The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1878-08-08

vote. But were any one Of all the nineteen con.
trived and false votes to be challenged by the
House OF Representatives were not each and eV
cry fraudulent and every disqualified vote to be
passed as true electoral vote by the separate act
and approval of the House and Senate too the
result must have been the election Of Mr.. Tilden
by majority of all, or else his choosing accord
ing to the express mandate of the Constitution,
by the House Of Representatives, since therein
the Democrats prevailed whether voting by num-
bers or voting by States.
For the House Of Representatives, by the Con.
stitutiOn, and according TO the uniform practice
and procedure hereunder being concurrently
with the Senate witness In the opening, and an
actor In the counting Of the votes was made by
necessary Implication In the language Ofthe Con.
stltution Itself, the sole exclusive judge whether
or not the contingency had happened which
called upon 1t to make choosing of President in
default of an election by a majority of the whole
number Of electors appointed. No certlfcation
to 1t OF the happening OF that contingency was
required or contemplated No mode was pre-
scribed In which 1t should find out the existence
OF that default except its own knowledge as wit
ness in the opening, and an actor in the counting
of the votes. No review of Its decision, no appeal
from It's decision was provided. The COnsttu-
ton had left It, like every supreme udicature, to
judge for itself exclusively and conClusiVely of
the facts and the law calling into action It's ex.
press powers SO that the Democratic House Of
Representatives in the then existing state of facts
and law, was rightly perceived by Mr.. Tilden to
be an impregnable fortress for the rights Of the
people,
DEFEAT OF THE CONSPIRACY INEVITABLE.
That high debate which he therefore advised
and pressed, would have summoned every law.
abiding citizen in the land to q vivid knowledge
of the fact that their immediate Representatives
in the peoples House were upholdinE the Consti.
INT, NJ
exception in the history of any count by either
party, o'wit no false and challenged vote to pass
into the count without the separate consent OF
each House. The peoples gaze would have been
Tiveted upon the champions of the peoples rights.
Mere standing still by the House, or mere stand
ing STILL plus an offer TO take any rule OF Repub.
liCan making or adoption In the four counts twice
electing Lincoln, and twice electing Grant, must
have reduced the cOnspiratOrs to compliance with
law and precedent, or else to the suicidal neces
sity of open and actual usurpation, and its back
ing by the troops obeying Grant. Threats must
have rlsked their lives In acts-and threateners,
too, For nothing but such rank treason and red
handed violence could have enthroDed the bene.
fciary of their crime, nor keep him seated for q
single day. unless indeed, the Anglo.SaXon blood
of the founders Of this Republic be milk In the
veins Of their sons. An infexibe House always
fast in the final citadel of power, the keen bright
sunlight OF publicity through the long day Of such
q debate would have shrivelled and consumed
the conspiracy, root and branch.
CHANGE OF BASE.
There were inexplicable delays at Washington.
The rules of the House make delays easy, perhaps
He cited resolutions of the House
Privilege Commite which we're to raise the Dem
ocratlc standard there, were not reported until
the 18th Of January. Nor until the 18th could the
debate be- opened, as then at last, 1t was opened,
by the powerful speech Of Proctor Knott Its chair
man.
No sooner was that speech uttered than issue
joined; barely indeed was time allowed for It's
utterance, than Mr.. Knott was displaced, the de
bate and Its victories fOresaled Mr.. Tildens plan
supplanted, the responsibility elsWhere assumed
of otherwise encountering the Republican con-
spracy and the first step In such encounter taken
irrevoCably, by the entry of another Committee OF
the House, and the announcement of Demo
cratic compromise. Surrenders are, alas, irrevo.
cable Or II not surrender, at least the Electoral
Commission bill prottered the conspirators too
easy release from every hard impossblity In their
plot, and proposed TO exact of them nothing more
difficult than eight Of the highest Republicans
should put on blindness, and grant immunity to
the frauds which John Sherman in Louisiana
and Index" Noyes in Florida. had abetted OF
defended the committing Of by Republicans the
lowest and Vilest, whereby these frauds aiterward
got an effectual validity otherwise than by force
and arms
THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION SCHEME.
