Independent Statesman

Special to Journal.

President Hayes's Attitude on the Supervisors Law.

[Special dispatch to the Boston Advertiser.]

WASHINGTON, March 23.

A story has gained wide circulation today to the effect that Senator Bayard and Representative Springer, through Secretary Evarts, have been able to ascertain what kind of a modified election bill the President would sign, and that the caucus bill, in its final shape, will closely conform to the President's views. The story is believed by several prominent Republicans who have talked with the President upon the general subject involved, to be utterly absurd. There is no doubt but that he has expressed himself in the strongest possible terms in relation to preserving all the legal guards to the purity of elections. It is also true that those who have heard his views regard the so-called compromise of yesterday's Democratic caucus a mere pretence of an offer to the Republicans, and as one that the President will never think of signing either as a separate measure or as the price of an appropriation bill. The story, so far as it involves Secretary Evarts, is also believed to be without foundation, though curious political ideas from Mr. Evarts do not, as a general thing, create surprise. But in this case it is well understood, and by no one better than by Secretary Evarts, that the proposition to repeal the federal election laws had its origin in the Democratic necessity of carrying New York State in order to make the election of a Democratic President in 1880 a possibility. The feeling among the President's nearest Republican friends is of value, as showing their absolute confidence in his refusal to yield a single vital feature of the supervisors and marshal law. Some of them tonight, in ridiculing the story given above, declared that if it were true, and the President should finally agree to such a compromise, he would lose every Republican friend he now has, and would hereafter be regarded by them with more disfavor than had ever been manifested toward Andrew Johnson.