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CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



them, of course, appointed for their ability and 

 integrity. There are nine circuit judges, of 

 whom I do not wish to say any thing different. 

 The great question is, when you are dealing 

 with a body of appointments so great as that 

 provided for by this bill, amounting to, I will 

 say, speaking now within limits (of course, a 

 great deal by guess-work), not less than six or 

 seven thousand men, taking the whole country 

 through, whether you will give the power to 

 appoint that great number of officers to sixty 

 or seventy men, or to nine ? It is a question 

 whether the nine men could have the time, the 

 information, or the opportunity, in any shape, 

 to make these appointments as efficiently as 

 the sixty or seventy district judges. It is an 

 enormous addition to the labor and respon- 

 sibilities already imposed upon your circuit 

 judges." 



Mr. Morton : " I desire to say but one word. 

 The object is to give to this law as high a 

 character and inspire as much confidence on 

 the part of the country as may be possible. I 

 think it important, therefore, for these consid- 

 erations, that, in the States where the circuit 

 judges live, they ought to perform these duties, 

 and perhaps in other States ; and the provi- 

 sion that has just been adopted enables them, 

 by calling upon the district judges, to require 

 them to perform the duties where they them- 

 selves cannot. It seems to me there can be no 

 objection to the bill as it now stands, in this 

 respect," 



Mr. Thurman said: "If the circuit judge 

 makes these appointments, it is very ob- 

 vious that he must make them upon the 

 representations of some other person or per- 

 sons. He cannot have personal knowledge in 

 respect to every election precinct in the three 

 or four States composing his circuit. Indeed, 

 the district judge cannot have that personal 

 knowledge in respect to a great many pre- 

 cincts in his district, although that is usually 

 only about the half of a State ; and yet the dis- 

 trict judge will have much greater personal 

 knowledge than the circuit judge can have ; 

 and the district judge will also have more 

 knowledge of the persons who recommend in- 

 dividuals to him for appointment, a much bet- 

 ter knowledge than the circuit judge can have. 



" Take the case, for instance, of Judge Em- 

 mons, in Detroit. He is there, and he is asked 

 to make appointments in Tennessee; he is 

 asked to do it ten days before the election. A 

 paper is presented to him signed by ten men, 

 citizens in an election precinct, asking him to 

 appoint two supervisors for that precinct. He 

 says: 'I do not know two men in the pre- 

 cinct; I do not know anybody who does know 

 a man in the precinct.' What then must he 

 do ? The law is mandatory ; he shall make the 

 appointment. He has no discretion ; he must 

 make it. How, then, can he get two names out 

 of that precinct, except from the men who pre- 

 sent to him at Detroit the paper demanding 

 their appointment ? The consequence of the 



law, as it now stands, therefore, is simply 

 this : that the men who demand the appoint- 

 ment also make the appointment. That is the 

 fact. 



" I say, Mr. President, if this bill is to pass 

 at all, and if it is to be any thing like a fair 

 bill, to accomplish the purposes that are pro- 

 fessed, the amendment offered by the Senator 

 from Illinois ought to prevail." 



Mr. Trumbull said : " It has been thought by 

 Congress advisable to take, to some extent, the 

 supervision of the election of members of Con- 

 gress. And, in doing that, we have passed a 

 law by which we proposed originally to ap- 

 point these supervisors only in the large cities. 

 The Senator from New Jersey says we confined 

 the appointment to the circuit judges. There 

 might have been more propriety for it then. It 

 was only in cities, I think, containing more 

 than twenty thousand inhabitants, that any 

 provision was originally made. for appointing 

 these inspectors, and, of course, there were 

 but few such cities in a circuit. Now it is pro- 

 posed to extend the law so as to authorize the 

 appointment of inspectors in every precinct in 

 the United States when a congressional elec- 

 tion takes place, and it is proposed to confine 

 the appointment of these inspectors, one of 

 each party in those precincts, to the judge of 

 the circuit court. There is but one judge of 

 the circuit court in a circuit. These circuits 

 consist of many States, all of them of several 

 States. 



"Now, Mr. President, I suppose there must 

 be somewhere, but I do not know who it is, 

 some judge whom it is supposed it will not do 

 to trust to appoint these persons I do not 

 know what else this can amount to and who 

 that judge is I do not know. I presume this 

 law is supposed to be chiefly desirable in the 

 Southern States, where all the judges have 

 been appointed within a few years. I have no 

 idea that in the State of Illinois anybody will 

 apply to a judge to have any one appointed. I 

 do not suppose they will in the State of Indi- 

 ana. We have never had any such officers ap- 

 pointed in my State hitherto, and I trust there 

 will be no necessity for it. The elections in 

 the State of Illinois, so far as I know or believe, 

 have been fair elections. I do not mean to say 

 that an illegal vote was never cast. Probably, 

 in half a million votes there would be more or 

 less illegal votes cast ; but that there ever were 

 any considerable frauds practised at the elec- 

 tions in my State I do not believe, or any 

 frauds that these supervisors appointed by the 

 judge of the court would have prevented. So 

 that this law is to have its application, I sup- 

 pose, chiefly in the Southern States. Through- 

 out the Northern States, except in some of the 

 large cities like New York or Philadelphia, 

 I suppose, it will have no practical operation 

 whatever." 



Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, said : " I do not 

 wish to waste the time of the Senate, but we 

 considered this matter, I think, very fully in the 





