238 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Can they bring suit for damages for false ar- 

 rest? No; they are met by the conclusive 

 answer that it was an official act done in the 

 performance of a duty required by the statute. 

 Is there any reason why this outrage may not 

 be repeated at the next or any future election ? 

 If four thousand men can be arrested in one 

 day upon the affidavit of one man, the entire 

 legal majority of either party might be wiped 

 out in any city of this Union by supervisors 

 bold enough to take the responsibility of such 

 monstrous action. 



u My grievance is not that this was done by 

 a Republican official. My objection is that it 

 can be done by any official whatever. I should 

 protest just as earnestly against it if it had 

 been the action of a Democratic supervisor, 

 under a Democratic administration. It simply 

 goes to prove what I have already said, that 

 there is no safety and can be no safety for per- 

 sonal liberty when the fountiiin of power is 

 not in the people, but resides in a centralized 

 government. The fact that despotism is the 

 inevitable result of centralized power is as old 

 as the story of the human race. The com- 

 plaints of citizens at a distance from the cen- 

 tral power are rarely heard ; but where the 

 power to redress grievances resides at home, 

 where men live and move among their fel- 

 low-citizens, grievances can not long survive. 

 There is no more striking proof of this fact 

 than the manner in which the Tweed ring, 

 who were the creators of whatever frauds 

 occurred in the years 1868, 1869, and 1870, 

 was utterly broken up and its members con- 

 signed to prison and to exile. The very judges 

 who connived at their atrocities were the first 

 to feel the popular indignation, and were driv- 

 en in disgrace from the bench into obscurity, 

 from which they can never emerge." 



Mr. Hazelton of Wisconsin : " Mr. Chairman, 

 there are three propositions, sir, involved in 

 these amendments. The first in order, which 

 provides for the elimination of the restrictions 

 placed upon the jury-box by sections 820 and 

 821 of the Revised Statues, I support with all 

 my heart. I support it because it opens the 

 jury-box to the intelligence of the South, 

 brings it within that constitutional principle 

 which permits the citizen to be tried by his 

 peers, and places it where it ought to stand in 

 our country, open to every citizen ordinarily 

 eligible to pass upon a question of fact in the 

 courts of the land. 



' The next proposition, Mr. Chairman, is one 

 which the American people will repudiate at 

 sight. It is to make the jury-box of our coun- 

 try a political jury-box. It is to select one juror 

 from one political party and the next from an- 

 other political party, who are to constitute 

 thus made up a jury to try the great questions 

 which shall arise in the administration of jus- 

 tice in the future of our country. It is revolu- 

 tionary and impracticable. Such a system, eir, 

 will poison the very fountains of justice and 

 undermine and destroy the settled law of ages. 



To state the proposition is to condemn it, and 

 I discuss it no further. 



"The third proposition strikes down at a 

 blow twenty sections of the statutes, compris- 

 ing those election laws which constitute to- 

 day the safeguards of the ballot-box and the 

 muniments of liberty. They are all that can 

 protect and keep pure the ballot-box in many 

 States of the Union, and especially in the great 

 city of New York. And I tell the gentleman 

 from New York [Mr. Hewitt] in all fairness 

 that- there never has been an instance where 

 any honest voter has been deprived of the ex- 

 ercise of the elective franchise by the enforce- 

 ment of any one of those laws, and I challenge 

 any man on this floor to show an instance 

 where any man has been deprived of his rights 

 by those great safeguards of our Govern- 

 ment." 



Mr. Hewitt of New York : " I instance Peter 

 Coleman, by the decision of Judge Blatchford, 

 which I hold in my hand." 



Mr. Hazelton : " Now, sir, who asks for this 

 great change ; whence comes the demand for 

 these amendments? Do the one million vo- 

 ters of the black race in the South ask for tins 

 legislation? Not one of them, sir. Does the 

 demand come from that sentiment that carried 

 the Government through the storm and shock 

 of war and laid its foundations anew in the 

 principles of liberty? No, sir. "Where, then, 

 does the voice come from? Louisiana wants 

 it ; and her regular political diet has been for 

 the last ten years fraud, intimidation, and 

 blood. Alabama wants it, and upon that 

 declaration of her leading citizens that the ex- 

 ercise of the elective franchise by the black 

 man is a crime against American liberty. 

 South Carolina wants it also ; and the gentle- 

 man from that State [Mr. Aiken] only the other 

 day boasted on this floor that as a matter of re- 

 crimination they were in South Carolina now 

 visiting back upon the Republicans, upon the 

 black men, this whole scheme of the tissue 

 ballot." 



Mr. Aiken : " You are sorry the chickens 

 are coming home to roost, are you ? " 



Mr. Hazelton : " If you tell them a man's 

 right is struck down in South Carolina, they 

 will answer you that the North sent down 

 awhile ago a lot of carpet-baggers. If you say 

 that crimes are committed there against civili- 

 zation, against humanity, the answer is, ' Why. 

 you sent carpet-baggers down to rule over us.' 

 Now, the gentleman from South Carolina and 

 no man has a higher respect for that gentle- 

 man than I have says that because, away 

 back, some Republican was elected by tissue 

 ballots, now the thing had come home to 

 roost." 



Mr. Whitthorne of Tennessee : " Mr. Chair- 

 man, fax above party and far above the love I 

 bear the section in which I was born is my at- 

 tachment to a republican form of government ; 

 and whatever else may happen in the future 

 of this country, I trust the inheritance of a free 



