Mr. WASHBURN, ofIndiana, (contestanLl Mr. Speaker, suffering, as you Will soon per ceive, from the effects of 4 wintQ campaigns in the field, I would gladly have submitted my case upon the evidence and the able report of the committee, were it not that my silence might be interpreted as a want of faith on my gut in the strength and justice of my cause. nowing well, from long acquaintance, the talent and ability of the sitting member, even when thrown in favor of a bad cause, I welL might warn anybody less talented and saga cious than this House to beware of his soph istry. His great talent only makes him the more dangerous when employed in such a we. On one point we are agreed, and that is, that whether my vote be large or small I received the whole loyal vote of the 7th congressional district, and to prove this conclusively, allow me to quote from his answer to my no tice of contest, where, with a boldness characteristic of the man, he says: “ In conclusion, I chargethat you received 137 votes in this congressionaldistrict more than Mr. Lincoln did, showing that instead of being defrauded out of yourvotesyou receivedmorethanyourpartystrenlth (akin: Mr. Lincoln as the standard, whom you will doubtless admit received the enti support of all loyal men." Pape 6, Mia. Doc. No. 1. I need not stop to discuss the legal point so ably presented by the report, as no question is raised by the minority except upon applying the law to the facts. Fraud, when proven, must vitinte the return for that procured by fraud is no return, and whenever in any return a suficient fraud has been shown as to make that re turn uncertain, then the return or the election should be set aside. No honest voter should be disfranchised by any act not his own, nor should the return of any officer be valid when it does not show, the true condition as to how the hem est voters did vote, and I care not whether the act making the return uncertain results from the negligence, willfulness, or fraud of the judges of election, or whether the same has been produced by the interference or fraud of 3rd parties and entirely unknown to the judges. The question to be decided is, does the return express the will of the voters casting their votes at that precinct as shown by the ballots depos ited by them? T he legal presumption is always in favor of the return, but when you have established the fact that it does not express the will of the voters, as shown by the ballots, it must be set aside, and you must O behind the return and give effect to that. t will not be disfranchising anyone, but ving to each the true expression of his will. rand in elections has shown itself in various ways: the Oxford precinct of Kansas, the Gravais coal mine of Missouri, the Abbe precinct of StLouis, the Mann and Cassidy contest of Philadelphia, are striking but riot dangerous instances of open and direct frauds—not dangerous because the evil carried with it its own cure. The failure to take the oath, the driving away from the polls of legal.voters, the smashing of ballot boxes, and similar facts are not dangerous frauds, because the openness of the attempts to rob the voter gives an easy remedy. The highwayman of the Turpin school, in our land at least, has almost become a In th, while the midnight burglar and the a roit ickpocket alone bear aloft the palm of crime. 0, too, have election frauds kept pace with the times, no longer in broad daylight robbing the voter of his right, but silently and more surely creeping upon its unconscious victim and taking by stealth what it dare not attempt by force, dangerous because of the difficulty of its detection. he bungling forger harms no one; it is the skillful operator that gets his check cashed. I am sorry to say that in my own State the sacred right of a free ballot has been left with so few safeguards. Nowhere should the bal lot box be placed in the hands of one man, and that man a artisan. The trustee of the township is by virtue of his office inspector of the election; and he, elected by the vote of the township, and partaking of the political complexion of the majority, selects his associates on the election board, and that board with the right to adjourn from 5 oclock on the do of election until the next, the inspector in the mean time takin the box where he pleases, no sufficient seaing to prevent the opening of the box, leaving all to the honesty of the inspector, and be perhaps keenly alive to the great interest at stake, inducing him to act for the salvation of a party or a party favorite. Supposing that under such circumstances and such inducements the inspector forgets the sanctity of his path and his duty to country and, laying all upon the altar of party ambition, takes the ballot box during a journment and in the dead hour of night. when no eye is upon him save the all seein Eye above, opens the box with a key provide for the occasion—no hard matter in thisdayof bur larious improvements—takes out 50 or a bun red tickets and replaping them with the same amount of adifferent kind, closes the box. He can then rest easy. No witness is there to tell the deed. The box shows no signs of violence. The counted vote agrees With the ell lists, and I would ask you how this fraudlZthis crime, is to be detected. Would you swear the inspector by the ded itself? He is forsworn a perjurer and where else will you find a witness? Only one remedy in such a case is left. Prove how many votes went into the box of a particular kind, and how many of that kind the return show, and if you can prove satisfactorily that but one vote is missing, it shows that the return is uncertain and does not express the true condition of the vote. The principle, if established at all, is established y one missing vote clearly shown, as though it were 100. A large discrepancy only proves the fact, and may remove doubt that may be raised against the proof and not iggainst the conclusion draWn from that proof. hen the fact that a large discrepancy does exist is proven, I believe that it is sufficient proof of fraud as to at least demand from the party standing upon the return to explain it, and if he stands mute, if he fails to produce his partisan inspectors and judges to sustain their own return and explain the discrepancy, then the return, impeaced by this strong evidence of fraud, should be set aside as unreli able. Very fortunately for me, the present case does not rest or even turn upon this point alone. While this car mark is plainly visible in every precinct attacked, others more glaring, but not, to my mind, more conclusive evidences offraud exist. But let it be understood that this House has decided that the return shall override the proven vote, and in another case they will profit y experience. The operation will be more skillfully performed; no such awkward blunders as weremade this time will be seen. You may see the severed flesh, the trickling blood, but no wound has been made, because no eve save the assassins saw the blow or the blade. Let us, for a few moments, look at the blunders committed by —I will not say whom—at the precinct of Hamilton, in Sullivan county. 