Year: 1878

y


commended by the bar. It is not i'm


probable that such is the case. Law


yers have their fixed rules to go by
The pronouncements of the courts are


their law and their gospel, and it is


seldom, we believe, that any of them


have ventured in the cause of common
justice or of civil liberty to criticise OF
dispute the sacred edicts of a supreme


tribunal of law. The people, however


and their representative possess wider


latitude of opinion; these have no rules


to guide them, as Mr.. Burke well OBJ.
served, save the great principle of rea-
son and equity and the general sense of


mankind. The lawyer who follows his
profession in the courts must therefore
bow with humility to this remarkable
the citizen, however great his respect
may be for that high tribunal, has a
full and perfect right to criticise it and
! measure its judgments by those large
and enlightened principles which ought
to underlie society and constitute the
spirit of our legislation and our laws.
We are not so impracticabIe or so mad
as to assume that public opinion should
control the decisions of the courts of the
country, or that our judges should over
ride the plain letter of the law in
any public emergency. But every
intelligent man in this State realizes
how fearfully the public good has been
of late, and especially in the case of
Tom Anderson, sacrificed by the mar
row construction of technical or s'artifi-
cial JUSTICE" and the general judgment
of the people of Louisiana will be,
able trial and its most extraordinary
result are laid before them, that the
present court has proved lamentabIe
and humiliating failure; that it has
been unable to rise to the height of the
occasion, and, in the administration of
a jurisprudence framed to Cypress the
people, it has adhered with too great a
subserviency to the miserable techni-
calities of the system instead of boldly
attempting to enlarge and enlighten
it in the interest of society and for the
protection of the people.


It is not our purpose to question the
motives of the members of the Supreme
Court, all of whom are gentlemen of
unblemished integrity, and all of whom
concurred in the decision which declar-
ed that T. G. Anderson committed no
crime against the laws of Louisiana
in falsifying the election returns.
Neither shall we criticise the law upon
which the decision is based. Such law
is too refined, subtle and deep for our
poor comprehension. But this fact is
so luminous that it burns before the
eyes of the country with baleful and
unquenchable light, Anderson was a
principal in the crime by which the
election returns from Vernon parish
were falsified and reversed; the life of
our institutions is the freedom of cleo
tions, and the Supreme Court of Loui-
siana has announced that the wretch
who aided the perpetrators of this
damnable deed is, according to our
laws, innocent of any crime. The
grounds on which this singular decision
is based are, in brief, these: 1. Under
the law the returning officers were
required to make their canvass and
returns from the statement Of votes
made by the commissioners of cleo
tions; 2. To constitute forgery the
instrument set out and charged to be
feloniously made, must be of such
character that, if genuine, it would be
evidence of the fact it recites, and tend
to prejudice the rights of another; 8.
The returning officers stubbornly re-
fused to canvass the statements of the
commissioners, and only these were
evidence of the facts of the election
and could prejudice the rights of the
candidates 4. The supervisors con-
solidated statement was not such an
instrument as constituted evidence of
the fact it recited it could not prejudice
the rights of persons, and therefore the
Justification of that statement was not
forgery. We believe this is a fair
statement of the decision. 1t was upon
such quirks and quibbles of the law
that a man charged with one of the
most heinous crimes of the century, a
crime which has touched and rotted
the foundations of the government,
has been, after having had a fair trial
and conviction before an impartial
jury, declared innocent of any offense
against the law by the Supreme Court
of Louisiana and turned loose upon
society.


And now, what is the spectacle
which this decision has completed for
the edifcation of mankind? When
the people of Louisiana and the Demo-
cratic party of the whole country de-
nounced the wrong by which the cleo
toral vote of this State was to be count
ed for Mr.. Hayes, and protested
against the rulings of the Electoral Tri-
| bunal in the case, we were told that
neither Congress, nor the Tribunal, nor
any power ON earth had a right to go