you came to the circumstances of the case my idea was that the record evidence as to that route was not so strong as the evidence in regard to other routes which we were investigating, and I regarded Mr. Walsh as in this position-that if the transaction was truthfully stated by him, and if Mr. Brady thought that he was in danger from Walsh's testimony, the probability was that if we took up that case Walsh would take a trip somewhere before we got to the trial, and we would be left without any evidence. In other words, that he would collect from Mr. Brady the twelve or fourteen thousand dollars that he was claiming of the Government, or perhaps more, and would disappear. We would be resting in that case entirely upon a single thread, the testimony of Walsh, and for these reasons I did not think that a proper case to put ahead.

In the light of events Mr. Bliss does not appear to much advantage as a prophet, because" Walsh "has not disappeared, but has been here, to Bliss's great pain and sorrow, and will continue to be here. On page 230 Mr. Bliss, defending himself for having selected the weakest case and accounting for the verdict in the Brady-Dorsey case, says:

But by taking this variegation of frauds we got the benefit of that, and we got the benefit also of Walsh's testimony as to the transactions which had been alleged in the Prescott and Santa Fé route, but the jury did not believe Mr. Walsh, either.

Now, gentlemen, it never was any part of Mr. Bliss's plan to have me appear as a witness in the Dorsey-Brady case. In that case I was never considered as a witness at all, and I was called as a witness at last simply because when the case as he had made it up and had gone into court with it, was about to be dismissed, Mr. Merrick accidentally discovered the nature of the testimony that I had given before the grand jury and came to the conclusion that I was the witness that could save the case.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. Were you before the grand jury in the Brady-Dorsey case at all?— A. No, sir; I knew nothing about it. The evidence that I gave before the first grand jury Mr. Bliss suppressed from Mr. Merrick, so that, as I have already stated, Mr. Merrick had no knowledge of it until it came to his ears in the most accidental manner.

By Mr. STEWART:

Q. How do you know that?-A. Mr. Merrick told me.

By Mr. FYAN:

Q. Were you subpoenaed to appear before the petit jury?—A. No; I think I was subpoenaed to appear before the second grand jury, and when I arrived here I was served with a subpoena to appear before the traverse jury.

Q. Were you subpoenaed before you saw Mr. Merrick?-A. No, sir. Q. You have stated that the case was in extremis when Mr. Merrick found out what you had testified to before the grand jury; now, I want to know whether you were subpoenaed as a witness in that case before the petit jury before Mr. Merrick found that out?-A. No, sir. I think I was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. I came over here to see my attorney, Mr. Hine. Mr. Merrick sent Mr. Woodward to me at the Arlington to ask me to call upon him, Merrick. I declined to do so, saying that I did not know him, and had no reason for calling upon him. Mr. Woodward then said, "Will you receive Mr. Merrick?" I said I would, and Mr. Merrick called. To the best of my recollection I was not under subpoena at all at that time.

By the CHAIRMAN :

Q. And, at the request of Mr. Merrick, you appeared as a witness?— A. No, sir; I would not appear at his request. I told him that the

weakest case had been selected, that the case was in extremis, and that by appearing as a witness I could not save it; and I told him it was not fair to ask me to appear as a witness in that case.

By Mr. MILLIKEN:

Q. With what object do you think Mr. Bliss selected the weakest case?-A. I set forth my views on that point in my first letter to the President, and if you will allow me, I will refer to that letter and read it.

Q. You can answer the question without reading that letter.-A. Well, I think I said that, in my opinion, he selected that case because he thought he could gain political capital thereby; he could pose as a prosecutor of the secretary of the national committee of the Republican party, thereby securing considerable éclat; while at the same time he knew that the case could not be sustained; that an acquittal was inevitable, and he believed that that would result to Mr. Bliss's credit.

Q. Do you mean to give the impression here that Mr. Bliss was in sympathy with the defense in those cases?-A. Well, is it fair for me to answer that question? You are asking a man whose convictions you know are pretty strong upon that point.

Q. It is fair if you wish to answer it. I shall not press you for an answer if you decline to give it.-A. Oh, I do not decline. I have not come here to decline anything. But at the same time I wish to deal fairly with everybody. My opinion of Mr. Bliss is on record, but I have no objection to stating it again. I have been putting it on record for a long time, and I am willing to put it on record once more. I have no sort of doubt that Mr. Bliss was in sympathy with the defendants from the beginning; and I think that therein he has done the President great injustice, because he has been held out as the President's intimate personal friend; he has paraded himself as such, and has made people believe that.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. Is there any further comment that you desire to make upon Mr. Bliss's testimony?—A. Mr. Bliss made a reference to me in connection with his account of how they looked for me, which is calculated to make an unfavorable impression. He says that a lady aided them in discov ering me. I would like to state, in relation to that matter, that I was subpoenaed three times for the Government. The first time the subpœna was served on me by a deputy marshal in New York. I had heard of him going to several offices in a mysterious manner looking for me, and I think he finally went to Judge Grandin's office, and said he was looking for me. Judge Grandin told me of it, and said, “What do you think you had better do?" Said I, "If he comes here with a subpoena, tell him to leave it here for me; I will answer the subpœna." However, he did not do that, and being up in the vicinity of the City Hall next day, I went into the marshal's office and said, "Is there a subpœna here for me? I understand that somebody has been looking for me very anxiously." They said "Yes; do you acknowledge the service?"

