Mr. Ker also tells you that Miner wanted to cut out S. W. Dorsey and J. W. Dorsey and Mr. Peck. Was that because he was a co-conspirator? He also tells you that Miner deserted his friend S. W. Dorsey. Was he at that time a conspirator? Mr. Ker tells you that S. W. Dorsey wanted to gratify his spite against Vaile and that the first thing he did after he got out of the Senate was to write that letter to the Second Assistant Postmaster-General against the subcontracts. Does that show they were co-conspirators? Did he want to gratify his spite because he had made a bargain with them by which they were to realize hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Mr. Ker also says that Miner's letter to Tuttle shows the conspiracy.
It is perfectly wonderful, gentlemen, how suspicion changes and poisons everything.
Let me read you the letter from which Mr. Ker draws the inference that there was a conspiracy. It is on page 885:
Washington, D. C., August 19, 1878. Frank A. Tuttle, Box 44, Pueblo, Colo.,
Dear Sir: Yours 14th received. We accept your proposition, provided (so that there shall be no conflict) that a friend of ours, who has recently gone to Colorado, has not made different arrangements before we can get him word.
The petition for expedition should be separate from the petition for increase of number of trips. We make no boast of being solid with anybody, but can get what is reasonable. Yours, truly,
MINER, PECK & CO.
You are told that is evidence of a conspiracy. Suppose the letter had been this way: "We boast of being solid. We can get anything, whether reasonable or not." That probably would have been evidence of perfect innocence. He writes a letter and says:
We make no boast of being solid with anybody, but can get what is reasonable.