Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1877 — THE ELECTORAL TRIBUNAL. [ARTICLE]

THE ELECTORAL TRIBUNAL.

A New and Stirring Review of the Work of the Commission, by Jere S. Black— The Horrible Condition of the South Under the Carpet-Baggers Graphically Depicted. Judge Jere S. Black, in The North American. liecierr for July-August, prints a lengthy history of the Electoral Tribunal which declared Mr. Hayes entitled to the Presidency. After noting in general terms the popular indignation which followed the declaration of the Electoral Commission’s vote, Judge Black gives a graphic sketch of the coiftlition of the South prior to the Presidential election of 1876, and draws in bold lines the portrait of the carpet-bagger. The extent of the spoliations of these adventurers from the North can hardly he calculated’ but the testimony of the carpet-baggers themselves against one another, the reports of the committees scut by Congress to investigate the subject, and other information from sources entirely authentic, make it safe to say that a general conflagration, sweeping over all the State of Louisiana from one end to the other, and destroying every building and every article of personal projierty, would have been a visitation ol' mercy in comparison to the curse of such a government. This may seem at first blush like great exaggeration, because it is worse than anything this misrule ever did before. The greediest of Roman proconsuls left something to the provinces he wasted; the Norman did not strip the Saxon quite to tho skin ; the ‘Puritans under Cromwell did not utterly desolate Ireland. Their rapacity was confined to the visible things which they could presently handle and use. They could not take what did not exist. But the American carpet-bagger lias an invention unknown to those old-fashioned robbers, which increases his stealing power as much as the steam-engine adds to the mechanical force of mere natural muscles. He makes negotiable bonds of the State, signs and seals them “according to the forms of law,” sells them, converts the proceeds to his own use, and then defies justice to “go behind the returns.” By this device his felonious fingers are made long enough to reach iuto the pockets of posterity ; he lays his lieu on property yet uncreated ; he anticipates the labor of coming ages and appropriates the fruits of it in advance : he coins the industry of future generations into cash, and snatches the inheritance from children whose fathers arc unborn. Projecting his cheat forward by this contrivance and operating laterally at the same time, he gathers an amouut of plunder which no country in the world would have yielded to the Goth or the Vandal. THE ItEION Ol’ ANAItOIIY. Security of life can never be counted on where property is not protected, and bloody reprisals followed. The carpet-baggers themselves testify to numerous other murders, ivantc n, unprovoked and atrocious, committed with impunity under the very eyes of the Government. Gen. Sheridan says he collected a list of 4,000 assassinations perpetrated within throe years. Senator Sherman* and his associates of the visiting committee swell this number greatly and add that “half the State was overrun with violence.” No effort was made to repress these disorders or punish the criminals. Nobody was hung, nobody tried, nobody arrested. The murderers ran at large : the victims fell at the awful average of about four every day, and the public officers quietly assented to let “ the rifle,' the knife, the pistol and the rope do their horrid work” without interruption. Are such men fit to govern a free State? “Fit to govern ! No, not lit to live.”

GENESIS OF THE RETURNING BOARD. But this system could not five, and as early as 1870 it became evident that the carpet-bag-gers must prepare for flight or punishment, unless they could contrive a way of defeating the popular will whenever and however it should be expressed. Then the Returning Board was invented. " This was a machine entirely new, with powers never before given to any tribunal in any State. Its object was not to return, but to suppress, the votes of tho qualified electors,or change them to suit the occasion. By the terms of the law it can exclude, suppress, annihilate all the votes of a parish for violence, intimidation, or fraud, which it finds to have been committed, and adjudges to have materially influenced tho result of the poll. This is judicial authority so broad that no court would consent to exercise it—inflicting the fearful penalty of disfranchisement upon thousands at once, without a hearing anti without legal evidence, not for any offense of their own, but for the supposed sm of others over whom they confessedly had no control. Of course it is in direct conflict with the State constitution, which declares that all judicial power shall be vested in certain ordained and established courts, and forbids it to be used even by them, except upon trial before a jury, and conviction on the testimony of credible witnesses confronted by the accused and crossexamined by counsel." It is, besides, a most insolent affront to the fundamental principles of all elective government, for it makes the poll of tho people a mere mockery, which decides nothing except what the Returning Board is pleased to approve, and elects nobody whom tho Returning Board does not graciously favor. Its power to veto a popular vote extends to all elections, for every class of officers, judicial, legislative, ministerial, and executive, including electors of President and Yicu President. HOW IT DID ITS WORK. This suppressing board did its work thoroughly frqui the start. It was never known to falter. Since its first organization in 1870 the majority of the whole people has been decidedly against tho carpet-baggers at every election. But the board always . intercepted the returns, and so altered them as to make a majority the other way. Kellogg was a candidate for Governor ; he was largely defeated, but the board certified him elected. The certificate was so glaringly false that carpet-baggers themselves would not help to install him, and Democrats determined to assert their rights. It was then that Gen. Grant, to the unspeakable shame Of the nation, lifted him iuto office on tho bayonets of the army. Afterward the outraged people rose in revolutionary wrath, drove him to shelter in tho Custom House, aud inaugurated the man they had lawfully elected. Again the President made war on the State and restored the usurper to the place which did not beloug to him. The Democrats regularly elected a majority of the Legislature ; as regularly the Returning Board certified a majority of their seats to carpet-baggers or scalawags or negroes not chosen, and when the true members met to organize for business the army was pnnotually on hand to tumble them out of their hall.

