Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1871-11-02
An Uneducatcd Ballot the Wind
iDg-Sheet Of Liberty.

Extracts from an Grafton IF the Hon.
Horace Munla, delirered. in 1872
Concluded.
Itremble at the catalogue of national
crimes which we are exhibiting before
heaven and'earth! The party rancor and
vili6cation which RACES through our news
paper press, in utter forgetfulness or con
tempt of the great spiritual law, that when
men pass from Judgment to passion, they
will soon pass from passion to violence !!
The fraud, falsehood. bribery, perjury,
perpetrated at our elections and the
spirit of w-atonness or malice, of pride or
envy, in which the sacred privilege of
voting is exercised! The practice of
double voting. like the parricide in Rome.
unheard of in the early days of the Repub-
lie is becoming more and more frequent.
Although, in some of the States, a proper
ty qualification. and in some even a landed
qualification is necessary, yet the number
of votes given at the last presidential
election, equalled, almost without a frac-
ton, one-sixth of the whole free popula-
ton in the Union. In one of the States
the number of votes exceeded by a large
fraction, one-ffth of the whole population
men, women, and children. Will it
not be a new form of Republic. unknown
alike to ancient or modern writer's, when
the question shall be-not how many
voters there are, but how many ballots can
be printed and put surreptitiOusly into the
ballot-box?
H CONTROLS II DESTINEs OF TIE
NATIONS?
No. rellow-citizens we have not for
wears past. and we shall not have at least
| for years to come, an election of a Presi-
dent. or a Congress, or a governor of a
State, chosen under written constitutions
and to legislate and act under written con-
situations. whose choice will not be de-
pendent upon, and determinable by beJd
voters unable to read and write. voters
who do not know, and cannot know, whcth-
CIR thev vote for King LOG orking SroRK.
The Industrious and noble band who fran
ed the Constitution OF the Union,-Nash-
iugton, Adams, Franklin. Jefferson. ladi-
son.-who adjusted all the principles which
it contains, by the line and plummet, and
weighed the words which describe them
in scales so nice as to tremble beneath the
dust of the balance, expended the ener-
gies of their mighty minds to perfect an
instrument which, before half a century
should pass away. was doomed to be adj
ministered, controlled, ~expounded, by
men unable to read and write. The pow
er of Congress over all the great social
and economical interests of this vast coun'
try: the orbits in which the States are te
move around the central body in the sys
TEN the functions of the Executive. who
holds IN his hands the Army and the Navy
manages all diplomatic relations with
foreign powers. and can involve the coun'
try at any time in the horrors of war ano
that grand poising power, the supreme
Judiciary, appointed to be the presiding
intelligence aver the system. to harmonic
its motions and to hold its attracting ane
divergent tendencies in equilibrium. al
this splendid structure. the vastest ane
the incest ever devised by mortals, Is un
der the control of men who are incapable
of reading one word of the Language
which describes its framework, and define
its objects and it's guards, incapable o
reading one word of contemporaneous ex
fposi.ion Of s~ntecrdsnt history 81 OF sub