been re-enacted in many of our laws. That
is the feeling which lay behind those statutes which we enacted after
our slaves were freed, for the making of elections free in the
South; for protecting negroes in the act of voting and preventing
interference with them by the Ku Klux Klan. The Democratic party
strongly objected and objects still to such legislation on the part of
the government, on the ground that the right of regulating elections
belongs to the States and not to the Federal government; which,
constitutionally speaking, before the Fifteenth Amendment at least,
was true. They do not, of course, deny this great old English
principle that elections must be free and must not be intimidated or
controlled by anybody; but, they say, we left the machinery of the
elections in the hands of the States when we adopted the Federal
Constitution; and although at our State elections some of the officers
elected are Federal officers--as, for instance, the President of the
United States, or rather the presidential electors, and members of
Congress--nevertheless, when we adopted the Federal Constitution, the
founders chose to rely for the machinery of a fair and free election
upon the officers of States; so that the Federal government has
nothing to do with it, and has no business to send Federal troops to
the South; and they called such bills the "force" bill. In theory, of
course, those elections were controlled in these bills just as much in
the North as in the South; but there being practically no complaint in
the North that the negroes were not allowed to vote, as a matter of
fact the strength of the Federal government was only invoked in the
Southern States.

"Fines are to be reasonable." You find that principle in all our
constitutions to-day in the clause that there shall be no cruel or
unusual punishments, and that fines shall be proportionate to the
offence; this principle is expressed also in Magna Charta.

Then slander and rape were made criminal at common law; before this
only the church took jurisdiction. Slander Is the imputing of crime to
a person by speech, by word of mouth. If it be a written imputation,
it is libel and not slander. Then in this statute also we find the
first import tax upon wool. The constitutionality of revenue taxes,
duties, or taxes on imports, was once disputed by our parties; one
party denying the constitutional right to impose any tax upon imports
except for the strict purpose of rais