AITLIED TO THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. The election came off on the proper day, supervised and controlled at every polling-place by officers of the carpet-bag interest.. According to their own count, the result was a majority of 7,639 for tho Tilden electors. But the opponents of Tilden and Hendricks determined that the record of the appointment made by tho people should be mutilated and changed so as to make it appear as if electors for Hayes and Wheeler had been chosen. They pretended to believe that violence and intimidation had frightened the Hayes men from the polls, and that their cowardice ought to be whited, in the form of disfranchisement, on the heads of others who had intrepidity enough to perform their political duty. The allegation was utterly mlse. It was made, not only without evidence to sustain it, but in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. EVIDENCE ALIUNDE. The unvarying preference,of the eight commissioners for the faise-'ovpr the true is very striking. When they got Iceland the Governor's papers, they found lyingWiunde two other sets of documents, one of which was a record of tho actual appointment made by tho people; the other was a mere fabrication of the Returning Board without any semblance of truth; they embraced the latter with all the ardor of sincere affection, and rejected the former witli all possible marks of their dislike. To give the decrees of the Returning Boards the conclusive effect claimed for them, it was necessary to hold that they were legally invested with judicial powers, and that their jurisdiction, whether rightly or erroneously exercised, was absolute over the whole subject matter. In Florida the statute which creates the board gave it nothing except ministerial powers, and the Supreme Court of the State [solemnly pronounced its claim of judicial authority to be altogether unfounded. But the ElectoralJCommission would not be influenced by either the written or the unwritten law. The commission e inceded to the Louisiana board all the judicial power it needed to sanctify its disfranchisement of the people in the face of the constitution, which expressly forbade it. This general jurisdiction was not all they bestowed on those boards; they declared in substance that it miirht be well exercised in particular cases where it was .not invoked according to the law which

gave them teing, as. for instance, where a Louisiana naiLh sent up its return without a protest, statement or affidavit. THE INFAMOUS EIGHT. The eight commissioners did not stop there. They went much further. They practically justified and sustained all the infinite rascality of the Returning Boards. They not only refused to take voluntary notice of the atrocious frauds perpetrated by them, but they excluded the proofs of their corruption which the Democratic counsel held in their hands aud offered to exhibit. These commissioners choked off the evidence, and smothered it as remorselessly as Wells and his associates suppressed Democratic returns. And this they put on the express ground that to them it was all one whether the action of these boards was fraudulent or not. They would suffer no proof of corruption to invalidate the right claimed by a Hayes man to put in the vote of a State for his candidate. This monstrous and uuendurable outrage was resisted to the utmost. All of the seven implored and protested against it. Judge Clifford, the President of the commission, laid it down as a maxim of the common law that fraud vitiates whatever it touches, aud proved it undeniably. He might have proved more. It is not merely a maxim of the common law; it belongs to all countries and all ages; no code can claim i exclusively : it pervades all systems of jurisprudence ; it lias its home in every [honest heart; it is the universal sentiment of all just men ; it applies to all human dealings. Judge Field looked in the face of the majority aud toldt them plainly that their disregard of this great principle was “as shocking in morals as it was unsound in law,” and added : “It is elementary knowledge that fraud vitiates all proceedings, even the most solemn ; that no fonn of words, no amount of ceremony, no solemnity of proceeding can shield it from exposure or protect its structure from assault and destruction.” But the eight w'ere as deaf as adders to the voice of reason and justice. They would not permit the fraud to be assaulted, much less to be destroyed. They stood over it to shield'it, and save it, interposing the broad iegis of their authority to cover it against every attack. The eight persistently denied their power, or that of Congress, to do what they were commanded by the law to do—that is, decide who were duly appointed. They would only decide that certain persons were namod as electors by a Returning Board. They would not understand that tho appointment by the people might be one thing, aud the action of the Re turning Board another, or that the latter, even as evidence of the former, was worthless if it was fraudulent. THtMTH E RIGGING FLORIDA OUT. They insisted that the Returning-Board certificate must be received with all the honors ; to question its verity would be usurpation upon State rights, which they (the eight) were most careful to preserve intact and unimpaired. “But,” said they, “if a Returning Board be-, haves unfaithfully, the State herself, by her own authorities, must sre to it and correct the wrong.” Thereupon came Florida, and showed that she had, in fact, made the correction. All the departments of her Government—lit r Legislature, her co irts,!