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COMMANDMENT.

RESOLUTION.

"No Senator or Representative, "The Commission, by a majority

or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector."

of votes, is also of the opinion that it is not competent to prove that any of said persons, so appointed electors as aforesaid, held an office of trust or profit under the United States at the time when they were appointed, or that they were ineligible under the laws of the State, or any other matter offered to be proved aliunde the said certificates and paper."

It would be unjust to cast upon the Electoral Commission the blame of all the wrong that has been practiced in this Presidential count. The Commission was but a council of advice, which Congress might have taken or not, as it pleased, the only condition being that, in order to reject it, both Houses must have agreed. The responsibility of the final decision lay, after all, upon Congress, or rather, upon the Senate, which voted throughout to follow the Commission.

The facts thus briefly recited present certain questionsmoral, political, and legal-which can not be considered too soon for our good repute and our self-respect.

THE MORAL QUESTION.

Whatever differences of opinion there may be about the political and legal questions involved, there can be none about the moral. The Presidential office is the gift of the people of the several States, of their own free-will, expressed according to the laws. A falsification of that will is an offense against the State where it is committed, and against all the States. If the falsification is beyond the reach of the law, it is not beyond the reach of the conscience. A robbery is none the less a robbery because it is beyond the range of vision or the arm of justice. If the possessor of an estate has entered through the forgery of a record or the spoliation of a will, which although believed by every neighbor is beyond judicial proof, all the world pronounces his possession fraudulent, even though he scatters his wealth in charities and gathers many companions

around his luxurious table. The example is corrupting, but it is against the eternal law of justice that the act should be respected or the actors continue for ever to prosper.

It is no answer to these observations to say that frauds have been practiced on the other side. Unhappily, there is too much reason to believe that neither party is free from practices which are at once a scourge and a dishonor. Neither has the disgraceful monopoly of such practices, whichever may have the bad preeminence. But this is certain: one wrong neither justifies nor palliates another.

There is no set-off known to the moral law. Because A has defrauded B, that is no reason why B should defraud A. If it were so, society would go on for ever in a compound ratio of crime. The first breach of the law would furnish excuse for the second, and their progeny would follow in sad progression to the end of time. This is not, however, the moral condition of the world. The lex talionis has been abolished by the law of civilization and the higher law of the gospel.

In this case of Louisiana there can be neither excuse nor palliation for the misconduct of the returning board.

On the 10th of November, President Grant telegraphed to the General of the Army instructions about troops in Louisiana and Florida, and added that "no man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. The country can not afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns.” And again: "The presence of citizens from other States, I understand, is requested in Louisiana, to see that the board of canvassers makes a fair count of the vote actually cast. It is to be hoped that representative and fair men of both parties will go."

Did the President of that day misrepresent his party, or his successor, or has the party changed and the successor also? Had the virtuous impulses of November faded away in Febru ary? Was there a change of heart or a change of opportunity? Neither Congress nor the Electoral Commission could give an honest title, without investigating the honesty of the transac

tions on which the title was founded; and yet a President has been installed, in the face of rejected offers to prove frauds, the grossest, the most shameless, and the most corrupting, in all our history.

Then what was the object of the committees of each House of Congress, sent into the disputed States? Was it to blind the people? Was it to conceal a meditated fraud? On the very first day of the session, December 4th, Mr. Edmunds, in the Senate, moved certain resolutions, of which this was

one:

"Resolved further, That the said committee" (the Committee on Privileges and Elections) “be, and is hereby, instructed to inquire into the eligibility to office under the Constitution of the United States of any persons alleged to have been ineligible on the 7th day of November last, or to be ineligible as electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, to whom certificates of election have been, or shall be, issued by the Executive authority of any State, as such electors, and whether the appointment of electors, or those claiming to be such, in any of the States, has been made either by force, fraud, or other means otherwise than in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of the respective States; and whether any such appointment or action of any such elector has been in any wise unconstitutionally or unlawfully interfered with; and to inquire and report whether Congress has any constitutional power, and, if so, what and the extent thereof, in respect of the appointment of or action of electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, or over returns or certificates of votes of such electors," etc.

