As to what takes place at a meeting of the Cabinet, its members of course are the first, if not the only, witnesses. And it is a matter of surprise that General Holt, so far as is apparent, never, in all these past years, applied to any one of them to substantiate so essential a part of his vindication. He states that he has always been satisfied that the matter must have been considered in the Cabinet, and adds that "from the confidential character of Cabinet deliberations" he has "thus far been denied access to this source of information." But he does not say when, or to whom, he applied for such "access," or how he had been "denied." It is certain, from what he says elsewhere, that he never applied to Stanton or to Seward; he admits in a subsequent communication that he never applied to McCulloch, Welles or Dennison; and, from the tenor of their letters now in reply to his, it appears he never applied before to Harlan or to Speed. And these are all the members of the Cabinet of President Johnson in July, 1865. Moreover, he does not, even now, in 1873, make application in the first instance to an ex-Cabinet officer. His first application is made to John A. Bingham, his old colleague in the prosecution of Mrs. Surratt, for Cabinet information in the shape of conversations with the two ministers, who, after so many years of unsolicited silence in life, are now silent, beyond the reach of solicitation, in death. And it is not until he has secured the desired information, which he would have us believe was entirely unexpected, that he is stirred up to the necessity of a public vindication of his character; and then he selects the two of the surviving ministers of the Cabinet, known to be hostile to the ex-President, as the objects of solicitation, sending them, as a spur to their recollections, the letter containing the reminiscences of his serviceable ally. But, by some fatality, the industrious inquirer takes nothing by his somewhat complicated manoeuvre. The letters he produces from Cabinet officers afford him no assistance. Judge Harlan can recall only an informal discussion by three or four members of the Cabinet (Seward, Stanton, himself and probably Speed) of the question of the commutation of the sentence of Mrs. Surratt because of her sex; which, she being the one woman under condemnation, would surely arise in a tribunal of gentlemen, whether there was a recommendation or not, as in fact it did even among the stern soldiers of the Military Commission. But the writer, who, as Senator from the State of Iowa, had voted for the conviction of President Johnson, makes the positive declaration, that "no part of the record of the trial, the decision of the court, or the recommendation of clemency was at that time or ever at any time read in my (his) presence." He remembers, with undoubting distinctness, inquiring at the time whether the Attorney-General had examined the record, and was told that the whole case