*n ] h r Executive —had at different times examined and revised the aition of her Returning Board ; pronounced it false, fraudulent and void ; declared that the Tilden electors wore duly appointed, and left the Haves candidates without a shred of authority to vote for the State. There stood the State herself upright before tho august commission, with all the evidence in her baud, protesting against the fraud and demanding that no vote should be received except tho vote of her own electors duly appointed by her people. But the commission auswered that under the circumstances of this she had no right to defend herself against the fraud of a Returning Board any more than she had to be defended by the Federal authorities. Whatever site might do, or decide, or re Helve upon, the great fraud was her master, and she must sub mil. So it appeared, after all the fine speeches about State right-*, that Florida had but* one right—the right to lie cheated out of her vote by tho same knaves who had already robbed her of her property. The right was sacred and intangible, aud the commission promptly put her in full possession of it.

A JUDICIAL DECISION DISUEOARDED. ] ii the case of Florida there was one piece of evidence offered which not only commended itself strongly to the consideration of just men. but, being supported bv certain artificial rules of 1 1 ad ng and practice, it was expected to find acceptance in the narrowest mind on the bench. This was the record of a judicial proceeding commenced in a Florida court by writ of quo warranto at the suit of the State upon the relation of the Tilden electors against the Hayes electors. The parties came into court and pleaded, and the issue made between them was whether oi:e set or the other (the relators or the defendants) were duly appointed electors of President and Vice I’resi lent of and for the State of Florida. Evidence was taken, the cause was debated by counsel on both sides, and the relators were duly appointed and the defendants not. This fact, thus determined by the court, was precisely the same fact afterward controverted by the same parties before the commission. When submitted to the latter tribunal, it was res judicata; not only true, bu t fixed and settled beyond the reach of contradiction. The judgment was not impeached for fraud, or reversed for error. It was in full force and virtue. It was not denied that the court which made the adjudication had complete jurisdiction both of the subject matter and of the parties. By all reason and all authority the commission was bound to respect this judgment as conclusive evidence. But to have done this would have made Tilden President and defeated the purpose of all the frauds in Louisiana and Florida both. They did not do it; they allowed the judgment to have no effect at all. They but looked to see what it was, and immediately swept it out of sight. They put it far from them, aud then proceeded to pronounce a different judgment which suited the Hayes men better. How could they break all the bars of legal authority which fenced them about? What starting hole did they find to escape from the corner into which they were driven and penned up by the' law of the land ? We shall see. STATE ACTION NULLIFIED. They said the judgment of the coiyt was too late ; it was pronounced after the Hayes electors had met and made out their votes, and sent them to the President of the Senate. Here were two sets of electors, each claiming the exclusive right to vote for the State, and both of them actually sent up their ballots. One of them was duly appointed, and had the authority claimed ; the other set was necessarily composed of mere pretenders, who wove not duly appointed, and, having no authority, their vote was a mere nullity. Which party was right, and which was wrong ? The conflict must be settled somehow. Where was* the jurisdiction to determine it ? Undoubtedly, and by universal admission, the power was in the courts of the State from which both claimants professed to derive their authority. The proper State court did determine it; but the commissioners said that, however competent the jurisdiction of the court, it was too late in making its decision, and then they proceeded, in the exercise of a jurisdiction exactly similar, to decide the same question of fact and law the other way. Now conies the query: If the court’s decision was worthless because it was late, what was the value of the commissiou’s judgment, which was later ? The eight did actuallv, not iu words, but in substance aud effect, give vent to the bald absurdity that it was too late in January to decide the dispute in favor of Tilden, but not too late in February to decide it in favor of Hayes.

