certificate is one thing; the appointment another. The State appoints, and the Legislature directs the manner of appointment, but neither can make true that which is false.

Now as to the person appointed. Brewster was one of the very persons sought to be excluded by these words of the Constitution: "No Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." He was, nevertheless, appointed, and he voted, and his vote made the President. How was this brought about? The Commission answer, "That it is not competent to prove that any of said persons so appointed electors as aforesaid held an office of trust or profit under the United States at the time when they were appointed." Of course, if it was not competent to prove it, the fact itself must have been of no importance.

Bentham's "Book of Fallacies" may be enriched, in another edition, with another fallacy, as remarkable as any he has recorded, to wit, that prohibition in the American Constitution means permission! Talleyrand was once asked the meaning of non-intervention. "Non-intervention," he replied, "non-intervention means about the same thing as intervention." So, in our new constitutional vocabulary, prohibition means about the same thing as permission.

It was, indeed, mentioned in the course of the argument, though the Commission does not appear to have thought much of it, that Brewster, having resigned his Federal office and come in upon a new appointment to fill his own vacant place on the 6th of December, being then both present and absent, the question of eligibility did not arise. But enough has been said about this resignation sham. If such a trick had been played in respect to a note-of-hand of five dollars, there is not a justice of the peace who would not have denounced the trick as conferring no right and affording no protection.

The people of New York were amused, three or four years ago, with the feats of a juggler, who dressed one side of him as a man, and the other as a woman, and who turned about so quickly that he showed himself as two persons of different sexes in the same instant. Brewster's feat was not less remarkable: he was at once absent and present; absent that he might

be appointed, and present that he might vote; went through the whole performance in less than an hour, absenting himself that he might be called in to be present, presenting himself though absent, voting ballots and signing certificates, showing himself to be as versatile and as agile as that master of jug glery.

Upon what theory the Commission held that evidence could not be received of Brewster's Federal office at the time of his appointment does not appear. He certainly was in the prohibited category. A marriage between persons within prohibited degrees is not good, even if consummated. The prohibited union of two offices in the same person should not be thought a legal union, simply because it is practiced. It has been said, though the Commission did not say it, that Brewster was at least elector de facto, and his vote was good, whatever may have been his title. Then why should we trouble ourselves about the returning officer's certificate? If, as elector de facto, his vote was good, then it was good without the certificate, and all that the Commission should have looked into was the fact of voting, without troubling themselves about the certificate of anybody or any other evidence of title. But, in truth, the distinctions between officers de facto and officers de jure have no application to the present case, and for this reason, among others, that two persons can not hold the same office de facto. It is of the essence of a de-facto possession of office that it should be exclusive. The Chancellor of New York said, in a judicial opinion, more than thirty years ago: "When there is but one office there can not be an officer de jure and an officer de facto both in possession of the office at the same time." This is true even when the office is a continuing one. Who, for instance, can say which of the rival Governors in Louisiana or South Carolina at this moment is the Governor de facto? In deciding between them, would not all the world pronounce this the only question, Which is Governor de jure? Much more is it true when the office is temporary, existing but for a moment, even if the doctrine of a de-facto officer can be applied to such an office at all. In the present case, Brewster went into the State-House and voted for Mr. Hayes; at the same instant his rival went into the same State-House and voted

for Mr. Tilden. It is absurd to pronounce Brewster, under such circumstances, an elector de facto, so as to make his vote for that reason good against his rival in the Tilden college, who was as much an elector de facto as was Brewster, and had this difference in his favor, that he was elected, and was eligible, while Brewster, the intruder, was not eligible, and was not elected. The only returns which went to the Electoral Commission were the double ones, where rival colleges of electors had acted at the same time in the same State. In those cases, as already observed, the question of a de facto elector could not arise. There was but one case, that of Wisconsin, where it could have arisen, and in that there was but a single return, which, of course, did not go to the Commission.

CONCLUSION.

Although these pages have been occupied with the vote of Brewster in the electoral college, it should not be understood that the other seven votes which were counted from that State, and the four votes counted from Florida, were any better than his. The one here considered had its peculiarities; the others had theirs. All of them were tainted, and the counting in of the President de facto was twelve times fraudulent. What may be the outcome I do not know. That will depend upon the spirit of this generation and the spirit of those to follow. It is a consolation to know that the questions will be reviewed by a tribunal higher than the Electoral Commission, higher even than the two Houses of Congress-the American people -from whose judgment there is no appeal but to the final judgment of history.

CORRUPTION IN POLITICS.

Article by Mr. Field, published in the "International Review," January, 1877.

THE corruption of American politics is a phrase in everybody's mouth, not only in this country, but in others. What does it mean? Is it true? And, if true, what can we do for a change? These are questions which we propose, so far as we may be able, to answer in this paper.

The season is a fit one for such inquiries. As with persons so with nations, there are occasions especially fitted for selfexamination. The present is one of them. The nation has just celebrated its hundredth birthday. The 4th of July, 1876, was not only an anniversary but it was a centenary. If there be, as beyond doubt there is, reason for national self-examination on every anniversary of the day of independence, there is a hundred-fold more reason for it now.

When it is said that our politics are corrupt, what is meant? Is it that offices are obtained by corrupt means, or that they are corruptly used, or both? Is it that government is corruptly perverted from its true ends? or is it merely that, from inattention, offices are unworthily bestowed or unworthily performed; in other words, that, though there is misgovernment, it is after all only negligent misgovernment? The truth is, we do not doubt, that both kinds of misgovernment prevail, the intentional and the negligent; and both in a certain sense are corrupt, for neither can exist without a violation of duty on the part either of the elector or of the holder of office. But in the ordinary sense that only is accounted corrupt which is intentionally wrong. It would be sometimes difficult to draw the line between the intentional and the merely negligent, because intentions being dispositions of the mind are invisible to mortal eye; but that there is a great deal of misgovernment is palpable enough, and much of it must be intentional. For proof of the former we need only the evidence of our senses, and with

their aid to compare what is with what should be. The result is before us, and the conclusion is irresistible.

In this discussion of the state of our politics we intend to make no comparison between the good and the bad in either our political or our social system.

arms.

We are not considering the whole subject of American society and government, with the view of striking a balance between the good that we do and the evil that we are doing or suffering. We will not stop to recount the glories of our history or the felicities of our condition. We lay aside for the time all thought of our moral and social, as distinguished from our political, state. In respect of the former, we forego the pleasure we should otherwise have in measuring our advance with the advance of other countries in our own time, or the advance of this country in these later days with its advance in what are called the better days of old. We refrain from pointing out our religious equality and freedom as worth more to the world than all the other triumphs of our time in arts or We will not stop to congratulate ourselves, or remind our detractors, that we have established in the Western hemisphere a refuge for all those who from other quarters of the world have fled hither to escape poverty or oppression, and that we have received them, watched over them, encouraged and defended them. Nor will we pause to boast of that which, unlike what has always happened in the rest of the world, is yet the fitting supplement of our victories; that we have never after the heat of battle taken the life of a traitor, while the soil of Europe is red with the blood of men who in good causes as well as evil have been cloven down by the sword of power. We would forget for the moment the amount of our wealth, the development of our industry, the States we have founded, the cities we have built, the universities we have endowed, the number of our schools, the ever-swelling volume of our charities, the activity of our religious bodies, the comforts of our dwellings, the ease with which we travel, the diffusion of knowledge, and the plenty that fills the land as though the horn of abundance had been poured out over all its valleys and hills. We are fain to look now not on the bright but on the dark side of our shield, however much, if the two were placed side