The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1898-12-17
IS MccoMAs QUALIFIED
An Able Discussion Of His Title to a
Seat in the Senate-Authorities
Quoted and Precedents Cited-A
Clear Case Made Out.
special Correspondence of the Advocate.

The event OF the past week was the great
confusion and generalization created among
the partisans of Judge Louis E. McComas by
publication in the Washington Post of last
Thursday regarding the constitutional dis
qualification of the Judge to hold seat in the
United States Senate. by reason of his having
expatriated himself from his native State of
Maryland by the acceptance in 1893 of a life
tenure judgeship in the local court of the Dis
trict of Columbia, which position he still
holds.
Not the least amusing feature of the general
CONSERVATION created by the publication re-
ferred to was the acute attack of German
phobia COMBINED with Mysteries with which
the Baltimore San was Immediately afflicted.
The persistent and characteristic manner in
which the San has been scolding and DIGGING
the national administration for several months
has evinced how sore it feels toward the Pres
ident it helped to elect to preserve the ma
tional honor, and there were grounds for the
belief that its repentant spirit might extend to
the reputation of one of It's Senators who is
Administration, whose pet and protege he is.
But the CONSERVATION, resentment and ire
pressble agitation manifested in the several
columns of hysterical matter printed III last
FRIDAYS issue served to dssipate all misap-
prehension on this latter score.
In vain did the faithful scribe on duty i'll
Washington seek interviews with Senators,
who generally laughed at his anxious fears
and Knocked at his calamity, and from whom
he received no crumb of comfort. 1t was
compelled to fall back for its only comforter
upon that fresh and fertile young statesmen of
Montgomery county, Mr.. Ashley NJ. Gould.
Although the case against Judge McComas
was only partially understood and weakly
presented by the young scribe who fixed the
Posts article it acted as a bombshell of
great explosive force on Mr.. Gould as well as
the SIM, and the result was shown in what
they both said in defense of the Judges title
All the defenders of the Judges title to his
seat find their chief hope and consolation in
the ''three-fflhs majority which the Repub-
licans will have in the next Senate, and III
view of the safe bulwark which it thinks that
will afford the Sun doubts if the fine hand'
of Mr.. German is in any way responsible for
this, to its mind, untimely and unpleasant
agitation In this particular it may be said
the SIM is quite right, for although the abso
lutely untenable character of McComas' title
to his seat was made known to Mr.. German
shortly after the Judges election, fortified by
the positive opinions of competent Judges who
had fully examined the question, the Senator
has perSstently refused to have any concern
i'll the matter.
Perhaps The SIM, if it investigate closely,
will find that the guilty agent who is bent on
killing Cock Robin is among the political
HcssinnS like itself, who, having helped to
make The Judge Senator elect, have tired OF
their work and are bent on Knocking the
props from under him.
All levitv aside. it is now well established
fact that the Judges senatorial prospects do,
in truth, stand upon very treacherous toun
dation. The facts and the law and the uniform
precedents in both branches of Congress are
clearly and Enthusiastically against his right to
take his seat.
Mr. Gould rests the burden Of his defense
of McComas S title upon the fact that he has
been able to retain the privilege of voting in
Maryland. although he is forced to admit that
for this privilege he is indebted solely to the
decision of IA single judge in the Hagerstown
circuit. lie omits to state that this decision
of the Hagerstown Judge was squarely in con
fiict with II final decision made by the Court
of Appeals nearly at the same time, i'll IL case
on all -fours with that of Judge McCOmas, which
necessarily annulled and reversed, i'll practical
effect, the decision of the Hagerstown Judge.
Mr.. Gould says ''of course the Senate will
follow the decision of the Maryland courts.
If this test is to be accepted, then unques-
tionably the Judge is goner, for the unani
nous decision of the highest court of the State
must be accepted in preference to that of one
Judge of the lowest court.
The real facts of the case are that Judge
McComas accepted his lifetime office as a
member of the District Court in February,
1898, and Immediately moved to Wash
ingtom with his family, but did not take the
be taken within ten days of removal, until
November u, 1894 In the meantime his
right to vote at the municipal election in
Hagerstown had been called in question by
the action of the registration officer in strik- |
ing his name off the voting list, which was |
ordered reinstated by the Hagerstown judge |
in March, 1894. But the decision of the F!
Hagerstown Judge, being in square conflict
with the contemporaneous decision of the
Court of Appeals, was nullity; and no bet
ter proof could be adduced that Judge Nc
Comas himself recognized it as such than his
own action in taking the affidavit of intention
in the following November, and thenceforth
to make some kind of show of
Statute, which it can be easily |
shown he did not in fact do.
But Mr.. Gould having made out TO his own |
satisfaction some kind 81 constructive resi- |
dence in Hagerstown for Mr.. McComaS, |
boldly announces that the text writers" and
others say that inhabitant and resident are
terms and mean the same thing; |
and by this bold somersault he, in his own
active imagination, lands the Judge safely in
the Senate.
Mr.. Gould must have read even the text |
writer's to poor purpose for Mr.. McCrary, |
in his work on Elections, which is recognized |
in Congressional cases as text book of the |
highest authority on these questions, in his |
Al H.. al col
to say in regard to section of Article of |
the Constitution, which provides as follows:
"No person shall be a Senator who shall not have
attained the of thirty years. and been nine years
citizen of the United States and tco shall not Oen
elected be an iahdbitont Of that State for ich he shall
be chosen"
THE meaning of the term inhabitant, land the |
of which is the point in controversy
what discussed. That it was intended to express |
different from the word resident, is APP
the original draft of the constitution, and was
striker out by the convention, and inhabitant in
serted 1t would seem that the trainers of the Con-
stitution were impressed with deep sense of the
Importance of an actual bona fide residence, of the
representative among the constituency resi-
1ence in the sense of actual living among them
and commingling with them-and therefore en-
poyed the term inhabitant in the sense of living or
abiding, and not i'll the sense of technical resi-
1ence. This view of the subject was sustained in
IN elaborate report made to the House of Repre-
sentatves in 1924, in of John Bailey, of MasSa
that State while he was a clerk in the Department
Of State at Washington, D. c., and temporarily
residing in that city while in the discharge of his
official duties He was held not entitled to the
seat. CLARK & Hail. 411). The conclusion reached
n that case that an inhabitant of State, with
n the meaning of these clauses of the constitution
S one who is bona fide member of the State SUBJ
ect to all the acquisitions of its laws and entitled
o all the privileges and advantages which they
,onfer'
This decision in the Bailey case was the re-
ut of the unanimous agreement of the House
Committee on Elections upon an elaborate
eport which was submitted to the House, and
which was adopted by vote of 125 to So,
Daniel Webster being recorded in the afirma-
i've in favor of unseating his colleague and
political friend from his own State.
In the course of the elaborate report then
.dopted the committee used the following
language, the application of which to the Nc.
Jonas case will be readily seen:
lin connection with this there was still another
Jew of this subject, which, in all probability had
Is influence with the trainers of the constitution