Providence Morning Star

COX TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.

SOUTH BEND, Ind., March 8.-Ex-Vice President Colfax arrived here at half past twelve o'clock this noon. He was met at La Porte by Colonel Humphrey and a committee who accompanied him hither. He was met at the depot by a crowd of people, with a band, who escorted him to the Court House, where Mayor Millet delivered an address of welcome, to which Mr. Colfax responded as follows:

Mr. Mayor, neighbors and friends:

My heart would be cold and callous indeed as it is not, if it did not throb more quickly and happily at such a welcome home as this one with which I am honored, and the gratitude for which it would take a lifetime to exhibit. Here you have known me from childhood, my going out and my coming in having been before your eyes. My character has been formed in your midst and you know whether, for a paltry sum of money, I could be induced to shipwreck it.

When you come hither, therefore, by the thousands, spontaneously and as I am glad to be told and know in a throng not confined to political friends alone, but participated in by prominent and life-long political opponents, to honor me with such unmistakable manifestations of your confidence and affectionate regard, I felt it due to you, as well as to myself, to expose the bitter injustice of the cruel charges on which I have been arraigned during the past winter.

If I had been a convicted and wicked criminal I could not have been pursued with more malignity by a portion of the American press and their Washington correspondents. Day after day every possible circumstance has been exaggerated and telegraphed as actual proof of guilt. Day after day it has been demanded that I should explain this, that or the other points, but when explained, and they had perverted and misrepresented the explanation, they determined, if possible, that the reputation of the man they hated should be destroyed; and, as day by day they thus poisoned the public mind, they rejoiced almost with shouts of exultation at having effected, as they hoped, their work of ruin.

The frank exposure of all my financial affairs did no good. The disclosure of the sacred confidence of the dead only gave fresh opportunities for cavil and falsification. The testimony of my step-father and sister, unimpeachable as you here so well know them to be, was denounced as unworthy of belief. These enemies were determined on having their victim, but confident of my innocence of this cruel charge, and confident that He who knoweth all things will, in His own good time make that innocence manifest to all. I have stood unmoved amidst this storm of vilification and injustice, willing to abide my time for a complete vindication, which I know is so certain to come.

Mr. Colfax then read from the Chicago Inter-Ocean of September 26, the following extract from the report of his speech at South Bend the day previous:

"Never having in my life a dollar or stock of any kind that I did not pay for, I claim the right to purchase stock in Credit Mobilier or Credit Immobiler, if there be one, nor do I know of any law prohibiting it. Do I need to add that neither Oakes Ames nor any other person ever gave or offered to give me one share or twenty shares or two hundred shares in the Credit Mobilier or any other railroad stocks, and that unfortunately I have never seen or received the value of a farthing out of the 280 per cent. dividends or the 800 per cent. dividends in cash, stock or bonds you have read about the past month, nor one cent- not one tenth of 1 per cent. I have said that if twenty shares of it could be purchased at par, without buying into a prospective lawsuit, it would be a good investment, if it is as valuable as represented, but never having been plaintiff or defendant in a court of justice, I want no stock at any price with a lawsuit on top of it."

Although I thus publicly claimed the right to purchase this very stock, and avowed frankly my willingness to buy, own and hold twenty shares, if I could do it without buying a lawsuit, and thus accepted all the odium there could attach to pure having the understood.

I have been charged with prevarication because I did not go out and state that I had withdrawn, years before, from an incomplete contract to buy shares, losing what I had paid on account. If I had supposed that a denial or explanation of an entirely different charge than I was answering would be required of me I should have certainly have done so, as it would have strengthened instead of weakening what I was stating, but that I could not foresee. An eminent divine once said, rather irreverently: If a man's foresight were only as good as his hindsight he would be but little lower than the angels," and my mode of speaking has always been to discuss and explain pending issues and not discuss or explain those that were not pending.

Mr. Colfax then argued that if one of his auditors had been charged with receiving shares in a woollen factory as a present, and having aided corruptly in carrying through legislation in regard to it as a return for enormous dividends, it would be a sufficient answer to say that the alleged corrupt action was only a part of a life long course of advocacy of such measures, and that the enactment had been a year or two before the alleged gifts, and that the accused individual had never owned any stock in woollen factories or anything else that had not been paid for, that no shares had ever been given him and no dividends ever received, and if there was added to this the frank statement that he would be willing to buy such factory stock at par if it was not involved in litigation, would not that be regarded as an explanation as full in every point as the case required?

No one could have been misled by my speech on the vital point that though no such stock was ever given to me, I publicly avowed my willingness to bear all reproach that could attach to an investment of my money in it at par as I ther understood it.

He then quoted from the telegraphic headings of papers which published the speech in September, to show that they understood him to deny ever receiving the gift of stock.

Colfax then commented on his own evidence as contradictory of Ames' statements, going into the matter in detail, but advancing no new facts. He referred to Ames' admission that his statement before the committee was probably correct, and to Alley's corroboration of it, and discussed the $1200 check, and after considerable talk on this point read the following letter from Mr. Dillon, cashier of the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives, dated March 1:

Dear Sir: When Mr. Ames made the deposit of $10,000 in June, 1868, in this office, my mind was naturally excited as to the purpose he had in view, and was all at sea until checks began to be presented. Then I surmised that Mr. Ames was the acting chairman of some investigating committee, and that as the contingent fund of the House was exhausted, he was paying the expenses of the committee himself until an appropriation should be made. I am very confident that the checks to the initials or bearer were all paid to Mr. Ames himself, especially the one of $1200, marked to "S. C. or bearer."

I then thought he was himself drawing the lion's share of his deposit. These thoughts had passed out of mind until Mr. Ames came into the office this session and demanded that his checks should be shown him. The moment I saw them I recollected all these thoughts of over four years ago as vividly as though they had occurred the day before, and as soon as Mr. Ames had retired I remarked to Mr. Ordway, the sergeant-at-arms, that I had paid that $1200 "S.C." check to Mr. Ames himself and how I paid it, namely, in two $500 and two $100 notes.

I was remonstrated with, however, and urged not to testify under oath to such belief, as it was improbable that I should recollect transactions of such a character for years.

Being unfamiliar with the laws of evidence I very naturally did not at first state my strong impressions, but testified as to facts only. At my second examination, however, I freely stated these strong impressions, and if I had had the self-possession of one accustomed to courts I would have stated the foundation of these decided impressions. This strong impression that I had paid this "S. C." check to Ames was confirmed by himself in answer to a question I put to him only the day before my second examination. I asked him, Did I not pay that check to you, Mr. Ames?" and he replied, "I think it very likely." Indeed the more I have thought of the whole matter, the more firmly I am convinced that Ames drew the money for the $1200 "S. C." check himself. If he had when writing it intended it for you, why did he not, as he did with several others who have acknowledged the receipt of the money, write the name in full? All the members who are charged with the initial checks deny having ever seen them, and I repeat, as I testified at my second examination, that my very strong impression is that I paid all the initial checks to Mr. Ames himself. Tendering my congratulations on what I regard as your triumphant vindication from the well arranged plot to injure you in the estimation of the people, I am very respectfully and truly,

MOSES DILLON, Cashier.

Mr. Colfax continued at some length, repeating his testimony before the investigating committee, and upon the close of his remarks Col. Humphreys presented him with a letter with 1,500 signatures of his fellow citizens attached expressing the confidence of the signers in him, after which the following resolution was offered and unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That in welcoming Schuyler Colfax home today, after his twenty years of arduous public services, in which he has excelled by none as a model statesman, temperate and faithful to principles, we do so with undiminished confidence in his honor and integrity, both as a public man and a private citizen.