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bar of public opinion.
They and their confederates, like the harpies of Tammany, thought the storm would soon “blow over,” and, instead of putting their houses in order, they set about organizing a campaign of hatred and resentment against Dana and the Sun. In this they invoked the aid of the federal courts to punish the editor for offences which, if offences at all, were offences against the laws of the State in which they were committed.
It was on June 20, 1872, that the Sun published a letter containing a phrase that was everywhere hailed as the shibboleth of corruption.
It runs as follows:
The writer was State treasurer at the time, but was convicted in 1880 of trying to bribe members of the Pennsylvania legislature, and served a year in the penitentiary for his offence.
His “particular friend” was a defaulter.
The suggestive and comprehensive formula used in this letter needed no interpretation.
Everybody understood it, and the press gave it the widest circulation, but the man who phrased it was a bold and fearless professional office-holder that could see no wrong in the words or in the use he had made of them.
To the contrary, regarding them as innocent, and the connection of his name with them in an opposite sense as constituting a criminal libel, he sued out a writ against Dana, and had him arrested as he was passing through Philadelphia and put under bond
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Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1907.
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