MR. GREAT PLEA. AN HISTORICAL AND JURIDICAL DISSECTION OK THE STALWARTS. NO MKTttOD RUT REI'KAb VOK VICIOUS STATUTKS WITH OI'I'RXMM VK INTKNT. The llouso of Representatives having under consideration the bill making ap propriations for the legislative, execu tive, and judicial expenses of the Gov ernment for the fiscal year ending Juno 30, 18*0, and for other purposes, Mr. Carlisle said: Mr. Chairman: I shall discuss the questions now under consideration in the committee, so far as 1 shall discuss them at all, in no mere partisan spirit, and yet it may be necessary for me to state some facts and submit some con clusions not strictly of a non-partisan character. The first question which presents itself relates to the form of the proposed legislation and the method hy which it is sought to he accomplish ed. So much has already been said on this subject that 1 shall treat it very briefly. Whatever the gentleman from Pennsylvania who has just spoken (Mr. Kelley) and others may think as to the propriety of incorporating substantive legislation into appropriation hills, no one of thetn can deny that it lias been so frequently done during the last quar ter of a Century as to have bec.ui.e t le rule rather than the exception. f n ty-four ye.irs ago this House ineor;>or .t -ed into the Consular and Dij '"*u ie Appropriation hill—the timet inu: j io priate place that could be imagined---! complete revision of ail the tariff laws of this country and sent it to the Senate. That provision was struck out in that body after a long debate, not because of the form in which it came, but because of objections to the substance of the legislation itself. And it is entirely safe to say that, at least since Ist'd, almost every general appropriation bill paced by Congress lias contained provisions— and in many instances most important provisions—repcalingjold laws or enact ing new ones, and tliis has boon sanc tioned by both political parties. Occa sionally protests have been made as they are made on this occasion, but ;n no instance, so far as I am aware, has such a protest been effectual. During the long domination of the Republic..n party in this House political legislation of the most important character was constantly enacted in the bills and a part of the very laws which wo now seek to repeal were passed in the Sun dry Civil Appropriation bill approved June 10, 1872. The very last I.egiia tice, Kxecutive and Judicial Appropria tion bill passed in Congress during the time it was under the control of that party contained a provision under which every gentleman froqi the State of lowa to day claims and holds his seat upon this floor. It is a very brief provision, and I will read it: That section 2o of the Revised Statul-s, prescribing the time for holding elections for Representatives in Congress, is hereby umditb-d so as to apply to any State that ha* not yet changed its day of election and whose constitution must be amended in order to effect a change in tho day of the election of State officers in said State. And the very next ssciion in the bill is one providing for the removal of suits from the Stale court* to the United States courts in certain case*. But, Mr. Chairman, I need not stop to cite pre cedents or nuke an argument to show the existence of the right to resort to such methods of legislation. That the practice has heen established and that the right exists is admitted by gentle tuerron the other side; hut they charge that it is revolutionary to exercise the right in this particular instance, be cause it is known or assumed that the proposed legislation does not meet the approval of the Kxecutive. It seems to ine that this places the gentlemen in a far worse position before this House and before the country than if they had taken the bold and manly ground that all the precedents established hy them selves were wrong and that the right to legislate in this form does not exist. To say that the practice ho* been estab lished during a long series of years by both {lolitical parties and that the right does in fact exist, but that it is revolu tionary to exercise the right in any in stance where it does not happen to meet the approval of the I'resident, is to say that he is the master of the people's representative, and that we ought to abandon an admitted practice ami to surrender an acknowledged right at lii dictation. It is admitted that it is neith er unconstitutional nor revolutionary simply to repeal these laws; hut it is charged that it is both unconstitutional nnd revolutionary to attempt to repeal them in a manner the Kxecutive does not like. One gentleman, at least—the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Krye)—has been candid enough to declare on this floor, amid the applause of his political friends, that we should not rejieal these election laws until, in some manner, the present Kxecutive had heen remov *■ ed from office. Here is the exact lan guage of the gentleman, as reported in the official debates: You have not repealed the law affording protection to the voter at the poll* y*t You have not repealed the election laws yet; and you will not repeal them ut.til you have removed the present Executive from his chair. [Applause.] Sir, thia