The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

I did not think that anybody could excel Mr. Ker in mathematics, but Mr. Bliss bears off the palm. He bean, off the palm even in misstatement, and bears off the palm in mistake. The two affidavits would call for the same amount of money precisely, and yet Mr. Bliss stands up before you and says there is twice as much on one as the other. Now, what is that for? That is to prejudice you: that is all.

Gentlemen, you saw John W. Dorsey; you heard his testimony; you know whether he is a man to be believed. It is for you to judge whether he is honest or dishonest, and I leave his testimony with you. It was direct; it was to the point; and his manner on the stand was absolutely and perfectly honest.

Now, there is another point made. You know you have to think of these things as you can, and step on them and then go on. Another point is made, and it was urged by Mr. Bliss day after day. And what is that? That Mr. Brady took the affidavits of all these men as absolutely true; that he allowed them to fix the limit of the money they would take out of the Treasury; that he allowed interested men to make the affidavits, and then he took the affidavits as absolutely true; that he allowed the contractors themselves to fix the sum they would seize. Now let us see what that is. Mr. Brady swears that he regarded the affidavit as the honest opinion of the man who made it, but not as necessarily true; that he had a standard of his own. Your views upon all such questions, gentlemen, will depend upon which side of human nature you stand—whether you are a believer in total depravity, or whether you think there is a little virtue left in human nature. If you stand on the side of suspicion, if you allow the snake of prejudice to forever whisper in your ear, why, your idea will be that every man is a rascal; and whenever he does a decent action you will say, "This action is a little velvet in the paw for the purpose of covering the claw of some devilment that he has in store." If you judge from that side you can torture any act, no matter what it is, into evidence of guilt. But you may judge from the other side and say that men, as a rule, are decent; that they would rather do a kind act than a mean thing; that they would rather tell the truth than tell a lie. I tell you to-day that there is an immensity of good in human nature. There are hundreds and thousands and millions of men to-day who are honest, who would not for anything stain the whiteness of their souls with a lie. They are laboring-men, it may be, working by the day for a dollar or a dollar and a half, and only taking enough of it to keep life and strength in their bodies and giving the rest to wife and child. And there are battles as grand as were ever won by a celebrated general, and just as bravely fought, with poverty day after day; and the man who fights the battles gains the victory and goes down to the grave with his manhood untarnished. You know it, and so do I. And yet you are all the time told to suspect everything, no matter what it is. There is a flower there; ah, but there is a snake under it! Always making that remark; accounting for every decent looking action by a base motive. That is not my view of human nature.

Now, Mr. Brady says that he had a standard of his own; that he let these men make their statements, and he took their statements as being what they believed to be the truth. And why not? Suppose I say to a man, "What will you take for that horse?" And the man says, "That horse is worth a hundred dollars." Suppose he goes and swears to it; that would not make any difference in the price I would give for the horse, not a bit. You see I am not buying an affidavit, I am buying a horse. So, when Brady says to the contractor, "What will you carry the mail at six miles an hour for?" and the man says "Twenty-five thousand dollars," and he swears to it, Brady is not buying the affidavit; it is the service. If he does not believe the service is worth that much, he says, "I can't do it," and that is all. But they say "No; that is not what Brady did."

Now, as a matter of fact, there are nineteen routes in this indictment, and I believe eighteen of them were expedited. I have made a calculation for the purpose of showing that the amount to be paid was a matter of bargain; that it was a matter talked over between the parties; that it was the result of agreement, and that Mr. Brady did not take the affidavit as the actual amount, and that they were not bound to take the amount that he actually said. Now, I have deducted what was allowed from what could have been allowed on the affidavits, and I find that the price did not depend upon the affidavits. I find that there was a difference between the amount called for by the affidavits and the amount granted of over three hundred thousand dollars. And yet these gentlemen say to you that Brady allowed the men who made the affidavits absolutely to fix the amount. Gentlemen, that will not do. It was a matter of agreement, a matter of bargain, the same as any other agreement or any other bargain.

Now, gentlemen, suppose they had had a conspiracy and said, "We want to get all the money we can out of the Treasury." They would have agreed upon a per cent.; they would have had all those affidavits showing substantially the same per cent., wouldn't they? Because they would have wanted harmony in it. They would have said, "It won't do for you to make an affidavit on that route with one thousand two hundred per cent., on this route with five hundred, on that route with two hundred and twenty per cent., and on the other route with three hundred and forty per cent. That won't do; that is nonsense; we are in a conspiracy and we want all these things to agree and harmonize." And the result would have been that they would have had about the same per cent, in all those affidavits. And yet those affidavits vary in per cent, all the way from two hundred and twenty to one thousand two hundred. They say, "Result of conspiracy." I do not look at it in that way.

It is also claimed that the persons who sold out—that is to say, John M. Peck and John W. Dorsey—agreed to make the necessary papers that the other parties required. That being so, why should not affidavits have been made in blank? Now, I ask you if the other parties were willing to swear to anything that these men would write, why were they made that way? Why not avoid the suspicious circumstance of blanks and put the amount in at first, knowing that the men would not hesitate to swear? Of what use was it, gentlemen, to have an affidavit suspiciously made, to have blanks suspiciously left, when the men were willing to swear to any numbers they would put in? Why did not the parties who made the affidavits write in the amounts? Does not that very fact, that blanks were left, show that they were to take the judgment of the men who were to do the swearing? Why would they leave blanks? Why did they not fill them up at the time and have them sworn to?

Why were they not continuously written? That is another point, if this was a conspiracy. Guilt is always conscious that it is guilty. Guilt is always suspecting detection. Guilt is infinitely suspicious. Guilt would make all the papers as nearly right as possible. Guilt would look out for erasures. Guilt would abhor blots. Guilt would have avoided having blanks filled in with different colored inks. Guilt would want everything fitting everything else, nothing to excite suspicion. Innocence is negligent. The man with honest intentions is the one that does not care. But the guilty man does not travel in the snow. He wants no tracks left.

Now, another thing: The fact that no effort was made to have the affidavits in the same handwriting, no effort to have the blanks apparently filled at the same time, that they were interlined, that there were erasures—all those things tend to show that the parties were honest in what they did. It was just as easy to have one without an erasure as with it; ii was just as easy to have one continuously written as to have the blanks filled up; just as easy to have one without any interlineations as with it. And yet these parties, knowing that they were conspirators (according to these gentlemen), Mr. Brady occupying a high and responsible position, were so careless of their reputations, that they did not even endeavor to make the papers passable upon their face.

Another thing: These very routes were investigated by Congress in 1878—this very business. If the parties at that time had been conscious of guilt, why were any suspicious papers left on file? Why were not others substituted that had no suspicious interlineations, no suspicious erasures, no suspicious blanks that had been filed? Why were these very affidavits at that time reported to Congress?