clared that the person having the highest number of votes shall be the President; not the one certified. Congress has not as yet invested any tribunal with the power to try the title to the presidency by quo warranto. No such law exists, I am sorry to say. Such a law, if I might be permitted to express my opinion, ought to be made. It is no small reproach to our statesmanship that for a hundred years no statute has provided for this great exigency. I know that one eminent member of this Commission has labored assiduously to procure the passage of such a law, and of all his titles to respect I am sure that will be especially remembered hereafter.

Mr. Commissioner Bradley: "Does not the law of the District apply to the case?"

I think not, sir. I should be very glad to learn that it does. The judiciary act of 1789, as if ex industria, omitted to mention writs of quo warranto. It gave the several courts power to issue writs of mandamus and certain other writs, but not that of quo warranto. I know that statutes lately passed give the right to a quo warranto in respect of certain offices, enumerating them, arising out of the amendments to the Constitution providing for the emancipated slaves; but I do not find any provision whatever for a writ of quo warranto to try the title to the office of President or presidential elector.

Of course, I speak entirely under submission to the better knowledge of the Commission. I have not been able to satisfy myself that there is any provision for a writ of quo warranto in the case of a President. But my argument is that, whether there be a law now existing or not, it is competent for Congress to pass such a law, and if a law to provide for a writ of quo warranto would be constitutional, then it is constitutional to impose a like duty on any other tribunal to investigate the title. That is to say, if you could devolve that duty upon any tribunal by means of a writ of quo warranto, you can devolve it by other means. If the Governor's certificate would not be conclusive there, it is not conclusive here. The right to inquire into the fact exists somewhere, and if nowhere else, it must be in you.

Thus, thinking that Congress could devolve upon some tribunal the authority to inquire into the title of the President, and that such authority would necessarily give to the tribunal investigating the right to go into the truth, notwithstanding any certificate to the falsehood, I argue that here, before this Electoral Commis

sion, invested with all the functions of the two Houses, you can inquire into the truth, no matter what may have been certified to the contrary.

Furthermore, I submit to the Commission that there is another rule of law which necessarily leads us to answer affirmatively the question whether the truth can be given in evidence notwithstanding the certificate; and that is that fraud vitiates all transactions, and can be inquired into in every case except possibly two. I will not contend here that the judgment of a court of record of competent jurisdiction can be impeached collaterally for fraud in the judge. Opinions differ. If it can not be impeached, it must be because such an impeachment would lead to an inquiry that would be against public policy. It would be a scandal to inquire into the bribery or corruption of a judge while the judge may be sitting to administer justice; and, therefore, from motives of public policy, it may be the rule that until the judge is impeached and removed there can be no inquiry into the corruption of his acts. And it may also be true that the validity of an act of a Legislature can not be impeached upon the ground of fraud or bribery. But, with these two exceptions, I venture to assert that there is no statute and no precedent for declaring any act whatever beyond impeachment for fraud. Now, this canvassing board and this Governor were not invested with the immunity which invests judges of Courts of Record. They were not dispensing justice between litigant parties, and it would not be against public policy to inquire into the corruption or invalidity of their acts. Not a single consideration that I have ever heard, or which I can imagine, should lead us to the conclusion that you can not inquire into the truth of their certificates. I put it to the Commission that if they acted corruptly, if they were bribed or led astray by hunger for office, or the thirst for power, or the thirst for gold, you can impeach their acts. Who is he whose acts we are now seeking to impeach? It is the then Governor of Florida, Stearns; Stearns, the man who sent the telegram asking on what grounds the votes of counties could be thrown out, and who received for answer, fraud, intimidation, and something else; Stearns, the man who controlled the canvassing board sitting to certify whether he and they were to continue in office.

Is it a true proposition that it is not lawful to inquire whether this man has acted fraudulently? If it be true that the certifi

cate of the Governor is conclusive evidence that the persons certified were elected, would it not follow that the certificate would be sufficient if there were no election at all? And suppose I were to prove that, in point of fact on the 7th day of November, there was no election at all in the State of Florida, that no man cast a vote, no polls were opened, no man thought of voting, would this certificate, signed "M. L. Stearns," be nevertheless unanswerable evidence that the four Hayes electors had been duly chosen?

Such, Mr. President and gentlemen of the Commission, is as brief a statement as I can make of the facts and the law as we understand them to be. The greatness of the question, having regard to the dignity of the presidential office, and the vast interests depending upon it, is as nothing compared with the moral elements involved; for true as it is that the person, upon whom your decision will confer the office for four years, will be the chief magistrate of forty-five millions of people, commander-in-chief of your army and navy, the organ between you and foreign states, the bestower of all offices, the executor of your laws, these are as nothing compared with the greater question whether or not the American people stand powerless before a gigantic fraud. Here is the certificate; one feels reluctant to touch it. Hold it up to the light. It is black with crime. Pass it round; let every eye see it; and then tell us whether it is fit to bestow power and create dignity against the will of the people. One of the greatest poets of the palmy days of English literature, writing of the coming of our Saviour, has said:

"And ancient Fraud shall fail,

Returning Justice lift aloft her scale."