present* a square issue from which we, as the representative* of a majority of the people, cannot shrink without dishonoring ourselves and de grading our constituencies. If thrrc had previously been a doubt a* to the propriety of the course we have adopt ed, that declaration and its indorsement by the party of the Kxecutive on this floor ought to have dissiimted it. It has dissipated it, and I believe to day we stand as thoroughly united in our de termination to assert the supremacy of the popular will under the Constitution and to rodree* popular grievance# hy lawful means as any body of men have ever stood since our race first bexan it* struggle for free government and indi vidual liberty. First we are told hy one gentleman standing high in the coun cils of bis parly that we will not he per nutted to repeal theae objectionable laws in the form now pro|ioaed j and then another, with equal authority to sneak, emphatically announces that we shall not repeal them at all in any ; form. Under such circumstances a# i these what difference does it make to n* or to the people whom we represent whether the British House of Commons hits attnehed legislation to supply hills during the lust two centures? We rep resent American citizens, not British subject*. We ore dealing with an Amor ican President, not a British king. The Kxecutive in this country has no pre rogative in the monarchist sense of the term ; he has only certain ]>owerx con ferred upon him by a written Constitu tion and hy statute ; hut when he threat ens to abuse that power, if he should ever mako such a threat, for the pur pose of defeating legislation admitted to lie deliberate, constitutional, and not injuring his rightful authority, all the means which the House of Commons in Knglund was justifiable in using to pre vent an abuse of the king's prerogative we are equally justifiable in employing here. It is true, Mr. Chairman, that | for nearly two hundred years the prac tice of "tacking" on supply lulls or ac companying such hills with petitions for redress of grievances has not been re sorted loin Kngland, hut the House of Commons, to which alone that right fie longs, has never by any net or dicclarn tion abandoned or surrendered it. And I beg to remind gentlemen of another historical fact equally pertinent in this discussion, which is, that for nearly the same length of time the veto power has not been exercised in Kngland. Since ITtiT, when the.Queen vetoed the Scotch Militia bill, no British sovereign lias vetoed an not of the British Parliament. It is, in fact, the veto power that has died in that country. It could not live in the presence of that great principle of the British Constitution which dis solves the Ministry in every conflict be tween the Crown and the Commons. The executive power there is directed by a cabinet of ministers and not by the king, and in the whole world there is not to he found a body of men ill an thority more sensitive to the popular will than they are. In the face of a vote of want of confidence or an adverse vote on an important Government measure, they disappear as if they had been smitten by the arm of Omnip otence itself. Any sovereign who should now attempt to retain a ministry in op position to the will of the Commons or to persist in any important measure of government which did not meet their approval would certainly imperil the peace of the kingdom, if be did not lose his crown. But my eloquent and learned friend from Virginia < Mr. Tuck, erj has so fully and clearly stated the character of the British Government in tins respect that nothing can be usefully added to what he has said. We are told, however, that the grievance of which we complain is a law upon the statute book ; front which I suppose the inference is to he drawn that it is not a grievance for which the Kxecutive is responsible, and therefore ire have no right to make its redress a condition upon which we grant supplies ol money to be expended by that department of the Government. This statement omits the important and controlling fact that the statute of which we complain is one which authorizes the Kxecutive to send thousands of his subordinate officer* to the jmjlls to interfere with our election* as members of this House ; and it is a just rau*e of complaint against him that he insists upon maintaining and exercising such a dangerous and uncon stitutional power. The exclusive power to originate money hill*—which include appropriation bill—belongs under tlie Constitution to this l*>dy. This gives us the right and makes it our duty to determine when, under what circum stances, for what purj>ose* and to what amount we will pro|M>e the appropria tion of the people's money. If we have not this right, if this is not our duty, if Congress is a mere machine to lie set in motion hy the hands of the Kxecutive to grind out such appropriations as may be recommended, then we are clearly wrong in this controversy and the gen tlemen on the other side are right. But if the Constitution has conferred this power upon us we are not wrong unless we abuse it and for that we are responsible, not to the Kxecutive, not to the minority here on this floor, but to the people who sent u* here. I'pon