Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1879 — Opening the Door to Fraud. [ARTICLE]

Opening the Door to Fraud.

Mr. Hewitt, of New York, declares that it is impossible for Republicans to understand the motives which govern the Democratic party in i “their desire and fixed determination to erase from the statute-books every provision which infringes the personal liberty of the citizen.” All wrong, Mr. Hewitt. The motives of your party leaders in seeking the repeal of the Federal Election law, for instance, are palpably obvious. The pretense that "the person al liberty of the citizen” has anything to do with this desire is too shallow to deceive the merest novice in politics. The Jaw is- not aimed at citizens possessing the right to vote, but at persons attempting to exercise a right they do not possess. The Supervisor’s law seeks to protect the liberty of the citizep by preserving from nullification his honest vote, through the depositof a fraudulent ballot. The Supervisor seizes the scoundrel ip the attempting to pollute the ballot-box by the deposit of a fraudulent vote, and hurries him off to Jail. Tfetus the personal right, of j the honest citizen to cast one ballot is protected equally against the repeater who would cast a dozen ballots, and the

person who, possessing no right to vote at all, impudently’ offers to cancel a legal vote with'a fraudulent vote. This is the exact character and effect of the law which the Democratic party proposes to erase from the statute-books. The proposition to •• erase" it, then, becomes not a grand effort at the enlargement and protection of the liberty of the citizen, but a despicable conspiracy to rob honest men of their votes by affording an opportunity for repeaters and fraudulent voters to mingle with them ballots which are printed lies. The indulgence of Democrats in glittering generalities about “the liberty of the citizen,” as a pretext for the removal of a necessary guard for the protection of that “liberty,” willnotsave the Democratic party from the scorn of all honest men. It is a fact of history that all laws devised for the preservation of the purity of the ballot-box in this country have been devised and pressed to adoption by the Republican party. It is equally true that, almost invariably, necessity has compelled the enforcement of such laws as against Democrats and the Democratic party exclusively. A striking instance of this fact is found in the records of the two great political parlies on the subject of the registry "of voters in large cities. The Democratic party invariably opposes a registry, and the Republican party as invariably supports it. The tendency of Democrats to commit, and of the Democratic party to wink at, election frauds is so manifest and strong that the Republican party has been compelled to hedge about the bal-lot-box with special protective laws. But all these enactments have proved insufficient to entirely repress the evil; and at every important election, even in the most enlightened cities of the North, necessity has compelled the organization of corps of unofficial guards to act outside the polling-places in the repression of the very general desire of Democrats to vote more than once, of to vote when they have no legal rightto exercise the franchise. So notorious is this fact that an essential precedent condition of a Republican victory in any and every urban district in the United States is hot merely the polling of every Republican vote, but an adequate provision for preventing the polling of fraudulent votes by the Democratic party. Under the regime in New York City, repeating, fraudulent voting and ballot-box stufling was carried to the lowest deeps of infamy by the Democratic party. Even Mr. Hewitt has not the hardihood to claim that the Democratic party of New York reformed the abominable practices of Tweed and the Tammany Society. He says that the “people cured the evil,” and argues that “ abuses of this sort” can be “much more effectually remedied by the people than by a centralized power.” The inference from his argument is that the Nation must submit to fraudulent elections of Congressmen until the States from which they are sent choose to reform their election practices—a stale, flat and unnrofitable conclusion.

There is logic in the Democratic party position, however, if there is neither a sense of public virtue nor personal honor in the attitude of individual members of the party in advovatjng the repeal of all laws enacted for the protection of the purity of elections. For we venture the assertion that there is not on record in the whole history of elections in this country an instance of an organized effort on th? part of the Democratic party to guard the ballot-box against _fraudulentßepublican votes. And the fact that there is no such instance is evidence that the Democratic party has.no fears of Republican repeaters, or of fraudulent Republican votes. This, then, is the situation: The Democratic party, as a party seeking power, has nothing to gain and everything to lose by affording the protection of the law to the purity of elections. Hence it proposes, in the language of Mr. Hewitt, to “ erase from the statute-books every provision which infringes the Jiberty of the citizen;” that is to say, the “liberty” to vote whether he has the right to vote or not, and the “liberty” of the repeater to repeat his vote as often as he can do so without getting in the Penitentiary—a villainous creedof a villainous party. Mr. Hewitt cannot point to a single instance of the abuse of the privileges of the Federal Election law, cannot name one honest citizen who has been deprived of the rights of suffrage by it; but he proposes to sweep the law from the statute-books, assuming that it infringes the liberty of the citizen. This is mere twaddle, and it is quite impossible in view of this utterance to regard him as more honorable than his Democratic fellows who vote for the measure with the distinct, definite hope and expectation of benefiting by the fraud to which its passage would open wide the door. No act of the Democratic party sincethe close of the war more clearly shows its corrupt character than the proposition to repeal a provision of law looking solely to the protection of the purity ot the ballot-box. The solid Democratic vote for it in the House shows that every Democrat “ will get what he can” by fair means or foul, and that the party as a whole is animated by no higher aims than during the late war, when it sympathized with the cause of rebellion, and gave aid and comfort to rebels.— Chicago Tribune.

.A clergyman in the west of England, who bad every gift butthat of extemporaneous speech, was recently announced to preach the principal sermon in an octave, the announcement drawing a large audience. To his horror he discovered that he had left his manuscript in his study, twenty miles away. Growing desperate, he gave out the text he had intended to preach from and proceeded: “In the first place, I should have remarked, etc. It was then my intention to point’out, etc., after which I would have gone_on to indicate,” and so op. It was all over in. a quarter of an hour, and the congregation in those fifteen minutes had a very lucid explanation of a discourse which, if it had bten delivered as it was written, could not have been gone through in fifty minutes.

—T|vo little children went to church alone fin Westfield, Mass. They became tired during the long sermon, and the (older one, supposing the school rules held good in churches, led his sister up in front of the preacher and said: “Please, sir, may we go home?” He said ,7 Yes,” and they soberly walked out. —A curious pair are two brothers in Hertford, Conn., employed at the same place of business same -miles from their homes, who had a falling out some dozen years ago, and have never spoken to each other since, though they ride to and from work in the same wagon, preserving,amoody silencctoward each other. ; ~ ■