AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
popular right that might be expected of jockeys making a horse trade.”
A few years later the Record saw Woodrow Wilson swap the governorship of New Jersey for another high office, and use the office, neglecting its duties, to accomplish the result and supported the effort as a delectable proposition. There was this difference: Wilson did what the Record only said that I intended to do, and in making the statement it was mistaken. Looking at the matter with deeper insight, testing it ethically, and assuming the facts to be true, as they were not, the accusation of the lawyer, if he was a lawyer, and of the Record was silly. In appointing a thoroughly competent judge I had performed my only duty to the court and nobody had any right to ask anything more so far as the court was concerned. It was no case of barter or buying and selling with Thompson because, according to the story, he knew nothing about it, and beside had nothing to give. It was no case of selling to Quay because he got neither office. It would not be a nice thing for me to appoint a good judge simply upon the hope of helping myself, but that involves questions of propriety, not of integrity, and there are few people who rise to such heights.
I had no intention of permitting talk to go on as though some wicked thing were being done in secret, and the next day I wrote to the Ledger:
I have carefully read the wanton attack upon myself in yesterday's Record, to see whether there could be any possible justification for it except a wish to excel in newspaper enterprise. I may be wrong but it seems to me there is no principle of ethics which would prevent me from going before the next Republican State Convention as a candidate for the Supreme Court, or from asking the support of Mr. Quay or anyone else who may have influence, provided I do not use the power of the governor for that purpose. If I chose to take this course, I should not hesitate in order to escape illogical comment. As a matter of fact I have not asked any person who may be a delegate to that convention, or any one who may have weight in its deliberations, to do anything whatever