all question* of this chaeacter they are the exclusivo and final judges. A great writer tqion institutional law ha* said : Whenever a question arise* between the society at large ami any magistrate vested with powers originally delegated by that society it must be decided by that Society itself. There is not upon earth any other tribunal to resort te. If unfortunately thia proposed legis lation slisll fail by reason of au irrecon cilable difference of opinion between the executive and legislative departments of the Government, both must appeal to the original source of their power and abide the result. It is revolutionary to join in this appeal rather than surren der our conscientious conviction* upon a subject virtallv affecting our own priv ileges nnd the liberties of our constitu ent*, the country will rebuke us and we will be compelled to bow in submission to its judgment. Now, sir, let us see whether these laws are of such a char acter as to justify us in taking the posi tion we have In demanding their repeal. I will endeavor to show, Mr. Chairman, ns briefly as the nature of the subject will permit, that they are so opposed to the spirit of our institutions, so repug riant to the Constitution itself and so oppressive upon Hie people that we are justifiable in declaring that we will not make this appropriation except upon Hie condition that they are removed from the statute-book. It is my purpose to discuss today only that pat t of the pending hill which relates to the repeal of what are known as the election laws. A* to those pro visions of the existing law which ex clude fmm the jury boxes in the courts of the United States all those who are unable to take a certain teat-oath, they are so manifestly inconsistent with the Knglish and American systems of juris prudence and so fatal to tho due ad ministration of justice between man and man and lietween the Government and its people that I ran not persuade my self that any considerable number of gentlemen here or elsewhere will tinder take to defend them. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelley) char acterir.es these provisions very mildly indeed when he says they constitute "an exasperating incongruity ia our law." As to those laws which relate to the ' elections, they are baaed upon the as sumption that in the present condition of the country it is constitutional, wise and necessary to clothe the Executive with authority to interfere with nnd control the election of members to this House, and I shall deal with them a* laws enacted and maintained for that purpose. This is no sectional question ; and it ought not to he even a party question. It is a question of vital interest to every friend of constitutional liberty ami to every lover of free parliamentary gov j ernment throughout the whole country. : It is a question which affects the people j of the North more than the people of the South. According to the census of | 1870 there were sixty-nine cities in the | Union to which the most offensive and most objectionable parts of these law* are applicable, fifty-live of them in the North and fourteen of them in the j South. The fifty live in the North con j tninrd a population of nearly five mil lions of souls, while the fourteen in the ; South contained only a little over one million and two hundred thousand. If we look at the expenditures we will find that more than five times as much money was disbursed in the years lH7' and 1878 to pay for the service* of su pervisors nnd s;>ecial deputy marshals of elections in the Northern States as in the Southern States. The whole ex penditure in lK7f> was ♦275,296.f>0, of which the sum of ♦230 .'<22 wa* paid for services in ix Northern States and only ♦44.774.iH) for services in the South. In lh"8 the whole sum expended was ♦202,- 2111 OW—so far n rejairlc-d—and of this tin- sum of ♦177,052 was on account of service* rendered hy these officers at election* in the same *ix Northern State* and ♦24,039 in the whole South. Rut, sir, I slutll not go at length into that matter. I long to see the titne come w hen the patriotism of our public men and tin- fraternal feelings of our people shall bo broad enough to ac knowledge but one boundary—the limits of th is whole Union. [ Apjdnuse, ] If that time has not arrived it i a con solation to me to know that I have never purposely said or done anything to p.ost j*>lie it. Mr. Chairman, greater thnn all other questions affecting the constitution and organization of this House is the que* lion whether thi* power of the Execu tive to interfere in the election of its members "hall he continued. If there be one principle in our Federal system more valti sl le to the people than on other it is that which was intended to secure the perfect independence of their Representatives. Thi* i* the people's Hone ; this is the only place in the council* of the Union where tliey speak and vote through Representative# chosen directly hy themselves. The right to choose their own Represent* lives belongs and ought to belong to . them exclusively. The jxawer of the Executive, so far as it can legitimately affect the action of theme Representa tives, must he exercised for the firt time not only after the election but after