I come now to the saddest and most melancholy chapter of this history of fraud. I refer to the report recently wrung from the commissioners in response to Mr. Muller’s resolution, introduced in Congress February 25th, 1878. This report, (Mis. Doc. 43, House of Representatives, 45th Congress, 2d Session,) is a very remarkable document, and merits to be extensively read and carefully studied. It is a remarkable document, as well for the force in which it illustrates the blighting power of money, the want of heart, soul, and conscience, even the better class of mankind is afflicted with at the present day, and, worst of all, that there is very little difference between the men, who, in 1870, deliberately plotted to rob the bank, and the men, who, in 1878, and under the disguise of law, make themselves and their friends the beneficiaries of what there is left.

The following passage is quoted from this remarkable report, to which the names of the three commissioners are attached. It reads like a bit of exquisite satire:

This is a very singular statement to make to Congress, and is false on its face. Can it be possible that these commissioners were so deaf to public sentiment that they did not hear the criticisms made on their conduct in managing the affairs of the bank for the last three years? Do they not know that the atmosphere of Washington has been foul with scandals in regard to the relations between one of the commissioners and a well-known Washington lawyer, who was enriching himself at the expense of the washers and scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant? Do they not know that these suspicious relations have been the talk of the Washington bar for at least two years? Why, gentlemen commissioners, this report of yours is, of itself, the best proof that there was just cause for these scandals, if such you choose to call them.

I have shown that Creswell and Purvis were mere figureheads, who pocketed their salaries with heartless regularity, while Leipold did all the business, and was really the Board of Commissioners. I have also shown this man Leipold’s relations to Senator Howe, and his son-in-law, lawyer Enoch Totten. We have now only to turn and see what an extensive field lawyer Enoch Totten found for his legal services, and how splendidly he improved it. Here are some of his charges:

The sad story of greed recorded in the above account of fees is so well told as to render comment by me unnecessary. And yet the above is by no means all lawyer Enoch Totten got of the money of the washers and the scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant. He can afford to ride in his coach; and I hope he can sleep at night with the self-satisfaction that he has been just and generous to the poor freedmen who had been so cruelly robbed, and had pocketed only what was right of their money.

Not very long since, Mr. Frederick Douglas said there were men in Washington, living in palaces, and riding in their coaches, who were prominent in robbing his people of their hard earnings. Mr. Douglas never told a greater truth. I envy no man destined to carry a guilty conscience through the world with him.

To turn to this lawyer Totten, he may be eminent as a lawyer, but I never heard of it. Nor have I ever heard that his reputation at the Washington Bar was such as to entitle him to excessive fees.[2] I have heard of Attorney-at-Law Totten, in connection with the “Beaufort and Texas Prize Claim,” which, in the language of District Attorney Wells, was one of the very worst frauds invented to get nearly a million dollars out of the Treasury of the United States.

I am assured that the legal services rendered by Mr. Totten, were of a very simple and commonplace kind; and that there are at least fifty members of the Washington Bar, as good and perhaps better lawyers than Mr. Totten, who would have gladly performed the service for one-sixth of the amount charged.

You have in the above a faint glimpse of the ways and means by which the money of these poor, plundered people is disappearing. And yet these well paid Commissioners, who have proven themselves so recreant to this trust, tell us with a coolness that challenges our credulity, that they have “no knowledge of any improper use of the funds of the company to which reference is made in the preamble of the resolution of the House of Representatives.” How very innocent these Commissioners are. Their innocence is only equalled by Mr. Attorney-at-Law Totten’s great respect for the money of his clients, the washers and the scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant. It was Sheridan, I believe, who said that if he wanted to find a first-class scoundrel, heartless and soulless, he would search for him in the legal profession. Had he lived in this age of Christian statesmen he certainly would have improved on that.