That bill, privately prepared by the Senate Con-
ference Committee, (l) had four days before firsl
been divulged to the House Conference Commit.
tee, ( and for three days only, in the secrecy Of
the committee rooms alone, debated. Commended
by so high authority, and with such complete
as that of the ablest and most trusted
Democrats in the leadership of both houses Of
Congress- no wonder that its passage into law,
seen TO be inevitable, was over in nine days, nor
opposed from that hour. Boards OF
trade, civic councils self-Constituted committees
from all sorts of four corners all at once made
haste, as was natural for them to do sighting the
adoption Of any plan to petition for Its Immediate
Moreover, the cool, hard temper
which the discarded policy had inspired and en-
acted was everywhere, In triCe, melted into SEN
timent under the high temper OF patriotic emo
ton which began TO prevail. For indeed some
OF Congress proclaimed themselves
because they had meant to be patriots,
andpatriots because, unlike the conspirators, they
had ceased to be partisans. Others pronounced
sacrifice political as we'll as religious sacra.
ment, and praised their own plety in thus propi-
tiating the arch-primate of treason.
COULD MORAL FORCE HAVE WON?
In large political strategy, as in military cam
paigns the success or the failure of any untried
plan must always remain a matter of reasoned
not of actual proof. But at least the
untried plan Of Mr. Tilden was not more difficult
than frmness and mere courage always are. 1t
asked no impossibilities. 1t simply exacted i'm
possibilities Of those who cOnspired his overthrow
and the subversOn of the sovereignty of the peO'
pie. Impeachment of 1t for probable failure In
the outcome must commence impeaching the ca
paclty of American freemen to carry on amid
public order the ark and shekinah OF their self
government For however rare In the statesman.
ship OF any time may be its adequate forecast its
its wise intrepidity, these were
not It's most noteworthy characteristics, nor has
he alone in the courage which INSPIRED them.
The Democracy OF the great West on Jackson's
birthday, with one voice had bade their repre-
crush the great conspiracy between the
upper and the neither millstOnes of the supreme
law, and the strength of those who had won to
hold. The signal and peculiar mark of that plan
was this: His absolute trust in moral forces his
entire trust in the people, their VOlions and their
power.
ALL TIDEN's FIGHTS WON By MORAL FORCES,
And why, of all men in the United States
should not he2 With like resolved, undoubting
faith, Mr.. Tilden appealed to the conscience and
the power Of the people, the last tribunal In Re.
publics, through every one of the desperate con-
tests which had made up the six years of his pub.
lie career. So had he striVen and.Slways had he
come off victorious, first In the overthrow of the
Tweed Ring In 1871; then in the impeachment
and expulsion Of the corrupt judges in 1872; next
in establishing the ascendenCy of the reform ele-
menr in the Democratic party of New York, and
in the installation of the reform policy 1t Its State
government in 1874, resulting in his own candi-
dacy for Governor and election over Dix by fifty
thousand majority; SO In the destruction of the
Canal Ring in 1876 30 anu so only in the great en-
deavOr for the redemption Of the Federal govern
ment from corruption and misrule in 1876.
And the people had answered his appeal In ev-
cry instance by the beslOWal of larger power and
higher trusts In the last contention Of all against
the Republican party itself, lapsed from the pur.
pose and control Of It's founders into coparceny
Of spoils consolidated and corrupted by sixteen
years continuous rule, welding the immense in
huence Of q hundred and sixty four millions fed
eral expenditure, nf hundred thousand Office
holders, of q countless train of claimants. con-
tractors and jobbers the people had yet rewarded
his faith with tAe laurels of victory bestOwing in
vote vastly the largest ever polled great popular
malorities-in New York State eighty thousand
sultrages more than Grants fifty-iOur thousand
majority in 1922 in the Union thirteen hundred
thousand more than Grant bad received at his
irst election and seven hundred thousand more
lhan he had received in his second election.
THE PEOPLE COULD HAVE BEEN SAFELY TRUSTED.