The edifying efforts made by Congress to throw guards about the ballot
would be encouraging were they based on a little knowledge of the
fact, and the reason for it. As it is, the _be-it-enacted_ agreed on
is little better than a solemn protest. Our learned law-makers would
enjoy greater progress if they would remember that we have had for a
century all the law necessary to punish such corruption, and that the
trouble lies in our inability to enforce its provisions.
What is really wanted is a tribunal to try and enforce the stringent
enactments already in existence. This does not now exist. When a
candidate for Congress corruptly purchases enough votes to secure his
return to either House, he knows that such Chamber, being the judge of
such applicant's qualifications, forms a court without a judge to give
the law or an impartial jury to render a verdict. The Committee on
Elections in either House is made up of the Democratic or Republican
party, and so the jury is packed in advance.
This is not, however, the only evil feature in the business. There is
probably no organized body so ill-fitted for adjudication upon any
subject as Congress. Returned to place by parties, the members are
necessarily partisans. Their tenure of office is so brief that they
have no time in which to learn their legitimate duties through
experience, and these duties are so numerous, to say nothing of being
encroached upon by services entirely foreign to their positions, that
they have no opportunities for study. The consideration then of any
subject from a judicial point of view is simply impossible. It is
"touch and go" with them, and the _touch_ is feeble, and the go
hurried. It seems that a case of purely judicial sort has no place in
Congress; and yet we have seen an instance--for example, in the New
Idria contention--where the courts had been exhausted, from an Alcalde
to the Supreme Court of the United States, and yet the complainant,
worsted in every one of these tribunals, came through the lobby into
Congress, and for over ten years kept that body in a tumult. Of course
this was kept alive by the corrupt use of stock to the extent of ten
millions, based on the credit of a company that would be such when
Congress gave its illegal approval. This fact alone proves the
dangerous and uncertain character of a legislative body that takes on
judicial functions.
When a contested election goes before the standing committee called
into existence as a court, it passes into a secret committee-room,
where the so-called evidence, put on paper, is supposed to be
considered. What would be said of a jury impanelled avowedly from the
party of one side, and then made into a court to sit and deliberate
with closed doors against the public?
It is true that the finding is shaped into a report and goes before
the House. But no member of that body, especially of the House of
Representatives, has either time or opportunity to read the evidence,
or even to listen to the arguments made by contestants upon the floor.
That tribunal has lost all power in its loss of public confidence. It
not only brings the law into contempt, but itself into such disrepute
that its findings are worthless. This is the condition of Congress in
public opinion. So far as contested elections are concerned, it is
regarded with contempt. To make matters worse, and pay a premium on
vice, the losing party is allowed the same mileage and pay given his
successful competitors.
If all contests were turned over to the United States courts, to be
tried in the locality where the wrong complained of was done and the
witnesses live, there would be few contested elections, and some
chance given to punish bribery and other corruption.
Again, the prohibition against the subscription or payment of money
has exceptions that open wide the doors to corruption. To say that
money may be used for any purpose is to leave the evil precisely where
the law-makers found it. It were better to have the government furnish
the tickets, as the government supplies the ballot-boxes, rents the
polling-places, and pays the officials for their services. The ballot
is as much a necessity to the machinery of election as the boxes; and
because it would be difficult and troublesome to supply them is far
from saying that it is impossible.
Then, to punish both bribe-giver and bribe-taker in the same way is to
throw a guard about the iniquitous transaction. The bribe-taker should
go acquit. Of course this would be in a measure opening a door to
blackmailers, and make the candidacy extremely dangerous. Such it
ought to be. The sooner we put a check on the shameless solicitations
for office the better it will be for the Republic. Let the offices, as
of old, in the purer days of the fathers, seek the man--and not the
man, as now, the offices. If the effect of this would be to drive
timid, decent men from office, it would not be worse than the present
system. A candidate for the House of Representatives must not only pay
his two years' salary in advance to "heelers," as they are called, but
must get drunk in every saloon in his district. We cannot make matters
worse, and there is a chance in a change for an improvement.
True reform to be effectual must be radical. A compromise with evil is
a surrender to hell. To cut a poisoned shrub even to the ground
relieves the eye for a time, but the root is made more vigorous by the
trimming. The constitutional governments of Europe have rid themselves
of bribery and other corruption by digging out the roots. This is the
only course open to us. When members of the House can bribe their way
to place, when Senate chairs are sold in open court, when it calls for
only two millions to purchase the Presidency, and all done by men of
high social position, we have reached the lowest level, and our great
Republic is a mere sham and a delusion. We are not menaced with the
loss of liberty and guaranteed rights. They are gone.