IN FAVOIt OF FRAUD EVERY TIME. Another thing they said: This judgment though it proved the fact that the Hayes claimants were not duly appointed, and had no title to the office of electors, did not invalidate the acts previously done by them while they were de facto in the exercise of the powers they usurped. There is a just and necessary rule of law which declares that the validity of acts regularly done by an officer shall not depend on the title by which he holds the office. You may remove a Sheriff by a quo warranto without destroying the titles of all who purchased land at liis sales, or a Judge without vacating his decrees, or a Treasurer without saying that his payment of a public debt is not satisfaction; but where a person assumes a special authority to do a particular thing the validity of the act does depend on the authority to do it. This latter rule applies here. These electors claimed a right to vote for the Htate under a special appointment given them to do that one act. When a competent court adjudicated as matter of fact that the Hayes electors had no appointment, it was a logical and legal necessity which declared the unauthorized votes to be null and void. If this were not the principle, then any impostor, or any number of impostors, might send up their ballots, and one would be as good as another. But again, let it not be forgotten that the Tilden electors had also voted at the same time and in the same way. Why did not this fact make as much weight for them as for the others ? It will excite the wonder of the world to learn that, in the opinion of the eight, a person who

voted under an appointment given him by the people, according to law, could not he even a de facto elector, but another person who had nothing to claim by except the false, fraudulent and void declaration of a Returning Board was good de facto, if he was good for nothing else. 1 his doctrine of the de facto sanctification, saving acts which have ho other “relish of salvation ki them,” aud making the votes of unauthorized’men as good as if they came from persons duly appointed, cuts a great figure throughout the whole case. It is not applicable, but the eight apply it everywhere, and, strange to say, they never use it when it does not make in favor of some fraud or other. One who votes according to the public will ol the State, legally expressed through the ballot-boxes, is] tie faco nothing. But if he was defeated or ititdigible, he is de facto all he wants to be. Oue of the Hayes electors in Louisiana was a Federal officer; his election was forbidden by the constitution of the United States, and he was not elected but beaten at the polls; de facto strained its utmost power on him, and pulled him through in spite of constitution and people both. Brit, his Democratic competitor- y»jio had acted as an elector in tho same same extent, was legally cliosefifby am-cverwhelming majority, and eonstitutronaljjr eligible; therefore, de facto could do nothing for him. fraud under the forms or law. In all the discussions of the subject the men disposed to favor the consjfiracv professed a most profound veneration for the “forms of law.” This was the keynote struck at New Orleans by the visiting committee, and it is heard in every subsequent argument of counsel and commissioner on that side. It seemed to be understood among them that a formal cheat was perfectly safe from exposure. If the sepulchre was whited on the outside, it made no difference that it was tilled with “corruption, dead men’s bones, and all uncleanness.” No refuge of lies could bo swept away. no hiding place of falsehood could ever be uncovered, if it was built in tho prescribed form. Only give it the legal shape, and the overflowing scourge would be turned aside. But legal form, however valuable as a covering for fraud, was, in their judgment, no protection for truth or justice or public right. The will of Louisiana was pronounced at the election with all the solemnities required by tlie law of the State aud of the United States. Tlie appointment of the Tilden electors on the 7th of November was a perfectly legal piece of work ; there was not a flaw in the record of it as it came from the hands of the appointing power. But it was looked on with perfect contempt. Neither the visiting committee, nor the Hayes counsel, nor the eight commissioners bestowed on it any of the'r love. Their affections were otherwise engaged ; tlioy gave tlie homage and devotion of their hearts to the beautiful regularity, the exquisite precision, with which the Returning Board compounded its false certificate. Another paradox of the eight is curious enough to be noted. They declared repeatedly that they had no power to try a contested election case, and for that reason they would not look at the evidence which showed what persons were duly appointed electors by the people. Now mark ! The case was this : Each of those votes came accompanied by what was asserted to bo proof that it was cast by electors duly appointed. The conflict was to be determined by the verifyin g power which Congress unquestionably has, and which tho commissioners expressly assumed wheu they swore that they would decide who were duly appointed. To decide it one way or tho other required precisely the same jurisdiction, , and called into exercise exactly the same faculties. Yet they held that if they decided according to the truth in favor of the electors actually appointed they would be trying a contested election ; but if they decided in favor of the pretenders, who had nothing but a fraudulent certificate, they would not be trying a contested election ; in other words, their jurisdiction was full and ample to decide it falsely, but wholly unequal to the duty of deciding it truly.

