Constitutional privilege as a cover for refusal of all information on the subject; that the pledge of the President made the reasons for removals a matter of high public importance; that, to rescue our political life from its demoralization, it was necessary that the pledges of parties and of public men should again count for something, and that, therefore, whatever disposition was made of this matter, it should be such as to sustain the confidence of the people in the good faith of the President.
Consider the aspect of the case. The Republican Senators are not going to let the matter rest. Some of them are in possession of cases of removal which have an ugly partisan look. You refuse all information about them. They contrive some way of investigating them, and they certainly have the power and are very likely to do that. Some of the cases in question are brought out before the public on mere partisan grounds in direct violation of your pledge. Suppose this contingency. In what light will it leave you? As a President who had made a public pledge; who, when questioned about its fulfilment, sheltered himself behind his Constitutional privilege to avoid giving any information; who thus did all, as far as his power went, to conceal the truth, but who could after all not prevent the truth from coming out in spite of him. In that case the charge would be, not only that your pledge had been violated, but that you had done all in your power to conceal and suppress the evidence. Have you considered that contingency?
Whatever the Constitutional privileges of the Executive may be, I know that I express your own feeling when I say that President Cleveland cannot afford to have any concealments of that kind. “Tell the truth” was the word that helped him and his friends over the most dangerous crisis in his campaign, and “Tell the truth” is the solution of the present complication.
