The St. Johns herald., 1890-04-03
Federal Control of Elections.

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 gerous direction of centralization
 at Washington. For 3 hundred years the conduct of Congressional elections has been left exclusively to the several States, and as Con gressmen primarily represent not the country at large but the !ocali- ties from which they come, and, in important cases, their States as such it is a dangerous innovation to transfer the matter to Federal con- trol. There is no public reason for abandoning the tradition or policy in this matter. Itis only consider atiors of the narrowest partisan ship which prompt the proposal to abandon it. This is the second ob- jection to the bill. It is not a de- vice of statesmanship intended to promote the general good, but a trick of partisanship by which a minority party, temporarily in con trol, hopes to retain power with a majority of the people opposed to it. A third objection, which ought to be fatal, is that the bill is not in fact or intention equally applicable to the whole country but only to those districts where the Dudleys , and Quays of the party in power see a chance to overcome a Demo cratic maj jority by means of it. The bill requires petition of 800 voters as the basis of Federal interference, and ef course no such basis will be provided except in those districts in which rascality hopes to profit by it. The thing is a two-edged sword, and whatever advantage the Republicans manage to gain from it while the Federal power is in their hands, the same will the Dem- ocrats gain under a Democratic ad- ministration. In both cases the gain will be made at the-eOst of honesty and good government. It is not for such partisan uses that power was conferred upon Congress. It is not in such piratical spirit that laws should be enacted. The country has q bitter memory of the results of legislation for party, ir- respective of everything else, in the reconstruction period. It is not likely to welcome q return to the high-handed system.-N. Y. World.
 Under this bill, for the first time in our history, members of the ju- dicial department are to appoint the officers of registration and election and to certify to the election of members of the legislative depart ment even when there is no contest. Not only is this wrong in principle, but 1t would be almost sure to work bad in practice. It could hardly fail to bring the members of the judiciary into the meshes of parti- san politics and expose them to all sorts of temptations and suspicious. It would involve the most serious danger to that branch of the Gov ernment which has heretofore been most carefully guarded from politi- cal contamination, since if the To- cal authorities that now conduct elections are brought under suspi- cion thereby, the United States courts could not escape similar inn putations and the Federal judiciary would suffer immeasurably in pub- lie respect and be forced to sacrifice much of that popular confidence in its integrity which it has always hitherto enjoyed Providence Jour nal.
 For negro suffrage the Republi- cans have no one to blame but themselves, and if their votes now go to swell the Democratic electoral vote no fault can be found with the Democrats. The Republicans are themselves to blame. Their gain by