"JUDGE BRADLEY HEARD FROM
"An explanation has at last been offered in behalf of Judge Bradley respecting his alleged misconduct as a member of the electoral commission. It is found in the columns of the Newark Daily Advertiser, a journal with which he is known to maintain relations of unusual intimacy, and is in the following language:
"'It is just as well that the full fact should be known as a matter of history. Judge Bradley had already decided, in the Florida case, that he could not go behind the returns of the State officials. In the Louisiana case, he finally, and, after anxious thought, held to the same opinion, but of two sets of returns he chose the one he thought most authentic and legal. That elected Hayes. As to the doubt whether Judge Bradley could have prepared a written opinion on one side while he was expressing different opinions orally on the other, the facts are worth telling, and we dare to assert them without any other authorization than our challenge that they cannot be contradicted. The morning before the opinion was given, Senator Edmunds had guessed out Judge Bradley's decision, but he did not know it. Up to that time, as we understand, the opinions delivered had been oral. There may have been one or two exceptions. At the session next day, Senator Edmunds whispered to Judge Bradley that as the opinion he was to give was to be decisive, it ought to be in writing. The argument had not then closed. Bradley accepted the suggestion, and, sitting at his place, dashed down the decision on paper within an hour, in the presence and during the debate of his colleagues. He was subsequently urged to enlarge the argument, but it stands in the printed report just as it was then written. And therefore Judge Field is very correct in saying that Judge Bradley did not, at any time before, "read" to him an opinion.'"