CINCINNATI, March 29, 1877.

Gen. J. M. HARLAN :

DEAR SIR,- This will be presented to you by Mr. James E. Anderson, who may desire to communicate with you confidentially.

Yours truly,

STANLEY MATTHEWS.

HEADQUARTERS REPUBLICAN PARTY OF
LOUISIANA, MECHANICS' INSTITUTE,
NEW ORLEANS, September 25, 1876.

To R. B. EDGEWORTH, Esq., Supervisor of Registration, Parish of Plaquemime, La.

DEAR SIR, — It is known to this Committee, from examination of the census of 1875 [the fraudulent one above referred to], that the Republican vote in your parish is three thousand; and the Republican majority is two thousand two hundred.

You are expected to register and vote the full strength of the Republican party in your parish. Your recognition by the next State Administration will depend on your doing your full duty in the premises; and you will not be held to have done your full duty unless the Republican registration reaches three thousand, and the Republican vote is at least three thousand.

All local candidates and committees are directed to aid you to the utmost in obtaining this result, and every facility is and will be afforded you; but you must obtain the result called for herein without fail. Once obtained, your recognition will be ample and generous.

Very respectfully, &c.

Other letters explaining the modus operandi of "not failing in the results expected" appear in testimony. But this was not all. More specific instructions were given orally to the supervisors. Mr. Edgeworth testifies thus:

"Governor Kellogg came to the parish in company with Governor Warmouth, Judge Pardee, DistrictAttorney Price, and others. I showed him letter of instructions of 25th of September. Governor Kellogg told me it was extremely necessary to have that majority from that parish, and that I must by all means send in that majority from that parish. I told him I thought it was impossible; the registration would not reach three thousand, and it was impossible to do it. Governor Warmouth brought eight men from New Orleans and placed them at the different polls. These men are now all office-holders at New Orleans. They went to the polls and remained there all day."

And he further testifies that "after the election Governor Kellogg said to me that I had not carried out his expectations."

When the question came up in Congress as to how the electoral vote of Louisiana should be counted, there were two Republican Congressmen from Massachusetts who, by their commanding talents and the purity of their lives, to-day outrank all men in the Republican party in New England. One of them to-day is president of Amherst College,-President Seelye; the other is that man who last year refused a Republican nomination for

governor in Massachusetts, Henry L. Pierce, exmayor of Boston. Here is what these men said when they voted to give the electoral vote of Louisiana to Tilden and Hendricks. These are the words of ex-Mayor Pierce on counting the electoral vote of Louisiana :

"That gross frauds were committed in the canvass of votes is admitted, I believe, by both parties; and it is also admitted that the returning board acted in the discharge of their duties in an arbitrary and illegal manner. I should be recreant to my convictions if I neglected to place on the imperishable records of the House my dissent from the rule which it is proposed to establish."

Here is what President Seelye said:

"No nation, said Niebuhr, ever died except by suicide; and the suicidal poison is engendered not so much in the unjust statutes of government, as in the immoral practices of a people which the government is unable to punish and unable to restrain. It is because I fear that the strict and accurate interpretation of the Constitution applied by the electoral vote of Louisiana would imperil that vote in the future, and incur the very danger which the Constitution intended to avoid, that I am unable to concur with such an application."

There was one Republican in the Senate of the United States whose magic eloquence and transcendent genius places him at the acknowledged head of the Republican party. When the question

came up in the Senate of counting the electoral vote of Louisiana, Conkling turned to his Republican colleagues and said, "Gentlemen, you may do as you please; but, as for me, I will have no part or lot in this gigantic steal." He went out of the Senate Chamber declining to vote, and left it to others to consummate the greatest steal of nineteen centuries.

And now for four long years the Democracy of America have waited in patient silence to redress the greatest wrong ever committed, and to punish the most deadly blow ever struck at American institutions. But the hour of our deliverance draws nigh. The free men of America are aroused, and are marching to victory. The Democratic party has outlived a score of parties, and will outlive this Republican party that seeks to maintain itself in power by feeding the fires of sectional hatred, and by arraying one section of our common and blessed country against the other. Methinks I hear the beginning of the wild cheers of the stalwart Democracy which will go up to heaven on the ides of November next, over a country redeemed and disenthralled from Republican rule. Methinks I can read in the courses of the stars in heaven that a savior has been born to purify, elevate, and regenerate the politics of America; and that fifty millions of people are waiting to welcome with loud acclaims, as President of the proud Republic of the West, the great soldier-statesman, Winfield Scott Hancock.

TO THE TAX COMMISSION OF

CONNECTICUT

TO THE TAX COMMISSION OF CONNECTICUT :

I HAVE read with deep interest the discussion from time to time before your Commission. It seems as if all efforts were made principally to shield some particular interest, and to transfer its burdens to some other interest. This is sticking in the bark. It is chasing a shadow and ignoring the substance.

I know we are an old-fogy State, and that reforms move slowly here. But if we are to have any change, let us have one for the better; or let us continue on in our old ways until the whole community shall have become so disgusted with our present system that we shall be ready to cut it up root and branch.

Our

One of the principal branches of governmental duties is the levying and collecting of taxes. system, if you may call it a system, is a piece of badly constructed patchwork, and needs an entire reformation. It now shields those interests which are best able to bear taxation, and imposes taxes upon those interests least able to bear it.