INELIGIBLE ELECTORS RECOGNIZED. Perhaps nothing shows more plainly the animus of the eight commissioners than the determination they made upon the case of Brewster, the ineligible elector in Louisiana. Keep in mind that their defined duty was to decide who were duly appointed, and what votes were provided for by the constitution, and think how they performed it in this part of the case. Brewster was not only defeated at the polls like the rest; he was, beside, a Federal officeholder, and the constitution expressly declares that no such person shall be appointed an elector. But for HEIR VIOLATIONS OF THE STATUTE ! The action of the returning officers iu the whole business was unsupported by legal authority. The Legislature of the Slate did not, because it could not, give them power to disfranchise qualified electors. They lacked, therefore, the general jurisdiction which they assumed. But that is not all. They proceeded in the very teeth even of the void statute which they professed to follow. That statute pretends to give them no such authority as they exercised over any return to which a protest or statement or charge of intimidation is not attached when it is sent in by the Supervisor of Begistration or Commissioner of Election, and the charge so attached to the return mutt he supported by the affidavits of three citizens of the proper parish. Wanting this, the board was absolutely without the pretense of power to touch the return from any parish or polling-place, except for the purpose of compiling it and adding it as true to tne others. By the election law of Louisiana the board has no more authority to examine or decide a question of intimidation which is not raised hv the election officers than a private individual would have to steal it from the records and burn it. So stands the law. The fact is established by conclusive evidence that from evei y one of the Democratic parishes the returns came up without any charge, statement or protest. Iu all those cases they were therefore without color of jurisdiction. When nothing else would serve the purpose, they did not scruple a resort to plain forgery. Of the return from Vernon parish every figure on the whole broad sheet was altered with elaborate pains under the special direction of Wells. Perjury aud subornation of perjury entered largely into the business. There is hardly any species of the crimen falsi lor which the law has a punishment that did not become an elementary part of the great fraud which was committed wiieu the defeated electors and State officers of Louisiana were falsely certified as chosen by the people. THE CREATION OF THE COMMISSION. But how was the object of the conspiracy to be accomplished ? The House of Representatives was Democratic, and without its consent, expressed or implied iu some form or another, tins Senate could not give effect to a false count. The first intention was to claim that the President of the Senate had power to determine absolutely and arbitrarily what electoral votes should be counted and what not. This was the great rallying point until Mr. Conkling took it up, and, in a speech of surpassing ability, utterly demolished and reduced it to invisible atoms. It became settled, therefore, that the two houses must count the votes, and this clearly implied the power to inquire and determine what were votes. It could not be denied that th'e; voice of the House of Itopresentatives was at least as potential as that of the Senators ; and it was Dot supposed that the House would suffer a fraud so glaring as this to be thrust down the throat of the country “ against the stomach of its sense.” But if the two bodies would declare inconsistent results of the count, and proclaim I lie election of different Presidents, a state of thingsmig|t come which would subject jour institutions to a strain severe enough to endanger them greatly. It was in these difficult circumstances that a mixed commission of fifteen was proposed, consistiug of five Senators, live Representatives, and five Judges of the Supreme Court. The mode of appointing them made it certain that fourteen would be equally divided between the parties ; and, as the fifth Judge wonld be named by the consent of bis brethren on both sides, he might be expected to stand between them, like a daysman, with a hand as heavy on one head as the other. The Democrats consented to this in the belief that no seven Republicans could be taken from the court or from Congress who would swear to decide the truth and then uphold a known fraud : if mistaken in that opinion of their adversaries’ honesty, they felt sure, at all eveuts, that the umpire would be a fair-minded man. They were bitterly disappointed ; the commission went eight to seven for the great fraud and all its branches ; for fraud in the detail and in the aggregate ; for every item of fraud that was necessary to make the sum total big enough —eight to seven all the time. IT REFUSES TO DO ITS DUTY. We must look at the state of the case as it went before the commission. Tilden and Hendricks had 134 electoral votes clear and free of all dispute, one le.->8 than a majority of the whole number. They also had in ijonisiana eight, and in Florida four, appointed by the people, but falsely certified to Hayes and Wheeler by the Governors. In Oregon they had one eei tifii d by the Governor, but against whom a popular majority had been cast for an

