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 forever to prosper.
It is no answer to these observations to say that frauds have been
practised 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 preëminence. 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 forever 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 cannot 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 February? 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 transactions 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?"