n citizens become
slaves. The nature of the question to be determined, the absence of
any positive law to shut out pertinent evidence, the impolicy of such
an exclusion, its injustice, and the impossibility of maintaining it,
if by any fatality it were for a time established--all these
considerations go to make and fortify the position, that whatever body
has authority to decide how a State has voted, has authority to draw
information from all the sources of knowledge. The superstitious
veneration of a certificate, which would implicitly believe it, and
shut the eye to other evidence, is as revolting as that of the poor
negro in the swamps of Congo, who bows down before his fetich. The
idolaters, mentioned in Scripture, who took a tree out of the wood,
burned one part of it, hewed the other, and then worshiped it, were
only prototypes of the men of our day, who bow down before a piece of
paper, signed in secret fourteen hundred miles away, asserting as true
what they know or believe to be false.

It were useless, therefore, to inquire how far the laws of a State
make the certificate of a board of canvassers or of returns conclusive
evidence of the result of an election held in the State. It maybe
admitted that the Supreme Court of Louisiana, for example, has denied
its own competency to go behind the certificate of the board; but even
that decision is entitled to no respect, being made in contravention
of an express provision of the State statute, as the dissenting
opinion of one of the judges clearly shows. Every other State of the
Union, save perhaps one, has decided that the certificate is
impeachable, even in a case where the statute declares that the
canvassers shall "determine what persons have been elected." The
opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, an extract from which is
given in the Appendix, states and decides the point with clearness and
unanswerable force.

If what has been said be founded in sound reason, the two Houses of
Congress, when inquiring what votes are to be counted, have the right
to go behind the certificate of any officers of a State, to ascertain
who have and who have not been appointed electors. The evidence which
these Houses will receive upon such inquiry it is for them and them
only to prescribe, in the performance of their highest functions and
the exercise of their sincerest judgment.

THE REMEDY FOR A WRONG COUNT

is the remaining question. Hitherto, I have endeavored to s