Not long since, at a convention in one of tlie Middle States, assembled for the 

 nomination of State officers, a claimant contested liis opponent's seat on the 

 ground that the would-be occu^jant held it ihroiigh manifest fraud; as, in bal- 

 loting for his rival, the rubber bands which bound togother the name of the 

 candidate were not even removed from the package ; and thus were thev found 

 in the ballot-box: a charge which, it is fair to assume, was true, as the contest- 

 ant gained his seat: and yet no rebuke was heard in that vast assembly, nor was 

 a frown anywhere visible: rather, a broad laugh rolled over that great assembly 

 as ripples the water when a mightv stone is cast into its bosom. 



At this very hour more than fifty citizens of one of our States are behind 

 prison bars for stuffing, at a recent election, the ballot box. A free country can 

 know no higher crime. Less henious would have bee!i the stabbing of the higher 

 functionaries of the State — for such vacancies could readily have been filled. 

 But corrupt the ballot box, give fraud undisputed sway, let unscrupulous men 

 negative by foul means your or my vote, and they are robbing me of a privilege 

 mine by my very birth-right; they are endeavoring to subtract from the State 

 your and my personalitv; they are determined with the defeat of justice to en- 

 throne selfishness and h.tve it monarch ; they are prostituting their j >rivileges to 

 the most ignoble ends, and they are the most bitter and malignant foes of the 

 nation: and for the emoluments connected with position and power would not 

 only impede civilization but wreck the very foundations upon which the grandest 

 civilization rests, and ovei a ruined and prostrate country — stimulated by 

 greed, would mount the throne. The ballot is the heaven permitted palladium 

 of our civil rights. Smite it, and uiankind with a mighty wail will roll back 

 centuries and centuries to awaken in a bitter despotism ^— more bitter because it 

 had lost its power. Smite it, and clique — corporations — trusts — unholy 

 wealth, will soon be found forging fetters heavier and binding them tighter than 

 even a Roman slave ever wore. Smite it, and the government of the people by 

 the people dies — I repeat it, it dies;, and out of its remains a new government 

 will arise whose mission will be to deceive — to filch — to oppress — to slay. 

 no; the ballot must be kept pure and sacred; it must ever glisten with spot- 

 less integrity ; it must not know even the approach of wrong or fraud ; and it 

 must be so firmly enthroned that nothing shall be able to unseat it — palsied be 

 the hand uplifted against it. 



Prosperous America does not live l>ehind fortified castles, but in the breasts 

 of its citizens — or better perhaps, its life under God is in the ballot — and when, 

 therefore, that is surrendered, freedojn is surrendered — and when freedom is 

 surrendered slavery again appears to enter upon its cursed and blackened sway. 

 If need be this truth must be burnt into tlie forel^eads of the people — that any 

 trifling with the Ijallot box is high treason. 



Men talk of plagues visiting this and that eountiy. and our own nation within 

 a few weeks has received a great scare — but what is the advent of cholera or 

 any other withering disease to a dead ballot-box. or an unjust disfranchisement 

 of citizens in a land where the nature, character and execution of its laws de- 

 pend upon the voice of the people! Our loved country can stand the invasion 

 of many scourges as it has in the past, and it can afford to lay upon her solemn 

 altar the lives of a million of her best and nol)lest sons and yet live; but. believe 

 me. the death knell of the Republic shall have been struck when, under any 

 pretext, the ballot-box is assaulted, and its patrons are denied the exercise of 

 the privilege — the grandest civil prerogative in the worhl — the right to vote, 

 and the additional right that the vote be honestly counted. This point in the 

 administration of the State is to be most jealously guarded. The noble coun- 

 try of which we are citizens don't swing, as some suppose, on her mines, be they 

 of coal, silver or gold, nor on her fields, though they be the boundless prairies 

 of the west — nor on her factories or commerce, nor on the ease with which 

 position can be obtained — nor yet on her educational advantages extraordinary 

 as they are, but upon a clean ballot in the hands of justice-loving patrons, who 

 use it in place of the living voice. Keep that inviolate, and the destiny of the 

 nation is in the hands of its varied subjects, and that is where it truly belongs — 

 no centralization, no oligarchy, but the people — always the people. 



One further thought. It should be the aim of every citizen to see that full 

 justice is meted out to every member of the State. It is said in our day crime 



