"Fort Washington, Feb. 25, 1875.
"Dear Gov.,—I have perused the substitute. As a matter of course my first thought was that of a Yankee. I set to work guessing what could be the motive of the change.
"The substitute is so much more broadly comprehensive than I feared the 'toned-down' document would be that this conjecturing process led me into what, even to myself, seems a strange dance.
"The substitute proposed is very good, nay, it is as good and as perfect as the original, save in one single point. It covers every ground I ever had in view, save one.
"And, who beneath the sun, can stand in the gap opposing that?
"Now let me explain to you my thoughts and mental processes.
"The swindlers have removed their property, i. e., the plunder, out of the State of New York. When the infamous decision was made in the State's own court that it, i. e., this State itself, had no title, that judicial point was thenceforth law in all foreign courts. If the State should bring an action in any foreign court, such court would be bound to decide against the plaintiff on the strength of that decree, substantially made by such plaintiff itself. But when the county or city or any like entity brought its action, the maintainability of that action would be a judicial question, determinable by the foreign judges according to their own views derived by them from the general principles of jurisprudence. These principles taught me, and should teach them, that as to most of these fraudulent abstractions the subordinate local entity had no title.
"When conferring with you concerning this subject prior to your message I distinctly stated this consideration.
"Though this may seem the product of a jurisprudent's recondite studies, it was born of practical common sense, and what is, perhaps, more to the point of my next observation, and to which it is preliminary, this idea is of a nature to be eminently popular. It might fairly be thought somewhat sensational.
"I was amazed to miss it from the lines of your message. If the thought that you could have any hesitation about pursuing the plunderers and their plunder to the ends of the earth presented itself to me at all—as I must suppose was not the case—it was, of course, instantly rejected as fanciful and silly.