testimony was very weak, or insufficient, or something of that kindpretty much as he has testified here.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. Colonel Bliss was asked with regard to the Ottman case. What advice did you give, if any, as to the manner in which that case might be settled by the Government? Do you remember having had an interview with him about that?-A. What does the Colonel say about that? Q. He says, I think, that he called upon you among others, and had some conversation with you. Do you remember that?-A. The fact is this: Colonel Bliss did speak to me about that case, and I remember the occasion and the place. It was in a parlor at the Arlington. He had the papers before him, and he said that he had that case to settle, or do something with, and asked me what I thought about it. I told him that I had been counsel for Ottman, and of course I could not say anything about it; but I did not think the Government would ever conviet Ottman.

Q. Did you state anything about whether any part of the money should be returned?-A. Oh, no; not a word.

Q. Was there any statement made to the effect that the money could be recovered by the Government?-A. I do not think I had anything to say about that, at all. I do not recollect what the Colonel has stated about it, but I do not think I said anything on that subject.

Mr. BLISS. I do not remember my testimony about that; I remember my report. I remember that I said there, "Mr. Merrick says that Ottman cannot be convicted," or something of that kind, and then something to the effect that I thought that he thought the money was the money of the Government, but that he had not said anything about that.

The WITNESS. Of course I would not have said anything upon that subject, Mr. Chairman, either here or anywhere else, because I had been Ottman's counsel.

By Mr. STEWART:

Q. On page 479, Mr. Walsh in his testimony, alluding to you (Mr. Merrick), says: "I regret very much that Mr. Merrick's memory is so defective." That was apropos to the statement that you had said to him, Walsh, that Mr.Bliss and Mr.Kellogg had met him at Mr.Chandler's house, and Walsh says "he did say that Mr. Bliss had betrayed the interests of the Government." You have read the testimony of Mr. Walsh on that point; please state whether you said anything of that kind.-A. My recollection is not very distinct of what may have passed in my first interview with Walsh at the Arlington, when he disclosed to me the evidence which he said he had given before the grand jury in reference to Kellogg; that is, my recollection is not very distinct as to the expressions that may have been used. I was quite surprised that I had never learned from my associate of that evidence, supposing it to have been given to the grand jury as Walsh told it to me, and in the conversation with him I accepted his statement as entirely true. It is possible, therefore, that. may have used such an expression; but if I did, it was used in this way: "If that is the case, Mr. Walsh, if your grievance is correctly stated by you, if you did say all this to the grand jury, and Mr. Bliss did not act upon it, then he certainly has betrayed the interests of the Government." If I made any such statement, it was to that effect. I do not mean to say that I did say so; but, if I did use those expressions, it was most likely in that connection.

I

Mr. Ker, in his statement, page 528, discusses with considerable freedom what transpired between counsel, which I thought was not evidence, and I think so still; but at the bottom of the page he says this:

Mr. Merrick was very much excited, and he said, "Are you going up ?”—meaning up toward the hotel. I said, "Yes." I walked with him out through the corridor, and he said to me in a very excited manner, "What do you suppose that man wants?" I said, "Who?" He said, "Bliss." I said, "I don't know; what does he want?' "Well," said he, "he wants me to let Dorsey go." Said I, "What does he mean by that?" "Why," said Mr. Merrick, "he wants to let Dorsey escape. He says he can convict the rest, but to let Dorsey go." I said that probably Colonel Bliss had only thrown that out as a suggestion as to what would be expedient. "No," said Mr. Merrick, "he means it.'

What is your recollection as to any such conversation as that having taken place?-A. I do not recollect any such conversation; and I will add that I am very confident that no such conversation as Mr. Ker there states, or as is reported there, ever took place between him and me. I may have said to him (for our relation was quite close, and I had told him that if he went out of the case I would go too), "I want you in the case." I wanted him not, as he put its, for the purpose of watching Bliss, but I wanted him in the case because I thought he was useful, and I wanted him in it because I thought it was possible that an issue might arise, as it ultimately did arise between Mr. Bliss and myself, and in such a contingency I did not want to stand alone, and I knew that Mr. Ker would in all probability go with me, as he did in the Kellogg transaction. Our intercourse was free, our conversations were free, and criticisms were passed in the confidence of that rélation. Mr. Ker himself, I think, desires to correct the statement as it stands in your record, and if he will take it in his hand now and make the correction, he and I may not differ very widely about the conversation, although I regret exceedingly that these private interviews have been brought to public notice.

Mr. KER. (Referring to the record.) There is a slight inaccuracy in the statement of the conversation, and the way it should be corrected is this: From the statement "He wants me to let Dorsey go,” the word "me" should be stricken out and the word "wants" is to be inserted after "but," so that the statement will read, "Why, said Mr. Merrick, he wants to let Dorsey escape; he says we can convict the rest, but wants to let Dorsey go." With that change I stand by the record.