the will of the people ha* been re corded here in the passage of bills. Under the Gonslitution he may with hold hi# assent frotn our measures when they are sent to him in the regular way, hut he cannot elect our member* or in terfere with their elections without a violation of every fundamental prinri pie of free Republican government and a subversion of our most cherished in stitutions. He may not come into this hall and dictate the measures we shall pnas or shall not pans; he may not without the grossest indecency, oven send his omis sarie here to influence our delibcrnt ion# either hy threats or disapproval or by expression# of approbation; and yet it is contended thai he ought to have the power to dictate our policy in advance j by choosing the men who are to oonsti , lute our meml>er#hip. I.et the country understand distinctly what it i* the genth-men on theother side are contend ing for. They are not contending for free and fair elections; they are not contending for a pure ballot and a fair count, liec*ue these result# can he bet ter aecured without Executive interfer ence than with it. They are contending for the power of the Executive to lay hi# hand upon the vote when he *p proache# the ballot-box to choose his representative, to bribe him with office, to intimidate him hy threat# of prose cution of in distant and expensive tri bunals, to seize the muniment* of hi* title to suffrage, to arrest hi* person and to confiscate his estate hy the mi|>o*ilinn of ruinous fine* and forfeitures lor tech nical offence*. I am not one of those who would willingly obstruct the Executive in the exercise of any of his constitutional functions or deprive him of any of hi# constitutional power*; hut lam one of those who believe that every attempt to extend his authority beyond the limit* prescribed in the Constitution ought to he resisted hy every lawful mean* at our command. .Sir, without these odious law# the in fluence of the Executive department upon the politic* of the country is *1 most irresistible. It command* the army and navy; it direct* in a great measure the financial policy of the country; it disburse* more than ♦150,- 000,000 of the people's money every year in delraying the ordinary expense# of the Government ; it appoint* all the judges of all the court* ; it direct* the execution of all the laws, and therefore controls all criminal ami penal prose cutions, and it distribute* among it* ad herents more than one hundred thou sand office* and employment* with em oliiment* amounting annually to many millions of dollars. These are vast powers, and when vou add them the authority given hy these statute# to send thousand* of *ul>ordinate executive off! cerw to the polling place# throughout the country at every election for Repre sentative* to judge of the qualifications of voters, to arrest them without war j rant, and to deprive them of the right of suffrage for whatever the officer may ohoose to consider an offense, you have completed the full measure of Kxecu live | >ower to control the organisation and action of the House. If any gentleman will reflect for a moment upon the peculiar and impor taut functions performed by thi* body in the operations of the Government he cannot fail to realize the vast impor tance of preserving iu perfect freedom 1 and independence. Under the Conati , lotion we posse-.* the sole power toorigi j unto hills to raise revenue hy luxation upon the people ami to appropriate the public moneys. That money, when raised and appropriated, is to he dis j burned bv the Executive department, which udda wry largely to its power and influence over the people. Inch dental to this, and necessitrily involved 1 in it, is the power of the House to deter mine whether there shall or shall not he an army and navy main tain ted at the t-üblic expense and commanded hy the Executive. Under the Consitution this llou .e possesses the sole jxjwer to i originate impeachments against the President himself and other officer* of the United States ; and in case of a fail ure to elect by the electoral colleges, this House, voting by States, bus the sole | oner to choose tho President. Here then arc four great powers belong ing exclusively to the House of Itepre sentatives, in the exercise ol which the Executive may be directly affected either in his person or in his office. If he can control the organisation of this body by dictating the choice of its * members gvnerally or influencing the i election of a sufficient number to hold the balanco of pjower, he thereby con trols it* action on ail these vital mat ler*. Ho may determine, to a very largo extent, the amount and fortn of taxation upon the people and the amount and the object* for which ap propriation* shall be made; he tnay de termine the size and organization of the army and navy and the purposes for which they shall he used ; ho may pre vent his own impeachment for tho very corruptions which givo bun immunity, or secure the impeachment of a rival ; and he may, in the contingency 1 have mentioned, provide for In* own re-elec tion to the Executive office. It is not my purpose to elaborate these jirojmsi lioti". Their truth is too obvious to ad mit of argument, and the dangerous character of the power which the Ex ecutive would exercise in these instan ces i* too nppurent to require illustra tion. Do gentlemen on the other side seriously contemplate the permanent maintenance of a system of laws calcu lated to produce such results? Can it he possible that they place such a low estimate ujam the intelligence ol the people and so little reliance tijain their virtue and love of liberty as to #upp>o#c that they will ever rest satisfied until the stain of these odious enactments shall !