Pardon the liberty I take in intruding this letter upon you. I have followed your work in New York with admiring sympathy, and have frequently written of it in my paper. While hundreds of miles separate us, and our tasks and methods have been widely different, I must still believe that we have much in common, and that the ruling force which actuates us both is to challenge wrong and to fight the battles of good government. Very respectfully yours, (Signed) THOS. E. WATSON. THOMPSON, GA., August, 30, 1896. I intended to draw a very sharp line between Mr. Watson and many of those associated with him in the same movement; and certain of the sentences which he quotes as if they were meant to apply to him were, on the contrary, meant to apply generally to the agitators who proclaimed both him and Mr. Bryan as their champions, and especially to many of the men who were running on the Populist tickets in different States. To Mr. Watson’s own sincerity and courage I thought I had paid full tribute, and if I failed in any way I wish to make good that failure. I was in Washington when Mr. Watson was in Congress, and I know how highly he was esteemed personally by his colleagues, even by those differing very widely from him in matters of principle. The staunchest friends of order and decent government fully and cordially recognized Mr. Watson’s honesty and good faith--men, for instance, like Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, and Representative Bellamy Storer of Ohio. Moreover, I sympathize as little as Mr. Watson with denunciation of the “cracker,” and I may mention that one of my forefathers was the first Revolutionary Governor of Georgia at the time that Mr. Watson’s ancestor sat in the first Revolutionary legislature of the State. Mr. Watson himself embodies not a few of the very attributes the lack of which we feel so keenly in many of our public men. He is brave, he is earnest, he is honest, he is disinterested. For many of the wrongs which he wishes to remedy, I, too, believe that a remedy can be found, and for this purpose I would gladly strike hands with him. All this makes it a matter of the keenest regret that he should advocate certain remedies that we deem even worse than the wrongs complained of, and should strive in darkling ways to correct other wrongs, or rather inequalities and sufferings, which exist, not because of the shortcomings of society, but because of the existence of human nature itself.