The plain fact is, that the final vote on the bill was not a test of the sentiments of members of the House on the salary question. The responsibility for the increase of salaries rests upon those who forced the amendment upon the bill. There is one feature of the case to which I refer with great reluctance, and with a deep sense of the injustice that is done me. It is charged that I voted for the bill for the purpose of putting $5,000 of back pay into my own pocket. I fearlessly appeal to friends and enemies alike to say whether any act of my public life has warranted them in imputing to me unworthy and mercenary motives. The point here raised is one to which I did not intend to refer in this letter. I preferred to leave my personal motives to the future for vindication. But already, without my knowledge or procurement, a paragraph has found its way to the press which makes it proper for me to say what I did not wish paraded in public, that I not only did not receive the back pay nor- any part of it, but I ordered it so covered into the general Treasury as to be placed beyond the reach of myself or my heirs. I have thus stated the facts in the case, that you may know precisely what I did, and the reasons for it. I desire that this and every other act of my public life shall be fully known to you. Ten years ago you called me from another field of duty and honor to represent you in the national Legislature. Since then you have expressed your confidence and esteem in many ways, and in none more strikingly than in the five re-elections with which you have honored me. I have not been insensible to these evidences of your approval. I have conscientiously sought to serve you and the country with the best of my ability. I have spared neither time nor labor faithfully to discharge the duties of the place assigned me. Doubtless I have made my full share of mistakes and blunders, and my vote on this bill may have added another to the list. I respect no man the less for thinking so, but in this as in all my official conduct I acted for what I regarded the public good. Whether wise or unwise, defensible or indefensible, that vote had the approval of my judgment, and I do not shrink from any responsibility growing out of it. But I do not affect to conceal my surprise and disappointment at the construction which has been given to that vote. Probably no man who, conscious of his own integrity, has served a constituency as long as I have served you could see the basest of motives attributed to him and listen to a public demand for his instant resignation with indifference. Certainly I cannot. Were I to follow my own inclinations merely, I would at once abandon a position so difficult to fill acceptably, and which the assaults of calumny have rendered on so many accounts undesirable. But the charge on which the demand of the Warren convention is based is an injustice to which I cannot consent. The principle on
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