• effaced from the pages of the statute book ? I submit to every gentleman whether tins is or ought to be a mere party que#- lion ; whether all the Representatives of the j-eople ought not to unite a* one man and declare that law* which con fer this extraordinary and dangerous power upon the Executive ought to lointed with out limit under this law by the Execu tive department? In l t 7f>eleven thou sand six hundred and fifteen spiecial deputy marshals were appointed to at tend the election" oT the i>eo|,lo, and in one instance at least as many a one hundred and fifty-five were stationed at a single polling place. Nearly six thou sand supervisors were apjointed to officiate at the same election. At a similar election in 1878 nearly five thousand spiecial deputy marshals were appointed and over four thousand *u pierviaor*. In almost every instance, at least so far as the denuty marshal* were concerned, these officers were the partisans of the Administration, and although they were paid for their ser vice* out of the common treasury of the people, it i* a well known fact that they contributed all in their power— and in some instances at least even to the extent of abusing their jaiwers—to assist their party friend* in chooing niembo-*of this House in political ac cord with the Executive. Nine of the cities to which these executive officers were sent elect twenty seven Repre sentative* every two year* —a sufficient number under ordinary circumstances to control our action here upon all pxe litical matters; and yet these extraordi nary law* apply to all the cities in the Union containing over twenty thousand inhabitants. It matters little to the people whether the interference in their elections i* effected through the agency of the soldier with his inusket or the marshal with hi* club. It is the inter ference itself, and not its niero form, of which they complain. I cannot go into anything like a satis factory di*-u*ion of the particular pro visions contained in these statutes. It is sufficient to say generally that they authorise the appointment of special deputy marshals without limit as to numlier; that it is made their duty to attend the places of registration and the places of voting ; to challenge any citizen whnn qualification* they "may doubt," for that is the language of the statute*; and that they are authorized fo arrest any citizen or any officer of a Stale government, with or without pro cess, whenever they may think that the citizen or the officer ha* violated or is about to violate any law of the United Slate# or any law of the Htate in rela tion to election*. They are sent there for the ostensible piirtmse of preserving what is called by the late Attorney General "the peace of the United Htate# to protect the voter before the election in his personal freedom, and to see that he is not molested before the election on account of any vote that he may be about to give, or afler the elec tion on account of any vote that he may have already given. The supervisor* are authorised 'and em|*>wered, by one of the section* which we now seek to repeal, to "personally scrutinise, count and canvaas each t>al!ot in their elec tion district or voting precinct cast, whatever may indorsement on the ballot or in whatever box It may have been places! or be found so that if the ballots for tho local Htate officer* "re dopxisUod in separate bo from those containing l '"' for Repre sentative* in Congress, it i* made the duty of these officer# to seize and open those boxes and to count the ballot* contained in tliem. Extraordinary in struction* were given hy the late Attor ney General Taft to the United States marshals in 187 C, and which were, hy a mrange mingling of the civil and mili tary authorities, promulgated through the War Department in the form of a general order. Without stopping now to comment at length upon his extraordinary construe tion of statutes, 1 desire to call the at tention of the committee to the fact that they contain a clear misapplication of tin 1 opinion of Attorney tieneral Cusli ! ing in relation to the right of the mar- I shals to summon a jvnurr comilatuM. It is ; not true that Mr. Gushing ever gave any opinion to the effect thut the mar shals had the right to summon either the citizen or the soldier tr> assist him as a pottr rottnlalut in the performance of any duty except the execution of a process issued from the courts of the I luted Ktates. No Attorney General, •o fur as 1 know, except the one who issued these instructions, has ever de cided that a marshal had power to rum mon h)-oa*r to assist in "preventing dis order." that is, in keeping the peace. Mr. I aft claimed that it was the duty of these officers to preserve " the peace of