of the people of those States to obtain for
themselves the blessings of honest and capable local government.

If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but it will be my
ardent desire, to labor for the attainment of this end.

Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that if I shall
be charged with the duty of organizing an Administration, it will
be one which will regard and cherish their truest interests--the
interests of the white and of the colored people both, and equally;
and which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil
policy which will wipe out forever the distinction between North
and South in our common country.

With a civil service organized upon a system which will secure
purity, experience, efficiency, and economy; with a strict regard
for the public welfare, solely, in appointments; with the speedy,
thorough, and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public
officers who betray official trusts; with a sound currency; with
education unsectarian and free to all; with simplicity and
frugality in public and private affairs, and with a fraternal
spirit of harmony pervading the people of all sections and classes,
we may reasonably hope that the second century of our existence as
a Nation will, by the blessing of God, be pre-eminent as an era of
good feeling, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.

Very respectfully,
Your fellow-citizen,
R. B. HAYES.

The non-partisan verdict upon this letter is that it is faultless in
style, sound in principle, courageous, broad and elevated in tone,
liberal, wise, statesmanlike, and strong. It is, in short, the
declaration of faith of an honest man who has a heart in his breast and
a head on his shoulders, with purity in that heart and brains in that
head.

The conclusions which follow our study of the public career of
Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and the study of that interior life, the
beauty of which the world will not know until he has passed from it, are
briefly these.

In boyhood, in battle, in the civic chair, in the esteem of his State,
in every duty and relation of life, he has been first, and now, it would
seem, is first in the hearts of his countrymen. As a student, he was
foremost; as a lawyer, he was in the front rank; as a soldier, he was
the bravest; as a legislator, the most judicious;