Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1878 — Mr. Tilden’s Letter. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Tilden’s Letter.

. What Mr. TJlden intends to do in giz late letter on the cipher dispatches, and what, no far as the mere matter of Words is concerned, be does, is to plead the general issue of *• not guilty’ as it respects any knowledge of, or participation in, or concurrence with, any efforts, in the way of money or promises, to influence the action of any Returning Board or any Presidential Wee tor. He means to say this to the American peoSle and designs that they should so unerstand him. He does not deny the dispatches, either as to their authenticity or the correctness of their translation. He makes no attempt to explain them. He leaves them to tell their own story. He virtually confesses that on their face they involve a very grave obarge, and simply asks the public to believe that he had no knowledge of and nothing to do with these rascalities. He admits by this plea of self-al-leged innocence that there is a necessity for making it; and here he is unquestionably right, since the circumstances point with a very strong probability to him as particeps criminis. The public had so judged, and if Mr. Tilden himself had not tnus judged he would not have felt the necessity for writing this letter of disclaimer. What change, then, does the disclaimer make in the status of the case sa far as Mr. Tilden is concernedP None whatever as to tbe facts themselves, or as to the parties directly involved in those facts, or as to the relation of these parties to Mr. Tilden at the time and ever-sinoe. It doee not blot out a single dispatch or change its meaning. It does not make the parties anything hat his chosen agents, acting in his interests and recognized by him as such at the time and from that day to this. The whole force of the case as Jiresented by the dispatches remains ust what it was; and what confronts it is the naked denial of Mr. Tilden, containing vastly more words than were needed in a simple denial and nothing like enough words for a complete vindication. , The conclusion to which the reader of this letter is likely to come depends very much upon what he thinks of Mr. Tilden. H he regards him as an honest and upright man, too hightoned to be a party to any system of bribery or to defraud the Government in the payment of his income tax, then the letter will be deemed sufficient to cancel the effect of the strong probabilities against him. If, on the other hand, he looks upon Mr. Tilden as an ambitious and tricky demagogue, unscrupulous and unprincipled—’ which is the view taken by millions in this country and for which his personal and public record furnishes a very large occasion—then the letter will pass for almost nothing, as against the adverse probabilities which snow it to be false. This class of readers will find it difficult to believe Mr. Tilden simply on his own ipse dixit, when he says that he had not the slightest knowledge or even suspicion of all this attempted roguery by his friends and his own chosen agents in Florida, South Carolina and ..Oregon, in order to get him into the Presidency, and that he was himself as unsuspecting and innocent as a babe unborn. The rascality attempted had not come to his knowledge by even the remotest suggestion. All this is possible; yet, taking human nature as it is and Mr: Tilden as he is and the facts as they are, those who do not believe in his immaculateness will say, and justly say, that it is highly improbable. A very dark cloud still overhangs the case in respect to Mr. Tilden himself; and unless he can give the public something more than his own word and something that will confirm that word he may as well consider his chances for the next Presidency at an end. The Democratic party will hardly think it prudent to assume the task of his defense in a Presidential campaign.— N. T. Independent.