Mr. STEWART. I do not see that that varies the statement much. The WITNESS. Yes, sir; it varies it a good deal. Now, it is possible that some such conversation may have taken place, and I am not prepared to deny that some such conversation did take place. By "some such conversation" I mean this: Mr. Bliss and I were in consultation almost every day as to what was transpiring, and as to the progress of the case, and he remarked to me on one or two occasions that if we had Dorsey out of the case we could easily convict the rest. Now, in excuse for that expression of opinion by him, or in justification of it, I will say that a good deal of the testimony that was bearing directly upon Dorsey was ruled out by the court, and it may have been that on one occasion I did say to Mr. Ker, "Mr. Bliss wants to let Dorsey go," or "wants Dorsey out of the case," because, as I have said, this sugges tion or remark that if Dorsey were out we could easily convict the rest was made to me by Mr. Bliss two or three times, probably. I had my own impressions, and had my own opinions. I knew that Mr. Bliss bore very intimate and close political, and I thought personal, relations to Mr. Dorsey-I do not know that they were personal, but very inti mate political relations, as he has testified here to himself. My mind

was excited also by various rumors, which I will not repeat, but which, whether they were correct or not, necessarily produced some impression. Whatever impression they were calculated to produce adverse to my associates I endeavored to fight off, for the reason that I was warned by Mr. Woodward that there was a systematic attempt on the part of the defendants to produce disturbance and discord among the counsel for the Government, and that attempt I believe took the direction principally of an effort to create in me distrust for my associates. As this matter has been opened up, I must be frank with the committee and say that, whilst I did not believe that Mr. Bliss would be delinquent in the performance of his duty at all, at the time of the interview of which I am speaking-and by that I do not mean to exclude other times, or to say that I held a contrary belief at other times-whilst I did not believe that Mr. Bliss would be delinquent in bis duty, yet I belived that in his heart he did desire that Dorsey might not be convicted. That desire may have been the desire of an honest man determined to perform his full duty; yet, whilst he did perform it, still wishing that the result might not be achieved, though he put forth every effort to achieve it. I know of no testimony in relation to Dorsey that Mr. Bliss could have brought forward. I know of nothing that Mr. Bliss did in the trial, no affirmative act that he did, to protect Dorsey. He made no proposition to me that Dorsey should be allowed to escape. It is true that when the trial came to a close, and when we were in the midst of the argument, Mr. Bliss, possibly by inadvertence, in his closing argument omitted Dorsey. That was adverted to by the counsel on the other side, and, as you will see from my argument, I said, epeaking of the conspirators:

We will bring you together in 1877. S. W. Dorsey, of whom my learned brother was so fond of speaking as Senator Dorsey, was there at the council board, the presiding genius of the robber band, using these lower and lesser men for his own ends, as he was obliged to use somebody, because he wore the robe of office which he could not soil without danger in the open field. He had to use other means. His pockets were open, but other hands were to be thrust into the public purse. I will not call him Senator Dorsey. He is not a Senator. He is an ex-Senator. I do not choose to use that dignified term of designation, applicable to one of the highest offices in my Government, in speaking of a man standing in the criminal dock of a criminal court. And, if Mr. Bliss did not speak of S. W. Dorsey, I will, and I will track him and follow him, and I will show you who his companions were, and who his company was, and where they met and what they did.

Q. Was that at the first trial?-A. This was at the first trial. At the same time an unfortunate incident transpired that has been developed here in the evidence. By an error of some sort, possibly whilst I was on my feet making my argument, an interview was published in a Canada paper in which Mr. Bliss was represented as saying that the testimony against Dorsey was very weak.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what the interview said.

Mr. BLISS. I think not. I think the statement attributed to him in the interview was that the case against Dorsey was not so strong as that against somebody else.

The WITNESS. The part of my argument which I have quoted appears on page 2793 of the record of the first trial. My argument closed on the 28th of August. On the 24th of August, the following had ap peared in the New York Herald, as I am informed, as an account of an interview with Mr. Bliss:

Dropping politics, the conversation glided to the star-route trials, and Colonel Bliss was asked what he thought of Colonel Bob Ingersoll's claim that the Government had

no case.

"Mr. Ingersoll, I think," he replied, "will find out before the trials are over that

the cases contained a good deal of meat for the Government. The one against Mr. Dorsey, defended by the brilliant colonel, is admitted to be the weakest of the lot, but in all the others a verdict for the prosecution is confidently looked for, and even that may be decided in the same way."

Subsequently, on the 26th of August, according to Ker's statement here, that interview was corrected as follows:

To the Editor of the Herald:

I have not at hand the Herald containing the interview with me, but your editorial of to-day indicates either that you misapprehend its purport or your reporter has failed to report me accurately. I have never by word or thought questioned exSenator Dorsey's prominence in the route conspiracy. I have only said that, owing to the exclusion of testimony by the court, the case proved was not as strong against Dorsey as against others.

