Mr. SHELLABARGER. Now, that is a very pertinent question, and one I would as lief answer now as at any other time, and I will answer in a way which it seems to me will commend itself to the convictions and approval of the Gentfrom Massachusetts; that if it were a question of fraud relating to the admission of a vote, then it would be a question to be contested on the merits; but it it bea fraud or a conspiracy or a blunderand observe, Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that it was either, it is utterly immaterial for the purposes of this case which it was, it. comes to the same thingibis not only competent for this House, but it is the duty of this House, to see by a count and ins cction of all the legal returns of votes which are before Congress, whether those judges that met atrGettysburg assumed judicial powers which they did not possess and threw out the legal returns of a part of the townships or military precincts of the counties of Bedford and Adams; and if they did violate the law and assumed powers which did not belong to them, and met there after having rejected enough of the legal returnsof the townships to change the result and invited Somerset to come in, then I say, Somerset did right in not. coming in. This rejection of legal returnsisshown by the very papers on which the majority rely to make ontt cir primafaczc case, and it is not going into the merits to find the blunder or fraud when the appear on the very paper which Mr. Coffrot. relies on to make out his case. His case shows the illegality of this alleged rima facie title paper. I say, that when the conspiracy or fraud or blunder consists in arbitrarily rejecting part of the votes of Bedford and Adams counties, that is a conspiracy or fraud or blunder into which we are bound to look, because the papers themselves disclose it and it in turn invalidates the papers which it taints and here is just where we part. My friend insists that we shall shut oureyes and be stone blind here asto what is the truth in reference to the number of votes excluded by the returns and this although the papers themselves show the ille l exclusion.