How did he come to destroy them? Another suspicious circumstance against Dorsey! Boone said when he went into the business he just took the bidding-book and commenced at A, and was going right straight through to X, Y, and Z, and make a bid, I believe, on every route that was in the book. I think that is his testimony. Boone says:
I was going on without instructions. I was going on without authority from anybody, working on the bids.
He thinks it was the same day that Miner got here, or the day afterwards, and he—I suppose meaning Dorsey—came up to the room and saw what the witness was doing. He was making up bids for every route in the advertisement, going right along with big and little, when Dorsey said there was a mistake. No proposals were to be made for over three times a week or for routes under fifty miles. When Miner came into the room witness asked what was the reason of that. I say upon this point that Stephen W. Dorsey never said a word about it, and that Boone is mistaken. But he says he asked Miner the reason. What did Miner say? Did he say to him, "It is because we have got a conspiracy? We have got it fixed with the Second Assistant Postmaster-General"? No. He said this, he said for fear of failure in getting bonds; that they could not get the bonds for all the service and could not get certified checks for all the service. Boone was going clear through the book from preface to finis. They could not get bonds for all the service and could not get certified checks for all the service. You remember that for all the service over five thousand dollars they had to put up five per cent., I think, in certified checks. Now, there was an immense volume, of three or four thousand routes and he was going to put in a bid on every one of them. That is what Boone was going to do. He did not understand the conspiracy at that time. Miner explained to him, "We cannot get the certified checks. We cannot get the bondsmen." He did not tell him, "Good Lord, my friend, you don't understand the terms of the conspiracy. We are taking no such service as that. We are taking none over three times a week, because, don't you see, we want the chance for increase. We want the lowest. If we can find any service where the horses agree to stand still, that is the service to take. You must look over the terms of the conspiracy and have some sense about it."
Boone says he was starting in, taking the advertisements, going right through the territory, all over that country, and bidding on every route, not missing one. He never saw Stephen W. Dorsey do any work on the bids. The proposals sent down to the postmasters in Arkansas, including those to Clendenning, he (Boone) fixed himself and sealed them. Gentlemen, there is no evidence that Mr. Dorsey, as I understand it, ever saw one of those papers, but simply the form that was written out by Boone that was sent to Clendenning with instructions what to do with the proposals. That I understand to be the evidence. They proved by Boone that Dorsey never saw them; never wrote them; never ordered them to be written; never ordered a blank to be left unfilled. And yet, gentlemen, he was the man whom they say had brooded over this conspiracy; the man that gave to it life and form. He is the man that used Boone and John W. Dorsey and Peck and Miner as instrumentalities and tools.
What more? Did Boone take those bonds up to Dorsey and show them to him? He says that he did not open them; that he did not show them to Dorsey. That is what Mr. Boone swears. Surely Mr. Boone is an honorable man, stamped with the seal of the Department of Justice. He did not even show them to Dorsey. Dorsey never saw anything except the form after Boone had made it out. I showed you that form on yesterday, I think, marked 16 X. That is the only thing that Dorsey saw. He did not know what blanks were left in the bonds, or whether any were left. He never gave any orders about them, and never saw them. Yet the prosecution want you to hold him responsible as a conspirator for those bonds.
What more, gentlemen? Those bonds were never used. Nobody was ever defrauded. Not a proposal was put in the Post-Office Department. They never came to life. Dead! No contract, says Mr. Boone, was ever awarded on those proposals, even the proposals sent back, unless it was a contract to him, Boone. That is what he swears. And yet Dorsey is to be held responsible.
Let us hurry along, gentlemen. See how Dorsey came to do this. How did that arch-conspirator, as they claim him to be, happen to write that letter to Clendenning? On page 1567 Boone says that he suggested to Dorsey that he had better send a note with the proposals to Clendenning. Boone suggested it. He was not a conspirator, but he suggested it. Dorsey was the conspirator, but never dreamed of it. How fortunate for a conspirator to have an innocent man think of the means of carrying out a conspiracy; never thinking of crime, but having it all suggested by perfect innocence and then crime taking advantage of it. That is the position! He suggested that Dorsey would better send a note with the proposals to Clendenning. I will read from page 1568:
Q. Was there not danger that he would be declared a failing contractor? Was it at that time the practice of the department if a man, for instance, had fifty contracts and failed on one to declare him a failing contractor on all?—A. No, sir; but they would declare him a failing contractor on that one route and suspend his pay until he paid up the loss to the Government—just my case now, exactly.
Q. That was one of the reasons that you had. Now, you were informed at that time that they had not the money to carry this on.
When, as a matter of fact, did you go out of the concern?—A. The 8th day of August, 1878.