CONGRESS, UNITED STATES (ELECTORAL COMMISSION). 



187 



rote shall be counted, it is competent for them 

 to receive evidence furnished by the State her- 

 self in reference to the certificate her Governor 

 may have given. 



" Your honors perceive at once the wide dif- 

 ference in the two cases; and I respectfully 

 submit, in connection with that proposition, 

 that if the power does not exist in the two 

 Houses of Congress as a primary and original 

 power separately to take testimony going be- 

 hind the certificate, then it must exist in the 

 State to correct its own certificate, or impeach 

 it for fraud or falsehood ; or else we may be 

 inevitably tied to an accident or mistake, and 

 a presidential election may turn upon a cer- 

 tificate which is known to all the world to be 

 an accident, a falsehood, or a fraud, which can 

 neither be impeached by the State that gave it 

 because of fraud, accident, or mistake, nor 

 interfered with in any way by the Federal 

 Government to which it is addressed, but must 

 be a substantial and perpetual truth in the 

 presence of convincing evidence that it is an 

 active and living lie. 



" In the case of the State of Florida, taking 

 np the second proposition, the State herself, 

 after the meeting of the electors, ascertaining 

 that this certificate given by Governor Stearns 

 was given either in mistake or fraud, and 

 founded upon an irregular and illegal canvass 

 of the votes according to the laws of Florida, 

 by her Legislature passed a law directing an- 

 other canvass to be made. But she did not 

 pass that law, even, until she had appealed to 

 her judicial tribunals to interpret the laws 

 previously existing and relating to the subject. 

 Having appealed to those tribunals to inter- 

 pret these laws, and in the mandamus case 

 having received from her tribunal of last resort 

 an opinion giving construction to those pre- 

 viously-existing laws, by which opinion it be- 

 came apparent that the returning board had 

 transcended its legal duties and jurisdiction 

 and made a return which was erroneous under 

 the law, her Legislature then, on the basis of 

 that opinion, directed another canvass of the 

 vote to be made in accordance with the judi- 

 cial construction of the law. When that can- 

 vass was made and returned to the Legislature, 

 her Legislature passed another act on the basis 

 of that canvass, declaring that the parties to 

 whom the certificate had been issued by Gov- 

 ernor Stearns had not been appointed, and des- 

 ignating the persons who had been chosen as 

 the agents of the State to speak her voice in 

 the electoral college. But she has gone further. 

 A quo warranto was issued against these par- 

 ties who assumed to exercise the electoral 

 office under the certificate granted by Gov- 

 ernor Stearns, and that quo warranto having 

 come before the judicial tribunals, they, in the 

 exercise of a jurisdiction given to them by the 

 State laws of Florida, decided that the men 

 who had received that certificate were not 

 elected, but that other men were elected ; and 

 those other men so elected received a certifi- 



cate from the Governor of Florida, and in the 

 execution of the office to which they had been 

 appointed by the people in the previous No- 

 vember discharged their duties as electors, and 

 voted on the day designated by the law of the 

 United States. 



"Now, then, may it please your honors, you 

 have from that State this evidence evidence 

 from her Legislature, evidence from her Ex- 

 ecutive, evidence from her judicial tribunals 

 that the electors to whose vote we object were 

 not the duly appointed electors of Florida ; 

 and through all the departments of her govern- 

 ment Florida therefore comes to the United 

 States Congress and begs that you (for you 

 now exercise that power, and it is vested in 

 you) will protect her people from the enormity 

 of having their voice similated by parties never 

 appointed to speak in her behalf. Is not that 

 competent evidence to go before the House of 

 Congress? If it is not, and if Congress itself 

 cannot, in the exercise of its original power, go 

 forward and inquire into the manner and due 

 election of these electors, then you have placed 

 the whole Government and Administration of 

 the United States in the power of any Executive 

 who may issue his certificate to a party never 

 voted for at all, while the unanimous vote of 

 the State may have been in favor of another 

 party. You may take the whole population of 

 Florida, and although they may never have 

 voted for A and B at all, and though the vote 

 may have been unanimous in favor of other 

 parties, if the Governor chooses to issue his 

 certificate to A and B, that certificate becomes 

 binding upon Congress, and may cast a presi- 

 dential election. If this be the law, may it 

 please your honors, then who will 'deliver us 

 from the body of this death ? ' It is beyond 

 the power of Congress to grant relief; it is be- 

 yond the power of this tribunal. 



"I find that I have consumed, may it please 

 your honors, more than the time allotted me." 



The President: "The side that has been 

 opened has spoken one hour and twenty min- 

 utes. We will now hear the other side." 



Mr. Matthews : " Mr. President and gen- 

 tlemen of the commission : What are we 

 engaged in doing? What is this commis- 

 sion organized to effect? It is, to assist in 

 that business which under the Constitution 

 is called counting the electoral vote. This 

 is all the power that Congress has on that 

 subject. It makes no difference who is to do 

 it. The debate up to the passage of this act 

 was whether the President of the Senate 

 should do it, or whether the two Houses of 

 Congress should participate with him in it ; 

 and a variety of opinions, from the year 1800 

 up to now, has been entertained and expressed 

 by distinguished statesmen on both sides as to 

 where the power was lodged. But it is im- 

 material now. The question is not, Who does 

 itf but, What is it that is to le done? 

 ' " It was said by the objectors on our side 

 I think it cannot be controverted that count- 



