-credulous belief on Mr. Garfield’s part in the •character of Dorsey as a gentleman and a man of honor. The publication of these letters, so entirely upright in their tone and honorable in their sentiments, furnishes negative proof, if any were needed, that. Dorsey has no documents in Gen. Garfield’s handwriting to justify the base and cowardly insinuations which have been diseminated ■concerning the late President. The letter from Mr. Blaine, which Dorsey has seen fit to print for some mysterious purposes of his own, is highly creditable to the ex-Secretary of State. It exposes a cruel wrong which was done Mr. Blaine and the Maine Republicans during the preliminary •campaign of 1880. Mr. Blaine sent word to the National Committee thfot the Republicans of Maine had not received “one penny’s aid in the closest and most central battle of the campaign." At that time it was notorious’ that the Democrats were flooding Maine with money, and through a coalition of Greenbackers, trades-unionists and Bourbons were striving to defeat the most prominent leader of the party n his own State. . With reference to the other letters addressed to Gov, Jewell, but purloined and published by Dorsey, it is sufficient to say that they are such as politicians continually write to each other during heated political campaigns, but seldom expect to see in print. We suppose it would be idle at this late day to maintain the pleasant fiction that elections are held in this country without the expenditure of large sums of money. Money has been, is, and will continue to be used in elections for strictly—legitimate purposes. It was easily possible to spend a quarter of a million or a half million dollars in Indiana for the organization of political clubs, in defraying the expenses of speakers, bands and torchlight processions, in patrolling the borders of the State to prevent invasions of Democratic bummers and repeaters, and in hiring detectives to watch the Tammany thugs who were imported from New York to overawe and intimidate the peaceable Republican voters of Indianapolis and other cities of the State. The letters from Allison to Jewell are perhaps more unguarded than any of the others, but they contain not one incriminating word. They say that money must be used in Indiana. We know that money was lavishly used in Indiana by both sides, the only difference being that the Republicans used their money with more judgment and effect than the Democrats used theirs. The publication of these letters will not hurt anybody but Dorsey. They show that he has the spirit and the methods of a sneak-thief. Their publication at this time through the organ he has chosen will only complete the verdict of guilty which was passed upon him and the star-route jury alike by the American people when, after two trials, he at last escaped the felon’s cell which he was so well calculated to adorn. It wbuld have been better for the Republican party, perhaps, if all who desired to contribute money had imposed the same conditions as Mr. John M. Forbes did—that none of the subscriptions should pass through the sticky fingers of the ex-Senator from Arkansas; but we can not regret that he was put in possession of the instruments with which to complete his own ruin and establish the innocence of others whose only misfortune and guilt lay in associating with him on terms of equality.