The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1877-07-06
The Electoral Conspiracy.


The North american Reoieso for July contains
an article by Judge jeremiah s. Black, entitled
1.-THE Electoral Conspiracy" which is one of
the most scathing articles on that theme that
has been published. He first describes the
genus carpet-bagger and pictures the desola-
ton wrought in the Southern States, and es-
pecially in Louisiana, through their rapacity
and greed. He shows how when it was seen
that the wretched carpet-bag system could
no longer exist, owing to the adherence in
which it was held by the native people and
honest immigrants, who went to the South
ern States for purposes of legitimate business,
the Returning Board was invented. This
new machine was given by the terms of law
judicial authority SO broad as to enable it to
set aside the popular vote. Mr.. Black en-
plains how it did its work and how its infa-
nous powers were used in the Presidential
election to defeat the will of the people.
The creation of the Electoral Commission
is clearly explained; its refusal to do its duty
its pettifogging and inconsistent rulings set
forth in plain and logical manner. The
full extent of the outrage is summed up by
the accomplished jurist as follows:
"After all, there was but one question be-
fore the commission. Had the American
people the right to elect their own Chief
Magistrate They had the right. Their an
cestors struggled for it long, fought for it
often, and won it fairly. Being embedded
in their Constitution, it cannot be destroyed
except by II force strong enough TO overthrow
the organic sNucture of the government it..
self Legislative enactments or judicial de-
cisions are powerless either to strengthen or
impair it. The legerdemain of law. craft, the
catches of special pleading, the snapperadoes
of practice, do not help us to decide matter
like this. A great nation must not be I'M
paled upon pins point. Precedents which
might bind II Court of Quarter Sessions de-
termining the settlement ola pauper cannot
tie up the hands of the supreme legislature
defending fundamental right of the whole
people. When Granville, in 1866, cited the
authority of divers cases TO show that Amer
ica might be taxed without representation,
Pitt answered, Il come not here armed at all
points, with the statute book doubled down
in dogs ears to defend the cause of liberty
/ can acknowledge no veneration for any
procedure, law or ordinance that is repug-
nant to reason and the first principles of our
Constitution. / rejoice that America has re-
sisted So spoke the defiant friend of our
race in the presence of a hostile Parliament
ten years before the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. And now, after this long interval of
time, we behold our greatest right-the right
on which all other rights depcnd-success-
fully assailed in our own Congress with the
same small weapons that Grenvilc used. If
brute force had crushed it out, we might
have borne the calamity with fortitude; but
to see it circumvented by knavery and petit
logged to DEATH is too much TO be endured
with any show ofpatiencc.
"lf the majority of that commission could
but have realized their responsibility to God
and man, if they could only have understood
that in II free country liberty and law are in
seperable, they would have been enrolled
among our greatest bcnefactors for they
would have added strength and grandeur to
our institutions. But they could not come
up to the height of the great subject. Party
passion so benumbed their faculties that u
fundamental right seemed nothing to them
when it came in conflict with some argun ent
supported by artificial reasoning, and drawn
from the supposed analoges of technical pro-
oedure. The Constitution was, in their iudg-
ment, outweighed by void statute and the
action of a corrupt Returning Board
"Let these things be remembered by our
children's children and if the friends of free
government shall ever again have such con-
test, let them take care how they leave the
decision of it to tribunal like that which
betrayed the nation by enthronng the Great
Fraud of 1876"