New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-04-17
ELECTION FRAUDS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

ELECTION FRAUD IN PENNSYLVANIA.
The old question of how to secure honest
voting, and save to the people the actual ex-
preston of their preferences and opinions at
tho polls, has been under discussion in the
Pennsylvania Legislature And certainly no
State in the Union more needs to discuss it and
work toward its solution. On our fourth page
we publish extracts from the speech OF Col.
Mcclure of Philadelphia in the State Senate on
the bill proposed by him to regulate elections
in the City of Philadelphia, in which he sets
forth tho condition of that city under the
present law, and the crying need OF some re-
form. To the thoughtful men of the Repub-
lican party who almost without their own
knowledge have come out from the patriotism
which during the war rose above party, into
a sort of partisanship in which patriot
ism is fast sinking; to the men who
honestly believe The Republican party to be
without reproach and pure, we commend
careful perusal of this speech. Col. Mcclure
does not speak from conjecture, or state dis
puted points. What he says of the shameful
frauds in Philadelphia is chiefly of his own
knowledge and observation, and cannot be
disputed or denied Especially to the point,
and fruitful of suggestions, Is the leaf he
gives from his own experience of the obstacles
deliberately placed in the way Of legitimate
voting, the facility with which the voter Is
defrauded and the ballot made the instrument
of perpetuating villainy, instead OF the means
of throwing off the yoke or hated Ring
tyranny. These things he states, Us he says,
in the presence of those who know their
truth, and who before him will not question
them.
Honest voters who have q sincere hatred for
all the trickery and fraud by which political
contests are carried on, have made n great
mistake when, by the shortest process OF
reasoning possible, they have adopted the con-
cusion that the Republican party is sound
and honest and true because its opponents
stuffed ballot-boxes and through the organiza-
ton of Tammany robbed a city, 1t Is not
through one party alone that fraud has been
practiced and robbery carried on. II the DEM
ocrats carried things with high hand and
plundeTed right and left without stint In
New-York, Republicans have done the same
in Philadelphia. Rascalities of that sort are
not the exclusive characteristic of either
party. Both need watching and correcting,
purgng and purifying. The imminent peril
ia not now from the Democratic party.
That party has lost its power and
prestige. The danger of the present
time is from the party in power
in the nation and in almost undisputed pos
session of nearly all the States. Col Mcclure
shows by what means it controls Philadelphia
and the State of Pennsylvania, and the forms
of law under which its bad men perpetuate
their baneful rule and silence the protests of
honest voters. The frauds by which Pennsyl-
vania was carried in the election of last OctO-
Der were without precedent in the history of
the country. The men who profted by them
and whose living is by political chicane, were
themselves abashed and startled by their
magnitude. There was no appliance of fraud
left unused. There was false registration by
the thousands of votes, voting by repeaters'
ten, twenty and fifty times, obstruction OF
honest voters by false arrests and imprson-
ments and by violence and threats of vio-
lence. and there was stuthng of the boxes and
cheating in the court upona scale heretofore
unparalleled. Col. McClure's personal expert
ence as related by himself is only one of
hundreds. The story is one of shame and
dishonor. But the thing to be done was done.
The State was carried.
And now Col. Mcclure, in the presence of
the Legislature q majority OF whose members,
if not elected by these frauds. were certainly
accessory after the fact, recites the history
and asks in the name of common decency as well
as of Ring ruled community that the law under
which this stupendous crime was perpetrated
be amended so as to protect the bailot-box
and make the rights of citizens secure. He
put the question very plainly whether the
interest and success Of the Republican party
demand that fraud shall be protected in
Philadelphia, and it was for the Legislature
in which that party is dominant to answer.
There is no Republican partisan in Philadel-
phia so brazen as to deny the facts charged
by COL Mcclure. They are universally ad-
mitted. The simple question was, whether the
Legislature would undertake to correct the
law and prevent frauds in the future, or would
nut itself in the old attitude of successful
usurpation and ask the people with sheer
what they are going to do about it'll They
took the latter course. OF all the scoundrels
who perpetrated the frauds of last October, but
one was convicted. Him President Grant
pardoned, and respectable citizens of Philadel-
phia are unable to find who petitioned in his
behalf, or any fact connected with 1t, except
that Secretary Robson was very active in his
behalf. Pennsylvania is held to be very i'm
portant State in carrying elections. 1t is
usually necessary to carry Pennsylvania in
order to elect President. But if the Repub-
lican leaders think to hold that State, and
through that the country, by legalizing fraud
and pardoning repeaters, they make fatal
mistake. Electoral Reform has suffered in the
Pennsylvania Legislature a temporary check.
IL rrna NOT stranoe mariana that the men