Appendix to the Congressional Globe: Containing Speeches, Reports, and the Laws of the Second Session Forty-First Congress Page: 400

                                
400
APPENDIX TO THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
[May 27,
Ho. of Reps.
Federal Police in State Elections—Mr, Cox.
41st Cong....2d Sess.
fails to perform an act, he is allowed to vote ;
and the officer who fails to give effect to his
vote, on presentation of an_ex parte affidavit of
the facts, is liable to $500 to the aggrieved
party! This sum, no'less, is to be recovered
in the old common law action on the case.
Costs and counsel fees also, and fine and im-
prisonment ! Now, as to the civil action, one
familiar with the Constitution might infer that
" in suits at common law," like actions on the
case, " where the value in controversy shall
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury''
should be • preserved according to the seventh
article of the Constitution! But the preten-
tious wiseacres who framed this bill wish
to preserve the Constitution by breaking it!
They upset jury trial to punish voters—not of
their party! By the third section they con-
sider, first, an offer to do as the act done ;
second, give effect to the deed; and third,
then provide a civil remedy; based on an ex
parte affidavit of the plaintiff, and command
judge and jury to find at least $500 damages.
The jury can find no less. Their verdict is thus
limited. They are not jurors; but Congress
is, by this law! Was there ever such blind-
ness and idiocy ? Is this preserving jury trial ?
Is this preserving public liberty, or its great
safeguard ?
6. This bill discriminates in favor of the
black and against the white.
The fifteenth amendment is understood by
the House. The power to '' enforce " it is also
understood. What is "appropriate legisla-
tion '' for its enforcement is not so well under-
stood.
If you turn to section five of the bill you will
see that it allows lunderanco, control, and iu-
timidation of a white voter; but it makes it a
crime to hinder, control, or intimidato a black
citizen. Aside from the general and loose
words of this penal statute, is it not strange that
again in the twenty-third section there is a
similar provision? In spite of the fifteenth
amendment to the Constitution against dis-
crimination this bill does discriminate, and in
favor of the black and against the white. This
alone is enough to condemn this bill. But as
this has been elaborated by my friend, [Mr.
Beck,] I pass to the clauso which compels
State officers to enforce Federal laws.
6. In the second section these State officers
are compelled to act as Federal agents, and
a penalty fixed for their non-performance.
This is a scction coming from the old fugitive
slave law, and is in defiance of tho decisions of
the courts.
7. I would call attention to tho fact referred
to by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Kebb]
that this bill provides all through for lawyers—
shysters, he designated them—pettifoggers,
who get counsel fees at pleasure out of the
Treasury for hunting up these cases. It taxes
our people for this dospicable business, at the
pleasure of the ruling powers. But this is not
its worst feature. The crowning odium of the
bill is that it provides for spies and informers;
and this is the odium of history. Informers
are tho meanest class of men ever put under
the microscope for rational dissection.
I have said that the informer is the odium
of history. lSo he has been in all ages. This
bill is to be vitalized with his leprous pres-
ence. The learned gentleman [Mr. Bingham]
is familiar with the character; its portrait has
been drawn by a master hand. The informer
appeared in many a piece before he was pre-
sented in this bill. He has assailed with his
lucrative perjury many an innocent man in
other lands; he is as old as the "melancholy
scenes and murderous plots of the meal-tub
and the liye Houseas old as Titus Oates, the
"common voucher of base accusation." His
detestable character was depicted by the great
Irish orator. "I have heard," said Curran in
Finney's ease, '-'of assassination by sword, by
pistol, and by dagger; but here is a wretch who
would dip the evangelists in blood if he thinks
he has not sworn his victim to death, without
mercy and without end;" and then bursting
into an indignant flame of invective he makes
this picture of the hateful dramatis persona
of this bill; it is familiar to the schoolboy in
his declamations, but it is fit to be here repro-
duced ?
" But the learned gentleman is further pleased to
say that the traverser has charged tho Government
with tho encouragement of informers. This, gentle-
men, is another small fact that you are to deny at the
hazard of your souls, and upon thesolemnity of your
oaths. You aro upon your oaths to say to tho sister
oountry, that the Government of Ireland uses no such
abominable instruments of destruction as informers.
Let mo ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in
my hearing, when in tho face of this audionce, you
aro called upon to give a verdict that every man of
you know by tho testimony of your own eyes to bo
utterly and absolutely false? Ispeak not now of the
public proclamation of informers with a promise of
secrecy and of extravagant reward; I speak not of
the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so
often transferred from tho table to the dock, and from
the dock to tho pillory; I speak of what your own
eyes liavo soon day after day, during tho course of
this commission, from tho box where you are now
sitting; the number of horrid miscreants who avowed
upon their oaths that they had come from tho very
seat of Government—from the castle, whero they had
beon worked upon by fear of death and tho hopes of
compensation to give evideneo against their fellows
that tho mild and. wholesome councils of this Gov-
ernment aro holden over theso catacombs of living
death, whero the wretch that is buried a man lies
till his heart has timo to fostor and dissolvo, and is
then dug up witness.
