EGYPT. 



ELECTION LAWS. 



321 



shirk it. He says, in justification of his course : 

 " The people up here would reason thus if I at- 

 tempted to leave : ' You came up here, and, had 

 you not come, we should have some of us got 

 away to Cairo, but we trusted in you to extri- 

 cate us; we suffered and are suffering great 

 privations, in order to hold the town. Had 

 you not come, we should have given in at once 

 and obtained pardou ; now we can, after our 

 obstinate defense, expect no mercy from the 

 Mahdi, who will avenge on us all the blood 

 that has been spilled around Khartoum. You 

 have taken our money and promised to repay 

 us. All this goes for naught if you quit us ; it 

 is your bounden duty to stay by us, and to 

 share our fate. If the British Government de- 

 serts us, that is no reason for you to do so after 

 our having stood by you.' I declare positively, 

 and once for all, that I will not leave the Sou- 

 dan until every one who wants to go down is 

 given the chance to do so, unless a government 

 is established which relieves me of the charge. 

 Therefore, if any emissary or letter comes up 

 here ordering me to come down, I will not 

 obey it, but will stay here, and fall with the 

 town, and run all risks." 



On page 314 he formulates the position thus : 

 " It may be turned as one likes, three prominent 

 and undeniable facts exist: her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment refused to help Egypt with respect to 

 the Soudan, refused to let Egypt help herself, 

 and refused to allow any other power to help 

 her ; this can not be disputed or explained away. 

 Lord Dufferin's dispatch was, ' Hands off.' 

 The resignation of Cherif was the prohibition 

 of allowing Egypt to help herself. This tardy 

 succor under pressure, and Baring's dispatch, 

 established the unwillingness to help." But, 

 then, Gordon knew of this unwillingness of 

 Mr. Gladstone in the beginning, and he under- 

 took to brave it. Then comes the persistent 

 appeal for Zebehr to be sent up to him a bold, 

 bad man, whose recent arrest is ample proof 

 of the wisdom of the Government in refusing 

 to let him go. 



On the 22d of November, 1884, he says the 

 present state up to date is : " We have had pass- 

 ing through the hospital 242 wounded. We 

 have had some 1,800 to 1,900 killed between 

 17th March and 22d November. The Arab 

 camps are about five miles from the city." The 

 last act, so far as is known, is an entry, Dec. 14, 

 and ends thus : " Hard work this, of the expedi- 

 tionary force, and I ask for no more than two 

 hundred men; if they do not come in ten days, 

 the town may fall ; and I have done my best 

 for the honor of our country. Good-by. C. 

 Gr. GORDON. You send me no information, 

 though you have lots of money. 0. G. G." 



In reading his dramatic story of the siege of 

 Khartoum, one can not fail to appreciate the 

 genius of the soldier, but the misapplication of 

 the genius is painfully apparent. The lives of 

 Stewart, Earle, Burnaby, and the thousands 

 who have fallen, are a great price to pay for such 

 a piece of business, and Gordon seems to ap- 

 VOL. xxv. 21 A 



preciate it when he says, " What a farce, if it 

 did not deal with men's lives ! " * 

 ELECTION LAWS. Registration. On Dec. 1, 



1885, the Supreme Court of Ohio declared un- 

 constitutional the registration law recently en- 

 acted by the Legislature for the government of 

 elections in Cincinnati and Cleveland. Edward 

 Daggett, an election -officer in Cincinnati, had 

 been arrested for receiving the vote of a person 

 who was a duly qualified voter, except that in 

 consequence of absence from the city he had 

 not been registered before the day of election, 

 as required by the registration law. The Su- 

 preme Court set aside the law and ordered the 

 discharge of Daggett. The opinion, which is 

 reported in 43 Ohio State Reports, was writ- 

 ten by Judge Atherton, and concurred in by 

 three of his colleagues. Judge Mcllvaiue did 

 not take part in the decision. 



The Court admits that the Legislature has 

 the power to pass a reasonable and proper regis- 

 tration law. "It is competent for the Legis- 

 lature," says the opinion, " under the general 

 powers of legislation granted to it by the Con- 

 stitution, to provide for a general registration 

 of voters, and to make the fact of registry a 

 condition to the exercise of the right of vot- 

 ing. The power being conceded, the Legisla- 

 ture is supposed to know best the wants of 

 the State in that regard, and it is not for the 

 courts to question the wisdom of making such 

 enactments. Registration is one of the modes in 

 which purity in elections may be attained, and 

 every honest and qualified voter has an interest 

 in securing the integrity of the ballot and ex- 

 cluding the ballots of the dishonest and un- 

 qualified. Every honest voter is as much in- 

 jured by the reception of a fraudulent vote as 

 by the exclusion of his own, and it makes but 

 little difference to him whether his vote is 

 wrongfully excluded or completely neutralized 

 by the ballot of a person unqualified. Among 

 the safeguards that we deem most efficacious to 

 prevent fraud, insure integrity at the polls, and 

 enable the honest and qualified elector to exert 

 his just influence and control the result, is a 

 wise system of registration ; and we are satis- 

 fied that it is within the constitutional province 

 of the Legislature to enact a wise registration 

 law, that, without in any way abridging the 

 rights of qualified electors, or adding any un- 

 lawful qualifications to the voter, may secure 

 the purity of the election by a registry law so 

 framed as to be a reasonable regulation of the 

 mode of exercising a constitutional right. . . . 

 But while the Legislature has full power to 

 regulate the right to vote, it has no constitu- 

 tional power to restrain or abridge the right, or 

 unnecessarily to impede its free exercise. Under 

 the pretense of regulation, the right of suffrage 



* On the 12th of March Parliament voted a grant to the 

 family of Gen. Gordon, consisting of a brother and two sis- 

 ters, of the sum of 20,000. In order to perpetuate his mem- 

 ory, a committee has met in London, composed of the most 

 distinguished men of that city, to propose the construction of 

 a hospital at Port Said, to be known as the "General Gordon 

 Hospital." 



