The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-01-04
4 Sign Of the Times.

1t is a startling testimony of the extent
to which some years of Radical ascend
ancy have aebapched thes minds 5of the
people of the United States, that it has
ever been claimed, much less insisted on,
that Returning Board can lawfully ex-
ist.' The fundamental principle of repub-
lican government is that the will Of the
people is the supreme. arbiter what
measures of public policy shall ue car
ried on and W hat men shall conduct those
measures. This will, it is Il further prin-
ciple, is to be manifested by the votes of
the people, and all that any government
al power can rightfully do as to such
votes, is to decide as to the day on which
they shall be cast and the machinery by
which the voice of the votes shall be
made known. Of themselves 1000 pieces
of paper in box are, of course, nothing
but so many pieces of paper; they can
not declare the general conclusion at
which all the. votes have arrived, al
though each particular ballot unmistaka
bly, manifests its wish. Hence the una
voidable necessity of one set of officials
to count all the votes in each box, and Of
another set to compute the general result
of all the boxes. Out Of this. necessity:
arises the opportunity of Returning
Boards, the animating principle of
which is, that the ballots are to be count
ed not as cast, but as the Board thinks
they ought to have been cast. Such an
assumption is so absolutely destructive
Of the basis on which republican govern
ment exists that it is amazing the idea
should ever have been tolerated for an
instant in a country protesting to possess
free institutions. To say, as in Florida
for instance, that three men are to be the
final arbitcrs Of each election is really to
erect government of the triumvirate, as
fully as a polity of that sort once existed
in Rome. And to repose like power in
five men, as in Louisiana, or in half a
dozen, as in this State, is simply to vary
the form, without changing the substance,
of the oppression.
The true idea of republican govern
ment may, in fact, be illustrated by q
device which is said to have been pro-
posed for use in legislative assemblies, as
follows: Over the Speakers chair is q
dial, and connected Herewith are wires,
operated on the principle of the tele-
graph, running to each members seat.
When the member votes aye, he presses
the knob age on his desk, or if he vote no,
the knob no, and a corresponding result
appears instantaneously on the dial at
tie Speakers desk. This photographs
the will of the assembly on the pending
proposition, and affords no opportunity
for corrupt or blundering clerk to an
nounce q wrong result. In popular elec-
tions, of course, this idea could hardly be
operated, but the. illustration will serve
to show what republican government
really means. The ballot should be as
free rs air when being cast, and us in
effaceable as adamant when cast.
These principles are so elementary that
it is astonishing, we repeat, that a single
VOICE has been raised throughout the
United States in favor of such right rs
guat claimed by Returning eBoards-lhe
right, namely, to re-arrange the vote to
nit themselves. This is such palpable
knavery, such gross, open, declared swim
ding, that it could never have found an
llv0cate unless some great corrupting
cause had first broken down the barriers
between the conception of right and
wrong, of honesty and dishonesty. of
good government and despotism. IL will
stand in American history as most
shameful page that such question was
actually litigated in two of our State
courts. 1t is us if some CORY rufian were
seriously to contend that murder was no
crime, and insist upon the court, at the
bar whereof he was arraigned, passing
on the point. 1t is crime, forsooth, to
steal hog, fowl, yard of cloth, but
no offence to rob men of their participa-
ton in their own government, as mani
tested in their votes.
The Supreme Court of South Carolina,
and the Supreme Court of Florida, fol-
lowing it, has pronounced any such claim
absolutely groundless, and refused with a
proper contempt to permit such 'front.'
less defiance of law to clothe its naked
ness with one single legal rag; and in so
doing has spoken the plainest dictate of
common honesty, common right ana
common sense. A Returning Board is
like pirate, hostis humani generis, the
enemy of mankind, and it is reflection
upon the capacity OF Americans for self
government that the. claims Of such
buccaneers have ever been made the
theme of legal controversy. This could
never have happened if a long preva-
lence of Radical rule had not, to some
degree, sapped the foundations of the
public honesty. No man, says the
proverb, becomes a villain all at once,
and there would not have been anywhere
in the United States such sign of tur-
pitude as a defence or palliation of these
scoundrel Boards, if preliminary pro-
cess of prostitution had not been carried
on by the brigands who lead the Repub-
lican party.-Charleston Journal Of Com