Surely, you do not mean to imply that, under such circumstances, if the supporters of the Administration controlled a majority in the Senate, the President could not properly urge on his friends that the Committee in question be so changed as to admit of public business being transacted, and to cause the Administration to have a fair chance to carry out a policy!
The correct rule, of course, lies midway between extremes. It is, as I take it, that, in this particular case above all others, the Administration has a right to ask of its friends, when in control of the Senate, that the Committee in question shall be so constituted as to enable relations consistent with the reasonable transaction of business to exist between the President, the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Committee, to the end that, on crucial questions of policy at least, public interests may not be prejudiced, and the Administration may have a fair show.
I am confident you will concur in this proposition. The alternative is obvious. Public business could not be carried on.
Meanwhile, so far as Sumner is concerned, if he had not been deposed just when he was, the country would have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the Chairman of the Committee in question openly going over to the opposition in face of a Senate friendly to the Administration. The case would then have become clear. In any event Sumner was not entitled to be at the head of the Committee after the election of 1872. He had joined the opposition. He belonged, not below the gangway, but on the other side of the House.
He had practically done this at the time he was deposed; and the fact was notorious.
In accordance with your request, I return you a typewritten copy of your letter.
TO J. G. SCHURMAN
Accept my sincere thanks for the kind sentiments expressed in your letter of the 3d. Be assured, I appreci-
