Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1884 — MULLIGAN, THE LETTER THIEF. [ARTICLE]

MULLIGAN, THE LETTER THIEF.

A Fair and Impartial Opinion of the Man Who Is Trying to Injure Blaine. [Richmond (Va.) Whig.] It is evident that this whole Mulligan calumny is as foul as its source. And what Is that? Mulligan’s matice. A dishonorable man, in some dishonorable way, gets possession of private letters, which, by the aid of partisan hate and prejudice, he proposes to employ in a dishonorable . wav to smirch the character of an eminent and honorable gentleman, and, in pursuance of a dishonorable plot, they were orouglit to the front in the very nick of time to discredit the gentleman’s claims to the highest honor his party and countrymen could bestow upon him. A vile man, a vile plot, a vile use"of private correspondence, a vile misconstruction of this correspondence—could anything be viler than the whole dirty business? And do gentlemen who adopt Mulligan and his methods consider what they do? Are they sure that they are not degrading themselves in their eager efforts to damage Mr. Blaine? Of course, the Mulligan letters were only a part of the plot. All sorts of lies and misrepresentations were brought to bolster the foul meaning which foul misconstruction had foisted upon Mr., Blaine's private letters. But these, in every instance brought to scrutiny, were overwhelmingly refuted by the highest evidence. Even Mulligan supplemented tiis original baseness in obtaining and using the correspondence by inventing a dramatic fiction in connection with Blaine’s recovery of his letters, overdoing the matter, however, and making his statement obviously and ridiculously false by its absurd extravagance. Mr. Blaine got on his knees to him, Mr. Blaine promised him a consulship, Mr. Blaine threatened to kill himself, and all this stuff, when Mulligan himself confesses that Mr. Blaine, after once having the letters in bis possession, and looking them over, returned them, and that Mr. Blaine only retained them, on again having them in hand, when Mnljigan threatened to publish them before they went to the committee investigating the matter. The sum of the matter is, that the Mulligan calumny not pnly fails of proof, but is a self-evident falsehood upon its showing. Harper’s Weekly, the New York Times, and all the men and journals now so insistent upon the charge against Mr. Blaine, onoe declared he was guiltless and unsmirched by the evidence. Even the Bourbons of Virginia, with all the testimony before them, ignored the charge and lauded Mr. Blaine to the skies. The sum of the matter is that, the charge Is now revamped and pressed only on the well-known principle of “anything to beat” Mr. Blaine, the stalwart representative of Republican protection. Harper's Weekly in an editorial of May 13, 1876, after giving a correct resume of all the charges against Blaine, and disproving them from the record, closed the matter as follows; “If nobody now appears with new proof to justify this accusation it must be considered merely one of the reckless slanders to which every prominent man is exposed; and no charge that may hereafter be made against Mr. Blaine, unaccompanied by weighty testimony, will deserve any attention whatever. ” Gen. Geo. H. Sharpe, one of the leading New York stalwarts, says there is no truth in the stories circulated to the effect that the stalwarts are lukewarm in their support of the National Bepublican candidates. They will heartily support Blaine, who will, in Gen. Sharpe's opinion, carry New York State by 50,000 plurality.