"The first Democratic House of Representatives after the war was elected chiefly because of the exposure of the Credit Mobilier fraud and other disclosures of jobbery which resulted from my work. I broke up the Shepherd ring in this city and drove out the robbers. For eight years I labored without intermission to destroy the Star Mail-route ring, and finally made it possible to bring the guilty to punishment. That the result was a scandal upon, and a perversion of, justice was no fault of mine. That I was deprived of the credit due me for exposing the frauds never grieved me, because I was not working for glory, but to make good government possible. What I did to bring to just punishment the authors and abettors of the great fraud of 1876, and to make forever odious that great crime, you know. "That I have incurred the hostility of many and excited the envy of still more is but the natural sequence of the work I have done. Politicians are not prone to remember those who made their success possible, unless you are a present potential factor. Of course, in all that I did I had a fearless newspaper with a great circulation as an engine to work with. But I created, in no small degree, the power I used and the influence I exerted. When I began my work here the _Sun_ had only a _local_ circulation and a _local_ reputation. It secured, largely through my work, a _national_ circulation and reputation. It profited largely by my work, while I received only a modest salary and fell heir to all the enmities provoked.