Ancient fraud! When was there ever fraud like this? In previous ages fraud has succeeded only because it has been supported by the sword, and protesting peoples have been powerless before armed battalions. Never yet in the history of the world has a fraud succeeded against the conscience and the will of a self-governing people. If it succeeds now, let us bow our heads. for shame; let us take down from the dome of the Capitol the statue which every morning faces the coming light; let us clothe ourselves with sackcloth and sit in ashes forever.

MOVING THE HOUSE TO DISAGREE WITH THE COMMISSION.

On Friday, the 9th of February, by the votes of eight to seven (the eight being three judges of the Supreme Court, three Senators, and two Representatives, the seven being two judges of the Supreme Court, two Senators, and three Representatives), the commission decided that the votes of Frederick C. Humphreys, Charles H. Pearce, William H. Holden, and Thomas W. Long, Hayes electors, were the votes provided for by the Constitution, and were to be counted as four votes for Rutherford B. Hayes as President and William A. Wheeler as Vice-President.

This decision being the next day communicated to the joint meeting of the two Houses, Mr. Field submitted objections. The Houses then separated, to consider the objections, and in the Representatives he moved this resolution :

66 Ordered, That the counting of the electoral votes from the State of Florida shall not proceed in conformity with the decision of the Electoral Commission, but that the votes of Wilkinson Call, James E. Yonge, Robert B. Hilton, and Robert Bullock, be counted as the votes from the State of Florida for President and VicePresident of the United States."

Upon this, he addressed the House as follows:

MR. SPEAKER: Scarcely had the election taken place in November, when the President invited representatives of the Republican party to visit the disputed States of the South for the purpose of witnessing the canvass of the votes, declaring, as he did so, that no President could afford to be elected by fraud. When Congress met in December, acting in the same spirit, it sent committees of investigation into the same States to ascertain the truth. These States have been ransacked, hosts of witnesses have been examined, and piles of evidence have been laid upon our tables. Now, of a sudden, it is discovered that the invitation of the President was an act of superfluous folly, and that his messengers and the committees of the two Houses went on a fool's errand.

This discovery is made by Republicans. There is not a Democrat in either House of Congress who does not disown and reject it. It is now to be seen whether Republicans here reject or accept it. We shall soon know whether the Republican party has so far forgotten the brave words and heroic deeds of its earlier days as to cry, "Evil, be thou my good," and seek to install a falsehood in the chief magistracy of the land.

The Electoral Commission which you have constituted to solve the doubts and relieve the consciences of the people has gravely resolved, first, that no evidence can be received beyond the certificates and papers submitted to the two Houses by the President of the Senate; and, secondly, that of these certificates and

MOVING THE HOUSE TO DISAGREE WITH THE COMMISSION. 409

papers none can be considered which bears record of any act done after the casting of the votes by the electors. This decision means nothing less than that the certificate of the Governor of the State, in accordance with the determination of the State canvassers, is conclusive, unless before the electoral vote is cast the State rectifies the certificate. The qualification, I was about to say, is a mockery. We know that there is scarcely a State in the Union where the canvass is completed until within a few days of the meeting of the electors. We know, moreover, that in this State of Florida the canvassers completed their canvass at three o'clock in the morning, and that the electors voted at twelve o'clock of the same day. Upon the theory of the commission, unless the State of Florida, within those nine hours, acting through its various departments, aroused itself and rejected the determination of the canvassing board, there is no power to reject it in the State or in Congress. The doctrine of the commission, if I interpret it aright, amounts to this: That if the general commanding in Florida had upon the morning of the 6th of December marched a corporal's guard into the State-House, told off four of his soldiers, and forced the State canvassers to certify to their election, and the Governor to superadd bis certificate, there would have been no power in the land to prevent the votes of these soldiers from being counted as the electoral votes of Florida. We are now called upon to declare whether in the solemn judgment of this House such is the law of the land.

Let me show you some of its consequences. We offered to prove fraud; we were denied the right to do so. We offered to show that the pretended appointment of the Hayes electors was corruptly made. This was refused. But the truth can not all be concealed. One of the persons certified by the commission to be a lawful elector of the State of Florida is Charles H. Pearce. There is a record of him in the reports of the Supreme Court of the State which shows him to be a convicted felon. In the fourteenth volume of these reports I find the case of the State of Florida against Pearce. The indictment set forth that Charles H. Pearce, colored, a minister of the gospel and a Senator representing the eighth district in the Senate of the State of Florida, on the 4th of February, 1870, during the pendency before the House of Assembly of a resolution to impeach the Governor of high crimes and misdemeanors with the intent of feloniously influencing the vote of a member, offered and promised him $500.