Semi=weekly graphic., 1899-11-25
THE RULE OF FREUD
n<srT4 YIrCE IA EOLIIICOs

contested, just as elections have been contested ia other Southern States, and for the same reason. ytzs Charges aud ounter-charges Of fraud committed either in the elee- tion itself or in thecount afterward.
 Ithas come to pass that every. close election in the South is disput ed and made the occasion for aecu sations of deliberate rascatity on either side, and the candidates who have prima faeie case are not per mitted tt eater upon the discharge of tbeir official duties in peace until the opposition has first exhausted all the expedieuts known to official trieksters or hair-splitting lawyers to prevent them
 The most trivial technicalities are made much Of in these contests. The manifest intention Of the voter goes for nothing if a wrong initial, for instance, be printed or written on his ballot. The side he has voted against in such a case will demand shat his ballot be thrown out. And so it goes, until the whole armory of made-to-order objections is ex- hausted.
 Of course, there is a color of law for all this The law as it is made by tie average legislature and app piled by the average lawyer is chock full of humbug, to use the miidest term possible In tbe erd the de- cision goes 10 the side that controls the n achinery of government, ard by reason of such control rather than on the merits of the case. It follows that iu many instances the people are robbed of tteir suffrage and the basic principle of our syss tenn of government deliberately vio lated for partisan ends.
 What is to be tue end of all this? Is the republican form of govern. ment in half dozen to a dozen States of the Union to be forever made the mock of interruptions partisans? Are the honest citizens of those States who believe in re publican institutions and regard the stealing of ballots as 3 crime equal to or worse than picking a pocket, to submit always when the thieves brazen out the theft and jeering.Y ask: What are you going to do about it?a Will they always allow themselves to be robbed of the.r birthright by whatever party or faction happens to be tn control Of the election machinery?
 It is shame that there should be need of asking such questions in a country where men are supposed both to know their rights and to have the courage to maintain them.
 If there is no remedy but revoIu tion, then republican government iu tEe States in question is a wicked fraud, 3 mere convenience of poIiti. cal trickery, by which citizenship is degraded while scoundrels fatteu on the results of their yiIlaiuy Revo- lution-the opposition of force to authority acting under the forms of law -is dread alternative but in some eases it better beats man hood than tame submission
 This is not altogether 8 party issue. BegaIized political robbery is Of Republican origin. It was in troduced ia the South under the rule of carpet-baggers aud scala. wags of the Reconstruction period, aud wss eliminated as the result of a general uprising against it of the decent people North as well as South.
 But not for loEg.
 The scoundrellY digestion re. mained at work, and after a time the Democratic leaders in certain States conceived the ldea of perpet- uating their party in power by means of the very iniquity which the country had so sweepiugly con.