to hold and exercise the
office to which he shall by such return be declared elected."

Whatever doubt may have been expressed or felt whether this statute
applied to the canvassers of a presidential election, or whether the
words _prima facie_ really meant _prima facie_, or whether "courts of
justice," and "civil officers," included the Electoral Commission and
the two Houses of Congress, there can be no doubt that "the returns of
the elections thus made and promulgated" do not include returns
canvassed without jurisdiction, or made under cover of pretended
affidavits which the returning officers themselves caused to be forged.

But, passing from this view of the subject, although this is sufficient
to dispose of Brewster's pretensions, let us suppose a stronger
case--the strongest supposable--that of a State Legislature directing
not only the manner in which electors shall be appointed, but directing
also that the certificate of the State canvassers shall be conclusive
evidence that the State has appointed in the manner directed.

Because the Constitution provides that electors shall be appointed by
the State, in the manner directed by its Legislature, it is thence
inferred that the State must furnish the evidence of the appointment,
and of course that none can be received except that which the State has
furnished. And this is said to be the true States-rights doctrine. It is
a strange sight, that of gentlemen clamoring for State rights who will
not allow the people of Louisiana and South Carolina to take care of
themselves; who are even now debating at Washington whether they shall
not order new elections in those States, or which of two State
governments they shall put up and which put down, and who since the war
have treated the South as if no States were there, parceling it into
military districts, and denying recognition until constitutional
amendments were ratified. Their assertion of the conclusiveness of false
and fraudulent canvassers' certificates, on the pretense of upholding
State rights, should seem to be thrown in our faces by way of bravado,
unless it be meant, indeed, for burlesque masking hypocrisy. But if the
sight were not strange, and those gentlemen had been all along as
careful of the rights of the States as they are of their own places,
there is nothing in the claim for the conclusiveness of canvassers'
certificates which receives support from the doctrine of State rights.
On the contrary