"Is this fancy, or is it fact? Ilavo you not seen
him, after his resurrection from that tomb, alter
having boon dug out of the region of death and cor-
ruption, mako his appoaranco upon tho table the
living imago of lifo and death, and tho supreme arbi-
ter of both ? Ilavo you not marked when ho entered,
how tho stormy wave of tho multitude retired at his
approach? Have you not marked how tho human
heart bowed to tho supremacy of his power in the
undissembled homage of deferential horror? How
his glance, liko tho lightning of heaven, seomed to
rive the body of the accused, and mark it lor'tho
grave, while his voice warnod tho devoted wretch of
woo and death; a death which no innoeenoe can
osoapo, no art eludo, no force resist, no antidote pre-
vont; thore was an antidote—a juror's oath, hut even
that adamantino chain that bound tho integrity ol
man to the throne of eternal justioo is solved and
melted in the breath that issues from tho informer's
mouth; conscienco swings from her moorings, and
the appalled and afl'rightod juror consults his own
safety in tho surrender of tho victim:
" * Kt qua* sibi quisquo timobat—
Unius in miseri exitium oonversa tulore.' "
And yet, Mr. Speaker, in the faeo of this
picture and history, this bill is full of this most
atrocious, infernal system of informing. The
bill, in very fact, is the product of lawyer
craft 
Mr. DAVIS. If my colleague will allo«
mo, I would ask him in what section of this bill
there is any provision for informers ?
Mr. COX. If 'he gentleman will givo me
time I will show him. True, there is no such
wordas "informers." Certainly it is not used;
but 
Mr. DAVIS. And I assert that there is no
provision for informers in this bill.
Mr. COX. I will show the gentleman where
it is. The second, third, and fourth sections
make such provision. Those sections do not
call them "informers," but they are in effect
informers, because money is given to all who
prosecute. In the second section there is a
forfeit of $500 t.o the aggrieved; is there not?
There is an action on the case ; is there not?
Full costs and counsel fees; are there not? If
this is not payment to the prosecutor and an
inducement to prosecute, what is?
What does the learned gentleman from New
York [Mr. Davis] mean by an informer? Does
he mean what I mean? The man who gives
information and prosecutes for money, for filthy
lucre—thafeman, I say, is an informer. That
is what is meant by an informer under our rev-
enue laws; is it not? That is the definition
given bythe courts; is it not? But the inform-
ers under the internal revenue law are saints
in heaven compared with the horde of hungry
office-seekers and interested partisans who,
inflamed by zealotry, avarice, and rancor, will
be enabled by this bill to go South and North,
and play the part of Federal police-spies and
informers—pimps from " the seat of Govern-
ment"—miscreants from "the castle"—sent
forth to stifle the free voice of the people in
their elections.
Will the gentleman from New York, [Mr.
Davis,] if still unbelieving, read the third sec-
tion? There, too, is a penalty of $500 to the
aggrieved, and an action and costs and coun-
sel fees. So in the fourth section.
I could also show that by lawyer craft or
some other craft no provision is made in this
bill to punish the informer for bearing false
witness against his neighbor, which this bill
instigates and pays for. Is this an oversight?
If so, it is too late to correct it. We must
take the whole bill or none.
I might show also here the odious provision
of the twentieth section as to presumptive evi-
dence ; the presumption of guilt, and then tho
heaping, in a cowardly way, of the onus pro-
bandi on the defendant to show that he ia inno-
cent.
I pass that and other enormities and deform-
ities to speak of the last point.
8. By this bill, as I have shown, you propose
to call in the Army and the militia as a posse
comitatus to assist in carrying out your plans
of conquering the free ballot. I perceive in
these plans a conflict of jurisdiction that will
inevitably come between the Federal Govern-
ment anil the States if this bill becomes a law.
Sir, I mean by this no threat. But when gen-
tlemen talk so glibly about going to New York
and using the power of the Federal Govern-
ment to regulate elections there in their inter-
est, and against the popular will, as they have
iu the South, I do not know and I cannot say
how such assaults upon the freedom of that
grpat city will be repelled. I only know that,
in some bold, manly way befitting a great peo-
ple they will be repelled. Make sure of thai,
gentlemen. You cannot safely intrench upon
the freedom of the ballot. You have debased
its mode of exercise here and in the South, but
you cannot control it by Federal force for Radi-
cal purposes in New York. Your enactments
for this end are born of partisan malice and
unchristian spite. They do not rise to the dig-
nity of law in its highest sense. They do not
have " their seat in the bosom of God," nor is
theirvoice "theharmonyoftheworld." Would
you forget the first element of law—volition?
It is illustrated, in free countries, by .the bal-
lot; yet by pretending to throw safeguards
around it you smother its expression. You
would guard it so closely that it has not air to
breathe. Your embrace is its death. What
is your pretext? Is it the violence at our
elections in New York? Do you not know—
if not, I will tell you—that the voting in New
York city is carried on in perfect peace? All
testify to this who have been in New York on
election day. It is so quiet you would not
know it to be election day. Gentlemen talk
here about elections in New York as if they
were held under the influence of whisky, bribes,
vice, &c. Now, the simple fact is, that in or
about the room where the polls are held you
see no crowds and no rows, as you do in Illi-
nois, in Ohio, or in New England. There is
no drunkenness ; you see one or two policemen
there to prevent a possible trouble. The bal-
lots are placed in the various glass boxes. Any
one can see his ballot fall like the poetical
"snow-flake." If there has been fraud here-
tofore in the city of New York, the Republican
police, which has had the supervisory function
over the registration, had as much to do with
it as any one of any party. And such frauds
to some extent are incidental to all great cities
of diverse interests, where men are absorbed
in the hurried pursuits of wealth and luxury .
I repeat that laws like this will be inoperative