The second time I was served by Mr. Newcomb, in the office of Judge Grandin. Mr. Newcomb came in and said, "Is this Mr. Walsh ?" I said, "Yes." "Here is a subpoena for you" said he, and I received it.

The third time was while I was corresponding with Mr. Merrick, and when I declined to appear before the grand jury with Mr. George Bliss as the representative of the Government. I had been talking to some acquaintance on Broadway, quite close to the corner of Broadway and Wall street, and when we got through I walked down to the Battery,

and there got on an elevated train. The gentleman who served the subpœna told me afterwards that he had followed me all the way up, and when we got to one of the up-town stations he procured some ink and filled in the date and served the subpœna.

Now, I do not see wherein a lady could have aided Mr. Bliss or his assistants in any of these cases.

By Mr. MILLIKEN:

Q. I suppose if she was really a lady there could not be any objec tion to the remark. I do not see how that would cast any imputation upon you?-A. In this way: The statement was that the "lady" was taken out sleigh riding by some person who wanted to find me to serve a subpœna upon me. Now, process-servers. are not persons of a class with whom ladies usually go out sleigh riding. I know of no lady acquaintance of mine who would go out sleigh riding with a process

server.

Mr. MILLIKEN. Some of the men who serve court processes are very respectable gentlemen.

The WITNESS. Undoubtedly they are in the rural districts; but process-servers in cities, and especially in the city of New York, and more especially the class of persons that Mr. Bliss would probably select for that business, would not be likely to be such as a lady would go out sleigh riding with. However, the material point, perhaps, is that the Government had to pay for a sleigh ride for somebody.

On page 301, Mr. Bliss, speaking of the grand jury, says:

After that Mr. Walsh was put before the grand jury (I do not remember the time exactly), and gave evidence and produced certain papers. [That grand jury was in June, 1882, to the best of my recollection.] As the result of that at that time before that grand jury, as I recollect it, the only mention of Mr. Kellogg's name that was made was in connection with the production of these papers. We were going for Brady and Price. Certainly, when I went into the grand-jury room I had no idea that there was any question about Mr. Kellogg in the case. In the course of that meeting some of the jurors asked Walsh about certain papers, and as to where he had got them-the Price drafts, I think-and he said that Mr. Kellogg had brought them to him. I confess that the mention of Mr. Kellogg's name at that time did not convey to my mind the idea of Senator Kellogg.

That, of course, is unqualifiedly untrue. He knew perfectly well whom I had referred to. The best evidence that he did know who it was, and that he must have known, is found in Attorney-General MacVeagh's testimony, on pages 26 and 27, where he says that he knew of Mr. Kellogg's relation to the cases before the death of President Garfield. It is not possible, I think, that Mr. MacVeagh could have had knowledge of it and Mr. Bliss have remained in ignorance of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gibson also testified that he informed Mr. Bliss of it.

The WITNESS. I did not know that. Mr. Bliss does all he can to prejudice me in the minds of this committee.

On page 302 he goes on to say:

He was pressed a good deal by the defense in that case, they claiming that his whole evidence was untrue. He said that this difference of dates arose from a mistake of his lawyers. Then he had commenced attachment proceedings in New York, and the same error was found there; and finally he said that he did not tell his lawyer any more than he thought it was necessary to tell him-that that was not his way. He made this statement to the grand jury.

Mr. Bliss, you see, was trying to discredit me even before this committee. I presume that he felt that he was paid to do that. Now, in relation to the matter of the discrepancy between the bill of particu

lars filed here and the bill filed in New York, I call your attention to the testimony in the first star-route trial, page 1777, where I produced a letter which I had received from my attorney in Washington, Mr. Hine, on which I based my attachment proceedings in New York. I had written to my attorney here to send me a copy of the bill of particulars as filed here. He sent me this one [producing a paper]. I produced this in court. I had stated on the day previous, in court, that the error had been committed by Mr. Hine's son. It was a clerical error, and I was as much surprised at it as anybody. Among my papers in New York I have Mr. Hine's letter inclosing me the copy of the bill of particulars, and on the Monday following I brought it into court. This Mr. Bliss carefully refrains from alluding to.

