Your committee find themselves constrained to report that the moneys borrowed by the corporation, under a power given them, only to meet the necessities of the construction and endowment of the road, have been distributed in dividends among the corporators; that the stock was issued, not to men who paid for it at par in money, but who paid for it at not more than thirty cents on the dollar in road making; that of the Government directors some of them have neglected their duties and others have been interested in the transactions by which the provisions of the organic law have been evaded; that at least one of the commissioners appointed by the President has been directly bribed to betray his trust by the gift of $25,000; that the chief engineer of the road was largely interested in the contracts for its construction; and that there has been an attempt to prevent the exercise of the reserved power in Congress by inducing influential members of Congress to become interested in the profits of the transaction. So that of the safeguards above enumerated none seems to have been left but the sense of public duty of the corporators. The Judge Poland Committee investigated the conduct of the members who were suspected and acquitted all but two. The House accepted their decision. They recommended the expulsion of Mr. Ames and of James Brooks, one of the Democratic members. There were some special circumstances in the case of Brooks, which it is not necessary to recite. Brooks died before a vote on his case was taken. The House by a majority amended the resolution reported by the Committee in the case of Mr. Ames, and recommended a vote of censure, which was passed. Ames felt the disgrace very keenly, and did not live very long afterward. These disclosures did much to bring about the uneasy condition of the public mind which led to the Republican defeat in the election of members of the House of Representatives in the fall of 1874, and brought Tilden so near to an election in 1876.