John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

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... No matter what other amendments we may make in our laws, no matter with what unsparing radicalism we may lay the hand of change upon legislation and usages inherited from other times, let us be conservative at least in everything that relates to the defence of liberty and to the sanctity of personal rights.

The election of a majority of Democrats to the House of Representatives at the fall elections of 1874, and the organization of the House by that party the next year, show that the voters of the country had come to the conclusion that the Republicans could not be trusted to expose fraud and reform the public service. The change greatly encouraged Dana in the course he was pursuing. He had been the first to lay bare the Safe Burglary Conspiracy, and to charge that it had been concocted by the Washington ring, planned and carried out by the Secret Service of the Treasury, paid for with public money, and protected by those “high in the confidence of the administration.” The Sun's statements had been denounced as a calumny by the party organs, but the investigations which had gone to the bottom of the matter, justified that newspaper completely by securing additional testimony which both astounded and appalled the public mind. The facts and circumstances gathered by the committee were recounted from day to day in the columns of the Sun, in all their disgraceful details, and were finally set forth triumphantly in its issue of April 12, 1876, as a complete vindication of its course for the entire period of two years, during which it constituted a most absorbing topic of public discussion. It is difficult to realize, after the lapse of thirty years, that the Safe Burglary, the Whiskey Ring, the Credit Mobilier, and the Post-tradership exposures so completely engrossed the attention of the public press and of the people themselves; but when it is considered that