The committee, with well simulated delicacy, never summoned me to appear and testify, but sent for my clerk, and after examining him were glad, it seems, to drop it. I dwell upon this matter, because in a long career of public service it is the only attempt ever made to impeach Mr. Buchanan’s public or private integrity. He himself felt it very bitterly, and I think it will be admitted that he administered a wholesome and deserved rebuke to the House in his special message of protest. Although the result demonstrated that there was not the most gossamer pretext for the charge made by Covode, I think Mr. Buchanan’s friends can be well pleased at its having been made, and its futility exposed, as it leads to the fair conclusion for history, that Mr. Buchanan was invulnerable to any assaults upon the honor of his public or private life. Surely this is much to be able to say of a public servant, and a nation capable of breeding many such public men can justly congratulate itself. Another feature of Mr. Buchanan’s public life I will refer to, which possibly may not now be esteemed a great virtue. I mean his dislike of nepotism. Not unnaturally, there were members of our family who would have been very glad to have obtained civil or other appointments during his administration. But such was Mr. Buchanan’s freely expressed repugnance to using his public authority for the advantage of his relatives, that I am not aware that any of them even made application to him for office of any kind. Public policy clearly indicates the propriety and desirability of the President’s private secretary being, if possible, a blood relation, upon the ground that the honor and interests of the President and his high office can be most safely entrusted to one having an interest in his good name and fame, and therefore more guarded against temptation of any kind. I therefore do not consider the selection of myself, or my cousin Mr. James Buchanan, who followed me, as any exception to what I have stated. To such an extent did I know that my uncle disliked the appointing of relatives to office, that I never dared to tell him of my desire to be appointed to the paymaster corps of the navy, a position which from my nomadic tastes I had long coveted, and I concluded to save myself the mortification of a refusal. I could exercise no influence with him for myself. As an instance of this, I will mention that when the Hon. John Cadwalader, late Judge of United States Circuit Court of Eastern Pennsylvania, was appointed to that judgeship by Mr. Buchanan, he tendered me the clerkship of his court, a permanent and honorable position, and one that I should have been willing to accept. Judge Cadwalader had been my legal preceptor, and for years my warm personal friend, so that the proffered position would have been in every way agreeable and proper.