Here is the bill of particulars which was sent me by Mr. Hine:

I will pass over some passages in Mr. Bliss's testimony that I had marked for comment.

On page 304 he says:

Mr. Walsh has since so conducted himself that Judge Wylie did not hesitate in court last fall to express the opinion that he did not suppose the Government cared anything for the testimony of such a witness, and that all they could want from him was his papers. In a hearing the other day in court that was reiterated substantially by Judge Wylie, and Mr. Merrick, representing the Government, substantially the same view, saying that he wanted Walsh, not for his testimony, but for the papers, and he referred to Walsh as possibly writing from a lunatic asylum, or something of that sort.

Well, I have dealt with that. I don't think the court ever said any such thing; but even if the court did say it, the court is not infallible, and the court has evidently made as great a mistake in that as Mr. Bliss has made, and as Mr. Merrick made when he said that they did not want me, but my papers. The Attorney General, who I think is quite a good lawyer, took a different view, you know, and said that they wanted me as well as the papers.

Mr. Bliss says further:

Those papers I have never seen. I think there was an error committed in the case, and I do not think I should have committed it. When Walsh produced those papers before the grand jury I should have impounded them.

You will understand that Mr. Bliss is here insisting that Mr. Ker ought to have "impounded" those papers. Now, Mr. Bliss himself did not impound them. Those papers were before him when I appeared be fore the second grand jury; they were before him in the first grand-jury

room also, if he had chosen to look at them, and he did ask me for some of them, and I left them with him, as this letter will indicate.

GEO. BLISS, Esq.,

Assistant U. S. Attorney, Washington, D. C.:·

NEW YORK, June 22, 1881.

MY DEAR SIR: Oblige me by returning the letters, &c., that I left with you when last in Washington. Deeming it possible that you will be here Saturday, I would suggest that if you will bring them with you I will call at your office for them, as I dislike trusting them to the mail.

Yours respectfully,

J. A. WALSH.

In response to that letter Mr. Bliss gave me my papers. So you see that when he had the papers he did not impound them any more than Mr. Ker did. Of course, there was no occasion at all to do it, because I was acting in perfect good faith, but if Mr. Bliss thought there was occasion you see he did not do any more impounding than Mr. Ker did, and it was not fair for him to cast any such reflection upon Mr. Ker. Again, referring to the difficulty of finding me, Mr. Bliss says:

He has always been very troublesome to find. Mr. Merrick went to see Mr. Grandin, and finally told him that he wanted to see Walsh, and Grandin said he would try to arrange an interview. Mr. Merrick then came to my office, and we talked over the whole business of Walsh. I said, "Look here, Walsh's trouble is me; now let me stand aside; I will go out of the case in any form you wish; you may give him any assurance you desire that I am entirely out of the case. I will submit to anything, except public degradation in connection with the matter."

Now, the trouble was that Mr. Merrick could not give me any such assurance, because Mr. Merrick did not seem to be able to keep his promises. My attorney communicated to me the information that Mr. Bliss would no longer appear in the case, but there had been so many assurances given me already, and none observed-Punic faith all the time that I concluded to take no more assurances, and I never did take any assurance that Mr. Bliss was out of the cases until the AttorneyGeneral sent me word to that effect at Montreal through Mr. Brewster Cameron. I didn't even take the press reports.

There is another passage in Mr. Bliss's testimony in which he refers to me in connection with the matter of money, on accounts which I presented for a large amount-an amount so large that it would be liable to disturb the Treasury balance-so Mr. Bliss was unwilling to have it paid.

On page 308 he gives this testimony:

He said in substance, "My contract was not taken away through any fault of mine; it was taken away because of the wrongful action of the officers of the Government, and therefore I am entitled to this month's extra pay." That was the plausible way in which the claim was put in the Court of Claims. All that was ever said to me on that subject-I will not say that it was said to him, but I have understood it was said-was that the Government would facilitate getting a decision on the subject. Mr. Walsh made various claims, and demanded various payments. For instance, I have got here a letter of his dated New York, October 26, 1882, in which he

says:

G. BLISS, Esq.,

Special Counsel Star-Route Cases, New York:

MY DEAR SIR: You will oblige me by directing payment to me of the $350 for which I submitted to you a voucher in Washington.

This is what he calls the voucher:

To services rendered in star-route cases..

United States to John H. Walsh, Dr.

Q. Did you pay that ?-A. No, sir.

$350

Q. What is the service for which that bill is made?-A. I have not the remotest idea. I think the claim was for being in Washington here.

Q. It is not paid yet?—A. No, sir.

H. Mis. 38, pt. 2- -33*