the United Stales," a thing which I venture to say was never heard of until this document w> promulgated. J had occasion the other duy, in the discussion of another matter, to say something in relation to the respective powers of the Slate governments and the '"nited States government in matter of mere police regulation, and I desire now simply to call attention to what has Keen said hy others upon the same sub ject in order that their opinions may be presented to the committer; in a compact and convenient form. A dis , tinguished judge in Vermont, Judge Redfleld, says; This power >.f the Htat- extends to tlx protection <>f the lives, limbs, health, c< m fort slid quiet of ah persons and protection of all property within the .State. ■fudge Cooley says: In the American constitutional system the p-ower to establish the ordinary regula tions ■ 1 poll, e has beef! left with the in dividual States and cannot be assumed bv the National Go-.i rmnt-nl. It is a power to preserve domestic order st all times and at all places within the limits of the State,'and con sequcntly it can he exercised hy the State, and by the State alone, for the prevention of violence or crime or, in other words, to keep the peace. Many years ago Mr. Justice Story, in deliver ing an opinion in the Supreme fVsurt of the United States in a great leading case, said : To guard, however, against any feasible misconstruction of our views it is f.r-|-r to stan- that we are by no means to be un derstood in any manner whatsoever to doubt or to interfere with the pnlicsjinvsr belonging to the Slate* in virtue of their general sovereignty. That js.lice power extends over all subjects within the terri torial limits of the Slates and has never Keen conceded to the United Slates. Gertainlv, if there can ever he a time when the authority of the United States surrounds and protects one of its offi cers to the exclcsion of all other juris dictions It must l>e when he is engaged in the very act of executing a process issued from its court". And yet the present Chief Justice of the Supreme '"ourt. in delivering sn opinion in 1876, uses the following language: True it may sometimes happen that a person is amenable to both jurisdictions for one and the same act— Meaning the jurisdiction of the State and the United Mate*. Thus if a marshal of the United States II unlawfully resisted whlle executing the process of the courts within a State and the resistance is accompanied by an assault on the officer, the sovereignty of the Unites] Stal<* ts vioiaUd hy the resistance and that ; of the Stale by the breach of the peace in the assault. And again, in the course of the same j opinion, the Ghief Justice aaid : It is no more the duty or within the pow er of the Unite.) Stan* to punish for a con spiracy, to falsely imprison or murder with in a Slate than it would be U> punish for false imprisonment or murder itself. Showing clearly that in the opinion ] of the court a breach of the peace as •urh cannot constitute an offense against 'he Government of the United State*. Very different from the opinion of Mr. Taft was that of the present Secretary 'of State while Attorney General under the administration of Andrew Johnson. In the letter of instruction sent by him to the United States Marshal for the northern district of Florida on the 20th of August, IHf.ss, he stated the law upon the subject as follow* : While, however, the law give* you this "power to e/imm*nd all necessary assist ance," and the military within your dis trict are not exempt from obligation to obey, in common with all thecitir.cn*, your summon* tn cases of necessity, you will be particular to observe that this high and re sponsible authority is given to the marshal only in aid of his duty "to execute through out the district all lawful precepts directed to him and issued under the authority of the United Slats*," and only incase of ne cessity for this extraordinary aid. The military tiertons obeying this summons of the marshal will act in subordination and obedience to the civil officer, the marshal, in whoae aid in tho execution of process they are called, and only to tho effect of se curing St* execution. The special duty and authority In the execution of process issued to you must not be confounded with the duty and authori ty of suppressing disorder and preserving the peace, which, under out Government, belongs to the civil authorities of the States and not the civil authorities of the United Stales. Nor are this special duty and au thority of the marshal in executing proem* issued to htm to be confounded with the authority and duty of the President of the United State* in the specific cases of the Constitution and under the statutes to pro tect the Stales against domestic violence, or with his authority and duty under special statute* to employ military force In subduing combination* in resistance to the law* of the United States; Tor neither of theee dutiew or authorities is shared by the subordinate officers ol the Government, except when and as the same may be specifically communicated to them by* the Proudest, Thi* in the Inn gunge of a grcst lawyer and ii practical stiif.