Year: 1877

SENATOR EDMUNDS SPEECH ON THE BILL


FOR coTNTING THE voTE-ITL CHAR


AcTER AND EFFECT.


Mr. Edmunds led off on Saturday in
the debate OF the plan for counting the
electoralvotes. a. ~


His speech covers six columns of the
Sunday Herald, to which IL had no doub'
been previously sent.


The galleries were filed. Every Sena
tor was in his seat, and the chairs were
set in the space beyond the Senator
desks for the numerous privileged per
sons, including members of the Cabinet
members of Congress and ex-Senatsrsi
who were attracted to the scene.


The Herald says: The assemblage was
gratified by what Senator Conkling de-
fines as the ablest address of MI Ed
munds and one of the finest ever de-
livered in the Senate. Mr.. Thurman re-
CARDS it as unanswerable. The speech,
though occasionally embroidered with q
delicate irony in which the Senator from
Vermont is skilled, was lofty in tome
clear in statement and logical in form
beginging with a stately and fervid COM
pliment to the members of the joint com
mittee, and especially to the democratic
members of it from both houses. The
Senator then entered upon an explana-
ton of the several provisions of the bill
and proceeded with his argument. His


nset against the allegation of the right
of the President of the Senate to exercise
judicial power in the counting of the
vote was not only fierce and destructive.
1t was regarded as knightly because of
the chivalrous feeling of that officer
which the Senator contrived to maintain
even when the speech was at its utmost
heat.


The strong point of his argument which
Senator Edmunds defended for half an
hour with mastery inciveness was this:
That in response to the assertion of the
foes of the bill that it was unconstitu-
tional, the fact appears that there is not
a single section of the constitution, save
one, which has endorsed itself without
Congressional legislation. The excepted
sections the one which recognized slaves
as property, and in a notable case, cited
by the speaker, this constitutional pro-
vision was decided bv the Supreme Court
to allow master to recover slave as
property wherever he could find him.


This was the one exception to the rule
by which Mr.. Edmunds next ascended
to the height of his appeal for the passage
of the present bill


Ftrst-Reciting the language of the
constitution, which provides that the
electoral votes shall be opened by the
President Of the Senate AID shall then be
counted. He called attention to the fact
that the words "by him. were not added
If 1t had been the intention said Judge
Edmunds, TO confer on the President of
the Senate the Eight to count the votes,
two words, and two very short ones. TOO.
would have been appended TO that SEN
tence. The eight of Congress TO decide
the calculation Of the problem now pre-
sented he contended, was Just as plain as
its right to legislate upon any other con-
stitutional question. 1t had the same
power to specify the method of counting
the electoral vote, as it had to decide
upon thousand other details covered
but left obscure by the necessarily re-
stricted phraseology of the constitu-
ton.


AS to the matter of precedent. the
Senator declared that in point of fact the
votes had been counted by tellers of the
Clerks desk after each Presidential cleo
ton for peroid of forty years. No such
crisis as this had ever risen to necessi.
tate the action of Congress in the mat
ter, and the Congress was now called
on to exercise a right which had merely
lain dormant.


The only ornament with whichSenatol
Edmunds chose TO adorn what is conced
ed everywhere here tonight to have beer
a virile and strenuous presentation of tbt
joint committee was a pendent to hi.
oration. He urged Senators neither II
stimulate doubts in their own minds mo-
to let their wishes outrun their deliberat,
Judgments, and exhorted the chamber. in


behalf OF the country, not to leave it il
danger OF tossing anarchy, resembling


mountains tumbling evermorc into sea
without shore.