LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL. 



475 



ment was created by acts of Congress passed 

 in 1870 and 1871, and is now covered by sec- 

 tions 5508 and 5520 of the Revised Statutes of 

 the United States, which are as follow : 



SECTION 5508. If two or more persons conspire to 

 injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in 

 the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privi- 

 lege secured, to him by the Constitution or laws of the 

 United States, or because of his having so exercised 

 the same ; or if two or more persons go in disguise on 

 the highway, or on the premises of another, with in- 

 tent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoy- 

 ment of any right or privilege so secured, they shall 

 be fined not more than five thousand dollars and im- 

 prisoned not more than ten years ; and shall, more- 

 over, be thereafter ineligible to any office, or place of 

 honor, profit, or trust created by the Constitution or 

 laws of the United States. 



SEC. 5520. If two or more persons in any State or 

 Territory conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, 

 or threat^ anv citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, 

 from giving his support or advocacy, in a legal man- 

 ner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully 

 qualified person as an elector for President or Vice- 

 President, or as a member of the Congress of the Uni- 

 ted States ; or to injure any citizen in person or prop- 

 erty on account of such support or advocacy ; each of 

 such persons shall be punished by a fine of not less 

 than five hundred nor more than five thousand dol- 

 lars, or by imprisonment, with or without hard labor, 

 not less than six months nor more than six years, 

 or by both such fine and imprisonment. 



The question was, whether these sections are 

 constitutional, whether Congress has the power 

 to prescribe crimes against the elective fran- 

 chise at an election in a State at which Federal 

 officers are voted for, and to impose punish- 

 icnt for such crimes. The Court decides this 

 luestion in the affirmative. In the opinion, 

 fustice Miller says: "That a government 

 whose essential character is republican, whose 

 "" secutive head and legislative body are both 

 lective, whose most numerous and powerful 

 inch of the legislature is elected by the 

 >ple directly, has no power, by appropriate 

 iws, to secure this election from the influence 

 violence, of corruption, and of fraud, is a 

 reposition so startling as to arrest attention 

 id demand the gravest consideration. If this 

 rovernment is anything more than a mere ag- 

 :egation of delegated agents of other States 

 id governments, each of which is superior 

 the General Government, it must have the 

 >wer to protect the elections on which its 

 stence depends from violence and corrup- 

 ion. If it has not this power, it is left help- 

 33 before the two great natural and historical 

 enemies of all republics, open violence and in- 

 sidious corruption." 



To the argument that, because no express 

 power is delegated to Congress to provide 

 for preventing violence exercised on the voter 

 as a means of controlling his vote, no such 

 law may be enacted by Congress, he replies : 

 "It destroys at one blow, in construing the 

 Constitution of the United States, the doc- 

 trine, universally applied to all instruments of 

 writing, that what is implied is as much a part 

 of the instrument as what is expressed. This 

 principle, in its application to the Constitution 



of the United States, more than to almost any 

 other writing, is a necessity, by reason of the 

 inherent ability to put into words all deriva- 

 tive powersa difficulty which the instrument 

 itself recognizes by conferring on Congress 

 the authority to pass all laws necessary and 

 proper to carry into execution the powers es- 

 pecially granted, and all other powers vested 

 in the Government, or any branch of it, by the 

 Constitution." 



The opinion cites the power of Congress to 

 pass laws to punish theft or robbery of the 

 treasury of the United States, and depreda- 

 tions on the mails, although Congress is not 

 expressly authorized to enact such laws. The 

 contention that the States can pass the neces- 

 sary laws to preserve the purity of elections 

 and protect voters, is met by pointing out the 

 fact that the existence of State laws against 

 counterfeiting coin of the United States has 

 never been held to supersede the acts of Con- 

 gress passed for that purpose, or to justify the 

 United States in failing to enforce its own laws 

 to protect the circulation of the coin which it 

 issues. The Court refers also to the attempts 

 of Congress to protect officers of the Govern- 

 ment in the exercise of their duties in hostile 

 communities, in the nullification difficulties in 

 South Carolina, and in the late war during the 

 troubles growing out of the enforcement of 

 the draft. Justice Miller asks, if it be not 

 doubted that Congress has the power to pro- 

 vide laws for the proper conduct of elections 

 for Representatives in Congress, is such power 

 annulled because an election for State officers 

 is held at the same time and place? and says: 

 "This question answers itself, and it is only 

 because Congress, through long habit and long 

 years of forbearance, has, in deference and 

 respect to the States, refrained from the ex- 

 ercise of these powers, that they are now 

 doubted." 



The Court holds that the fifteenth amend- 

 ment of the Constitution, by its limitation on 

 the power of the States in the exercise of their 

 right to prescribe the qualifications of voters 

 in their election, and by its limitation of the 

 power of the United States over that subject, 

 clearly shows that the right of suffrage was 

 considered to be of supreme importance to the 

 national Government, and was not intended 

 to be left within the exclusive control of the 

 States. The opinion closes as follows : 



In a republican government like ours, where po- 

 litical power is reposed exclusively in representa- 

 tives of the entire body of the people chosen at short 

 intervals by popular elections, the temptations to 

 control these elections by violence and by corruption 

 is a constant source of danger. Such has been the. 

 history of all republics, and though ours has been 

 comparatively free from both these' evils in the past, 

 no lover of his country can shut his eyes to the fear 

 of future danger from both ^ sources. If the recur- 

 rence of such acts as these prisoners stand convicted 

 of, are too common in . one quarter of the country, 

 and give omen of danger from lawless violence, the free 

 use of money in elections, arising from the vast 

 growth of recent wealth in other quarters, presents 



