CONGRESS. (NOTEWORTHY ELECTION CASES.) 



171 



in saying that it will no longer be bound by the 

 long-time agreement made under other conditions, 

 and made desirable by other surroundings or made 

 by other generations of men. 



'"' Look at this case in 1850, and what is the 

 situation? We were then a weak nation of 23,- 

 000,000 people. Only two years before we had 

 acquired our Pacific coast, or the California por- 

 tion of it. We owned nothing beyond. There was 

 no Alaska for us; we had no coastwise trade. 

 Now our coastwise traffic is measured by millions 

 of tonnage. Then 10,000 families would have 

 been all that could be found in all that Pacific 

 region. Now we have three great States. Then 

 there was poverty there; now their wealth is enu- 

 merated by billions of dollars. Then there was 

 no commerce except the trader in hides and furs; 

 now the commerce of that coast reaches hundreds 

 of millions of dollars annually. I say that the 

 conditions have so changed, I say that our neces- 

 sities have so changed, 1 say that our interests are 

 so great as to demand that the people of this 

 generation will not longer be bound by the barrier 

 that was interposed by another generation half a 

 century ago." 



Noteworthy Election Cases. Probably noth- 

 ing connected with the session was of such sen- 

 sational interest as the contest over the admis- 

 sion of Brigham H. Roberts as a Representative 

 from Utah. The matter had been discussed 

 throughout the country long before the Congress 

 met, and public opinion was strongly against ad- 

 mitting him to the House or at least strongly in 

 favor of expelling him, as a polygamist, from 

 membership. The main difference of opinion in 

 Congress was as to the method of excluding him 

 whether he should be allowed a seat at all, or 

 admitted and then expelled. The special com- 

 mittee appointed to consider his case reported two 

 resolutions, Jan. 23, 1900. The majority resolu- 

 tion was in favor of refusal to admit: 



" Resolved, That under the facts and circum- 

 stances of this case, Brigham H. Roberts, Repre- 

 sentative-elect from the State of Utah, ought not 

 to have or hold a seat in the House of Representa- 

 tives, and that the seat to which he was elected 

 is hereby declared vacant." 



The minority resolution was in favor of admis- 

 sion and subsequent expulsion: 



" Resolved, That Brigham H. Roberts, having 

 been duly elected a Representative in the Fifty- 

 sixth Congress from the State of Utah, with the 

 qualifications requisite for admission to the House 

 as such, is entitled, as a constitutional right, to 

 take the oath of office prescribed for members- 

 elect, his status as a polygamist, unlawfully co- 

 habiting with plural wives, affording constitu- 

 tional ground for expulsion, but not for exclusion 

 from the House. 



" And if the House shall hold with us and swear 

 in Mr. Roberts as a member, we shall, as soon as 

 recognition can be had, offer a resolution to expel 

 him as a polygamist, unlawfully cohabiting with 

 plural wives." 



The contest of opinion on the course to be taken 

 was very sharp, as a constitutional question was 

 involved. In advocating exclusion, Mr. Taylor, 

 of Ohio, who was in charge of the majority reso- 

 lution, argued that Mr. Roberts was ineligible to 

 membership, on the ground that Utah had been 

 admitted into the Union with a condition against 

 polygamy; that the Edmunds law denied not 

 only the right of suffrage, but even the title to 

 hold office, to a polygamist; and that, as the 

 claimant was a notorious violator of the law of 

 the land, the House might of its own inherent 

 authority declare him ineligible. In answer to the 



plea made in behalf of Roberts, that he come 

 within the constitutional qualification to wit, 

 " No person shall be a Representative who shall 

 not have attained the age of twenty-five years, and 

 been seven years a citizen of the United States, 

 and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant 

 of that State in which he shall be chosen " Mr. 

 Taylor argued that the constitutional clause was 

 not complete, and aimed only at stating certain 

 grounds of ineligibility that required legal defini- 

 tion, whereas other and graver objections might 

 be taken for granted as in their nature disqualify- 

 ing. He stated the case in his opening speech as 

 follows : 



" The majority of the committee are fixed in 

 their conviction that in view of the status of 

 Brigham H. Roberts, not because of any moral 

 question that may be involved, but because of 

 the question of governmental right involved, in 

 view of his defiant violation of law, in view of his 

 denial of the validity and supremacy of the law 

 of the land, has no right to take his seat in this 

 body, and should be excluded therefrom. 



" The minority, on the other hand, attaching 

 more value to the husk than to the ear, seeming to 

 conceive that the shadow is to be more taken care 

 of than the substance, declare that we must let 

 him go through the hollow form, the sacred form 

 of taking an oath, and then expel him; to rob 

 him of that which is substantial,^ but that we 

 must not deprive him of that which is a mere 

 shadow. They say, ' You may come up and enter 

 our front door, in order that we may kick you out 

 of the back door; but we cheerfully declare, with 

 the Constitution before us, that we can not kick 

 you down the front steps.' 



" We believe that that is absolutely untenable 

 as a proposition of law and absolutely unsup- 

 ported by precedents. 



" I want to make these preliminary statements 

 respecting that. First, upon the doctrine of ex- 

 clusion. 



" The language of the constitutional provision, 

 the history of its framing in the Constitutional 

 Convention, and the context clearly show, what- 

 ever else may have been true, that it did not 

 intend to prevent this disqualification for crime or 

 for defiance of the Constitution and the laws. 

 The overwhelming authority of text-book writers 

 on the Constitution and of judicial declarations 

 on the subject harmonizes with this view. The 

 House of Representatives, in all the years of its 

 existence, has never denied that it had the power 

 and the right to exclude. 



" In many instances it has excluded for dis- 

 loyalty and for crime. In 1862 Congress passed 

 the test oath act, \vhich in effect disqualified hun- 

 dreds of thousands of American citizens, and 

 thousands of Representatives in this body went to 

 the bar of the House under a disqualification that 

 was not removed until they took the test oath, an 

 oath substantial in its character and superadded 

 to the constitutional oath. And this very House 

 in 1869 adopted a general rule of order providing 

 that no person should be sworn in as a member 

 against whom the objection was made that he 

 was not entitled to take the test oath. 



" On the proposition of expulsion I present these 

 general observations: That the ablest lawyers 

 from the beginning of the Government down to 

 this case, but of course not including it, have in- 

 sisted that neither the House of Representatives 

 nor the Senate has the right to expel a man unless 

 the thing for which he was expelled occurred in 

 connection with his election or while he was a 

 member, and was inconsistent with his trust or 

 duty as a member. 