Was all this parade of committees sent hither and thither, summoning witnesses from far and near, committing the recusant to prison, and looking into State archives-was all this a mock show, a piece of pantomime, for the amusement of the lookers-on, while conspirators were plotting how to conceal what they pretended to be wishing to discover? Taken all in all, the sounding profession, the bustling search, and the studied concealment, make a drama, half comedy and half tragedy, the like of which this generation has not seen till now, but the like of which it and its successors may see many times, if the audience does not hiss the play, and remit the actors to the

streets.

It has been objected, as a reason for not receiving offered evidence, that there was not time to take it before the 4th of

March. How was that known? Perhaps it could have been taken in an hour. Why was not the question asked, how much time the evidence would take, before it was excluded? If the certificate was false, and the falsehood was susceptible of proof, every effort possible should have been made to receive it, and receive it all. It is not commonly accepted as good reason for not searching after the truth, that the search may be difficult. Nor is it an unusual occurrence to require an argument or decision to be made within a period limited. Ten minutes' speeches in Congress, two hours' argument in the Supreme Court, a jury shut in a room until they agree upon a verdict, a court required by statute to render its decision by a day fixed, are not so strange as to be remarkable, or found in practice so embarrassing as to cause the practice to be abandoned.

Nor is it any answer to say that, if the offer of evidence had been accepted, the proof would have fallen short of the offer. That does not lie in the mouth of any one to say, who excluded the evidence, or justified its exclusion. The characters of the counsel who made the offer, and of the commissioner who moved its acceptance, are a guarantee not only of their good faith, but of a reason for their belief. No man has any right to deny that the proof offered would have been made good, who refused the opportunity. They who closed their ears should in decency keep their mouths shut. But it was not the counsel and the commissioner alone who believed that the proof offered would be made good. Every one who witnessed the examinations in Washington, every one who read the testimony taken by the Congressional Committees in Louisiana, must have been satisfied that the conduct of the returning board was throughout unlawful, wicked, and shocking, to the last degree.

The title of the acting President, however valid in law, if valid at all, is tainted with fraud in fact. There was fraud in certifying that Brewster had received a majority of the votes of Louisiana, and fraud in attempting to evade that part of the Constitution which pronounced his disqualification. When the Electoral Commission advised Congress, and Congress accepted, by not rejecting, the advice, that fraud could not be

proved, that advice being but the equivalent of saying that fraud was of no consequence; when it advised that the incompetency of the returning board, for want of jurisdiction, could not be proved, such proof being but the equivalent of proof that the pretended board was not a board at all; when it advised that the forgery, by direction of the board, of the statements and affidavits on which it pretended to act as true could not be proved, that proof being but the equivalent of proof that the pretended statements and affidavits were not statements and affidavits at all; when it advised that the barrier raised by the Constitution against the appointment of a Federal officer to choose a Federal President was not a barrier at all the moral sense of the whole American people was shocked. No form of words can cover up the falsehood; no sophistry can hide it; no lapse of time wash it out. It will follow its contrivers wherever they go, confront them whenever they turn, and as often as one of them asks the suffrages of his countrymen, he may expect to hear them reply, "Why do you reason with us, why seek to persuade us into giving you our votes, you that have taught us such a contempt for votes, that one fraudulent certificate is better than ten thousand of them?"

THE POLITICAL QUESTION.

The advice of the Commission, with the consequent action of Congress, was a virtual affirmation of this proposition, that if on the morning of the 6th of December the Federal General commanding in Louisiana had surrounded the State-House with soldiers, and marching in eight of his captains, had compelled the returning board to certify their appointment as electors, and the Governor to add his certificate, Congress and the country would have been obliged to accept the votes of these captains as the constitutional and lawful votes of Louisiana elec

Whoever supposes that the union of these States can endure under such an interpretation of their fundamental law, must be endowed with credulity beyond the simplicity of childhood. The doctrine is an open invitation to transgression and usurpation. The judicious disposition of a few troops in the capitals of disputed States, on the day of the electoral vote,

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