Holt may well wonder at Speed's obstinate silence. He exclaims: "It is a mystery to me." It will be a mystery to every one, provided the black charge was false. But, on the hypothesis that the charge was true, that the paper was suppressed, either actually or virtually, there is no mystery. Had Speed known that the paper was, not only "_before_" the President, but considered by him, either in or out of the Cabinet, it is beyond the limit of human credulity to believe, for a moment, that, with all possible motives to lead him to succor his friend, and with none to lead him to shield the character of his dead political foe, he would not have uttered the one decisive word in the controversy. And he comes as near doing so as he dares, evidently. He shows, in 1873, a yearning to help his old friend--a yearning so strong that we may be sure it was not the frivolous pretext of "official propriety" which constrained him, then, much less in 1883. If he, too, as Holt said of Stanton, feared the resentment of the dethroned Johnson in life, he certainly could not have feared the resentment of Johnson's ghost after death. He must be numbered among those who, "With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As, _'Well, well, we know;' or 'We could, an' if we would;' or 'If we list to speak;' or 'There be, an' if they might;'_" "ambiguously give out" to know what they are sworn "never to speak of." If there was any oath-guarding "fellow in the cellarage," rest assured it was not the pale wraith of the hood-winked Johnson, but the blood-boltered spectre of his once wide-ruling Minister of War. * * * * * Amid such a dearth of direct explicit testimony of members of the Cabinet about a disputed Cabinet incident, it is curious and interesting to watch the assiduous ex-Judge-Advocate, with the most ingenious and industrious sophistry, attempt to extract corroboration from the statements of the two ex-Cabinet officers, whom he has induced to speak, where in truth no corroboration can be found. After all his efforts, he is forced at last to fall back upon the single testimony of the one man without whose encouraging information he frankly informs us he would not have dared to come before the people, and upon whom he brings himself to believe he might safely rest his defense. That man is John A. Bingham, now, as once before, Special Assistant Judge-Advocate to Joseph Holt.