GEORGE BLISS.

These publications were called to my attention at the time, and to the attention of the Attorney-General. I regretted them very much indeed and they reflected back in my mind upon the impressions that I had previously had; for in my judgment was, on the first case as well as in the last, although there was some evidence against Dorsey which was excluded by the court, that the testimony against Dorsey which was in the case was as strong, or stronger, than that against any other of the defendants; and, as a taunt had been thrown out by the counsel on the other side that my associate had not made mention of Dorsey's name, I made Stephen W. Dorsey the subject-matter of my argument, and claimed then, as I have just shown you from the extract I have read, as I have claimed throughout, and as I now believe the fact to be, that he was the originator and the center of the scheme, its inspiring genius, and its master and teacher.

Mr. BLISS. Did not I in my opening describe Dorsey just in that way?

The WITNESS. I think that in Colonel Bliss's opening statement to the jury he did describe Dorsey in the same way. In that opening statement he said, if I mistake not, that he regarded Dorsey as the center of the conspiracy. That was before the evidence was taken. I only say that there was a taunt thrown out against me, or against the case, because Colonel Bliss had not mentioned Dorsey when he came to sum up before the jury. The Attorney-General was very much disturbed about the publication of this interview, and about the condition of things generally in reference to the Dorsey case, and he immediately went to work to prepare himself to make a statement of the specific instances in which Stephen W. Dorsey appeared in the star-route transactions, and I think the Attorney-General's argument collected together seventy or eighty or ninety separate occasions in which Dorsey's name was mentioned in the evidence in the

case.

The Attorney-General and I discussed the subject fully between ourselves, and discussed also this interview with Mr. Bliss, Mr. Bliss's relations to the transaction, and the question of the arguments that ought to be made to meet the exigency that had arisen; and Mr. Ker is wrong in saying that except for the Attorney General's closing speech the case would have gone to the jury without their knowing anything about Stephen W. Dorsey from the arguments, because my speech was made before the Attorney-General's, and if, when next Lent comes around, you gentlemen want to do some penitential service, and will undertake to read that speech, you will see that when I got through the jury knew pretty well all there was about Dorsey.

Before I conclude, as I suppose there are no other questions which

you gentlemen wish to ask me, allow me to say a single word in rela tion to the letter which I addressed the Attorney-General, withdrawing from the case, and in which I said: "The most important of these cases in which it is likely any further action will be taken by the Government is the case of the United States against William Pitt Kellogg." There are a number of indictments still pending. There are indictments against parties in what are called the straw-bond cases, indictments against parties for perjury, and for one thing and another of an insignificant character. As to the straw-bond cases, allow me to say that, as far as I have been able to learn, the Government sustained no actual loss by those bonds, except, possibly, in the case of Boone, and that loss, I think, was made up by deductions, and Boone was accepted as a Government witness, and is entitled to immunity as to the indictments pending against him.

Mr. BLISS. They have been nolled.

The WITNESS. Yes; they have been nolled. Colonel Bliss suggested to me in one or two communications during the past winter that we should look up those cases and be prepared to do our duty in trying them, but I told him that I did not agree with him. I had also a conference with the Attorney-General, in which I told him that I did not think it was worth while for special counsel, at a large compensation, to be trying cases of that character-cases which were within a narrow compass and which could well be tried by the district attorney, and that I thought he had better turn them over to the district attorney, or, for the present at least, let them alone. After having used my best endeavors, and failed, to secure the ends of justice against great criminals, I did not choose to come down to the business of searching for mousing owls.

Mr. FYAN. There was a question which Mr. Merrick declined to answer yesterday, and upon which it is desirable that the committee should make some kind of ruling. Mr. Merrick was asked whether, when Mr. Bosler was here under a subpoena duces tecum, anybody approached him (Merrick) for the purpose of having Bosler discharged, and he answered that somebody did, but refused to give the name. I believe I am correct in that statement, Mr. Merrick ?

The WITNESS. Yes; in substance you are. I stated what had transspired in the interview with that gentleman. I said that it was a matter of no earthly importance to anybody in the world, and contained no substance whatever except what I then stated.

Mr. FYAN. Its importance might depend upon whether that party wanted to get Mr. Bosler away from here in order to deprive you of certain information which Mr. Bosler could give you. If that was the object, then it might be of some significance.

The WITNESS. Oh, I did not understand that there was any such purpose or design whatever. Mr. Bosler was here on subpoena, and thought he was unreasonably detained, and Mr. Bosler did not desire to have the private records in his books exposed to public view. The object was to guard against a possible obtrusion into his private records, and I assured the gentleman that no private records should be interfered with in any way, and that all I wanted of Mr. Bosler was those papers. That was all there was of it.

The CHAIRMAN. In reference to the point raised by Judge Fyan, he has suggested that the question whether you should be required to give the name shall be considered by the committee in executive session. The committee will, therefore, consider the question, and, if they deter