ineligible candidate. To elect Hayes it wa« necessary that each and every ono of these thirteen votes Rhould l>e taken from Tilden and gives to Hayes. As this required many distinct rulings based upon contradictory grounds, the path of the commission was not only steep but crooked. HEDGING FOR OREGON. The commission, following the lead of counsel for Mr. Hayes, insisted that the certificate of the projXfr State officer ought to l>e regarded as conclusive evidence of the appointment made by the jieople. It is undoubtedly true that the State has a right to speak on this subject through her own organs, and when she docs speak her voice should be regarded as true. But what officer is her proper organ? The Governor being her political chief, and his certificate required by act of Congress, it would not- have been unreasonable to hold that it was conclusive unless tainted with fraud. The Hayes electors had the Executive certificate in Louisiana and Florida, and this, in regard to those States, gave the eight a great legal advantage. But tliev threw it away, abandoned the attestation of the Governor as worthless, claimed no faith or credit for it, and pronounced ii open to contradiction, no matter how honestly it may have been given. What was the meaning of this phe - nomenal ruling which apparently opened the door of investigation even wider than the Democrats asked ? It was understood by everybody. The commission was hedging for Oregon. The eight were reaching across to the Pacific for the vote there, which was jnst as important as the twelve on the Gulf of Mexico. Fur the purpose of electing Mr. Haves this vote was worth as much as all the others. To get that vote for their candidate they were required to go further than they went for any of the rost, and so they held: i. That the certificate of the Returning Board was propria rigorr an appointment. 2. That it was a due appointment, though corrupt and dishonest. 3. That this was a' vote provided for by the constitution, though the constitution in plain words provided against it. THE FULL EXTENT OF THE OUTRAGE. After all, there was but one question before the commission. Had the American people a light to elect their own Chief Magistrate? They had the right. Their ancestors struggled for it long, fought for it often, and won it fairly. Being imbedded in their constitution, it cannot be destroyed except by a force strong enough to overthrow the organic structure of the Government itself. Legislative enactments or judicial decisions arc powerless oitlier to strengthen or impair ■ it. The legerdemain of lawcraft, the catches of special pleadings, the snapperadoes of practice, do not help us to decide a matter like this. A great nation must not bo impaled noon a pin's point. Precedents which might bind a court of quarter sessions determining the settlement of a pauper cannot tie up the hands of the supreme Legislature defending a fundamental right of the whole people. When Grenville, in 1706, cited the authority of divers cases to show that America mights be taxed without representation, Pitt answered: “ I come not here armed at all points, with the statute book doubled down in dog’s ears, to defend the cause of liberty. I can acknowledge no veneration for any procedure, ' law, or ordinance that is repugnant to reason and the first principles of our constitution.- I rejoice that America has resisted.” So spoke the defiant friend of our race in the presence of a hostile Parliament ten years before the Declaration of Independence. And now, after this long interval of time, wo behold our greatest right—the right on which all other rights depend—successfully assailed in our own Congress with the same small weapons that Grenville ‘ used. If brute force lia<l crushed it out, wo might have borne the calamity with fortitude; but to see it circumvented by knavery and pettifogged to death, is too much to be endured with any show of patience. If t-lie majority of that commission could but have realized tlieir responsibility to God and man, if they could only have understood that in a free conutry liberty and law are inseparable. they would have been enrolled among our greatest benefactors, for they would have added strength and grandeur to our institutions. But thsy could not come up to the height of the great subject. Party passion so benumbed their faculties that a fundamental right seemed nothing to them when it came in conflict with some argument supported by artificial reasoning, and drawn from the supposed analogies of technical procedure. The constitution was, in their judgment, outweighed by a void statute and the action of a corrupt Returning Board. Let these tilings bo remembered by our children’s children; and, if the friends of free government shall ever again have such a contest, let them take care how they leave the decision of it to a tribunal like that which betrayed the nation by enthroning the great fraud of 1876.