-i-rnan who under- Hand* am] appreciate* the character of I the institutions under which he liner, ; mid I submit it without further cotu ment to the consideration of gentlemen j who are contending here and elsewhere , for the {tower of special deputy marshals, j "to keep the peace and prererre order" I in a State on the day of election or any other day. They ran bane no such power, and any attempt to confer it , upon them i* simply an attempt to ! usurp the rightful authority of the j Stale*. It i* not possible for me to devote any ' considerable time to a recital of the many abuse* that have la-en committed | under thin law, hut I desire to ray what : i* known to the whole country, that at ; the Congressional election of 1878 in the i city of New York those who controlled | ami directed this ingenious and oi.pren | ive i-ohtical machinery brought it* whole force to bear with crushing effect I against a single class of citizens, ftllHtl j can citizens of foreign birth. In May, j IS"*, the Chief Supervisor of Klertiona ' m that city caused one of his clerks or j assistant* to swear to a single complaint I against iOO persons of foreign birth 1 who held certificates of naturalization issued from the Supreme ami Superior courts in 1868, and on which they Jiad regularly registered and voted at every election since that time. On this com plaint the same Supervisor of Elections, a* clerk of the f nited Mate* (>urt. is sued wariant* returnable before himself as Commissioner of the I.'nited States (hurt. Afterward it *e,-nis to have been discovered by this officer that these warrants were illegal by reason of tbe fact that the complaint contained more than one name and thereupon , they were withdrawn, but immediately afterward he caused more com plaints to be made and issued warrants upon them in the same way. Many ! persons were arrested under this prr>ceaa and about 3,400 naturalized citizens, in order to escape from this {.artisan per secution, actually surrendered their papers. ,1 uI a few days before the elec tion in November he caused the same : clerk or assistant to swear to 3,2(i0 more j complaint* They were *worri to in • package*, many of them on the Sunday preceding the election, and during the night preceding the election warrant* were made out against th>* |B were defective and that therefore the certificates were void. The truth was that precisely the same kind of record and no nth<< had been kept in that Court for a period of fifteen year*, un der the administrations of nineteen dif ferent judge* of both johtical parties, the Hon. Edward* Pierrejont, late Min ister to the Court of St. .lame*. Wing one of them ; that between fifty and *ixty thousand j>er*on* had during that time Wen naturalized in precisely the same manner a* these persecuted men. and many of iftim had been voting and ex errising all tbe other rights of citizen ship without question Ipr twenty year*, ami that Wfnre these arrest* were made a State judge, in an able and elaWrato opinion, had expressly decided that the record was sufficient and the naturali : zation* valid. Notwithstanding these facts, about which there can W no dis pute, these nine or ten thousand per son* who had in good faith procured their pa{>er* in IMVH were selected to W the victim* of * vile a political conspir acy and persecution as wa* ever set on foot in the history of any country. Certainly no such crusade against the political rights of any class of cilisens wa* ever before inaugurated in this country, and none ever had lea* excuse or justification. In otne instance* the p*|>er* of the citizen were seized by ! these Federal officer* when he catne u> register and were retained until the election was over. The totol absence of sufficient legal cause for these extraordinary proceed ing* is demonstrated by the admitted fact that although thousand* of war rant* were issued and hundred* of ar rest# were made, not a single conviction wa* ever obtained, and indeed not a single one was ever prosecuted to a final hearing. I have said that there were leg ally qualified voters, and a brief reference to the judgment of the I'nited States Circuit Court in one of the cases will es tablish the truth of the statement. Una of the men arrested, peter C-oleman by n*me, appears to have Wen so poor and friendless a* to W unable either to pro cure hail or otherwise secure hi* release, and consequently he was thrown into jail, and in the excitement and confu sion of the occasion was overlooked un til some time after the election. A writ of hat.es* corpus was sued out and he was brought Wfure .fudge Itlatchfoni. who alter an clgjiorate investigation of the whole question discharged him from imprison menu The evidence taken by a committee of this House during the last Congress and rejtorted In Miscellaneous Docu ment No. 23 shows that per son# who were naturalised in the Su perior Court in 1868 registered and voted in the city of New York at the election in 1876, but tbe result of the system of intimidation inaugurated and carried on by the chief Supervisor of Election* and hia subordinate* waa that only 1,- 240 such persons voted at the Congres sional election in 1878. It ia therefore almost self evident that about 8,000 vo ters, nearly all of whom were Demo [Continued on 4(A pogt. J