I am first referred to as a “very small peg…

chunk 522 · paragraph 2013

f human nature, evil motives, ignorance, cowardice, pre- sumption, bull dozing and chicanery if they would be a little more consistent. I am first referred to as a “very small peg wobbling about in a big hole,” and yet when the hole is filled they howl that I alone filled it. I am accused of the awful crime of writing the report of the grand jury. Do these critics consider it the duty of some other member to do that work? That it was my report is true only in the sense that I drafted the general con- clusions upon the reports of the committees submitted to me, which was adopted by the grand jury without dissent. That clerical errors may explain some of the matters reported by the committee on the probate clerk’s office, I do not doubt, but they were errors of the clerk, not of the committee or jury. The vindication of Mr. Carpenter or any other official can not be complete and final because of the discovery of a few clerical errors. Now as to any control or attempted control of the grand jury, or to do more or less than my duty, every member will bear me out in the statement that there was the most perfect unanimity in our work on the county affairs ex- cepting in one instance, wherein I was disposed to more moderation and leniency, I was sum- marily sat down upon by the other grand jurors.