1st, was attempting to give an excuse for excluding my friends from the board. Another time, having the power, they will not be so foolish as to show the fell hatred that rankled in their hearts against myself and friends. No “ black abolitionist” could be trusted even to sit on a board where the balance, 4 in number, were true and trusty Democrats. Little did they think that, upon the final trial the jury might be composed of persons who by this test were made ineligible to the position of judge of elections in Sullivan county. The next time the ins ector will be more careful with his key. Hi; will take the box home with him instead of leaving it in the voting room during adjournment; and I believe this would be preferable, especially if he would burn the tickets taken from the box instead of hiding them under the carpet. and, again, when exposure is about to be made, in the place of seeking shelter behind a published card they will remain quiet, for accoring to the statement of the sitting member this card is the cause of all the trouble. The way of the transgressor is hard. Criminals often, in endeavoring to avoid suspicionffurnish the means for their own detection; but the sitting member would have you believe that because a man makes his mark he cannot read, and if he cannot read, he therefore cannot swear as to how he voted. The attorney for the sitting member was present and cross examined quite a numberof these individuals, and as the result, found that the party could either read or else had shown his ticket to some one who could read. Union men in Sullivan county are not so plenty that they are careless as to how they vote. For instance, the 1st personmentioned in the minorit report as unable to read, because he signed is name with a mark, testified O cross examination as follows, ( see page 10 Mis. Doc. No. 11:) " Cross examined.:zgueslion. Can you read and write? newer. I can read print; I cannot write. xguealion. Did you read the ticket? “ newer.Ycs. read it throu h. John Gilkeson. next on the ist, on cross exami rliation in regard to another point, answeredas follows: “fraction. " Did you give him the ticket? newer. I dont recollect whether or not I gave it. to him. but I “ read it. Peter Moore. takenfrom the samelist in minority proporaon cross examination says.in answerto question, can you read and did you read the ticket ! “Amwer. I did not read it: but I got Mr. Belser, an honestman, to road it “ to me. Mr. Belser says, I am not quite positive that I read the ticket which Peter Moore voted. but I think I did I am certain I gave him the ticket; it was a Union ticket of the somedescription with those that hadeolonelWashburns numeon." —M0D. oc.No.11, page 21 and yet after this testimony, brought out by themselves, they ask you to believe these men could not swear as to how they voted. But the minority report says I have not shown that one of these voters, swearin they voted for me, was a legal voter. This House has always decided that a voter havmg voted, that it is primafacic evidence that he had a legal right to vote. (See Botts vs. Jones, Bart lett, age 74,) where the rule is clearly stated, as fo lows: “ The committeeare of opinion that the true principle is that every voter admitted by the regular officers authorised to decide the question at the polls ought to be consideredlegally qualified, unless the contrary be shown." But it may he insisted that the poll books and tally papers must be produced on this point. Let me read from the celebrated case O Vallandigham vs. Campbell, (Bartlett, page 229:) “It was objectedthat the poll books of the several wards and townships or certified copies! creof,were not produced in evidence and that until theirahsence was acooniited for no proof could horeoplvodto establish the fact that the voter whoseright is disputed did l vote at the election. So much of the statutesof Ohio as relate to this subject will befound in appendix No. 2. It Will be observed that as to the polbooks proquired to he sent to the clerk of?the county court. no provision is madeanywhere for furnishing on gelfor any pur one; and these poll lists are not within the actsof (ingresstouching the authentication of mo ords. It nowhere appearsthat any art of the object of the law in requiring them to be cut is that they may furnish evidence in criminal prosecutions or upon contested elections,especially as the pnre not any where declared to be records. The chief purpose. no doubt, is to enable thoiudges of elections and other! afterward to compare the number of ballots in the box with the number of names on the poll list, and thus to stand my a check upon frauds. The under signedare of osmion that the poll lists are not only not the sole an hest eVidenceto prove that a particular person voted, but that they are not themselves sufficient. "The undemned are sustained in this viewof the case by analogous decisions in courts of law, whero it has been repeatedly adJudged that where even the lnw requires for purposes of evidence a register or list of the births. marriages. deaths and the like, the fact in criminal cases may yet be proved by parol."—1 Grocnlcq on Evidence. p. 80 and cases there cited. The statutes of Indiana are identical in language with those of Ohio. Fraud may not be proven by an isolated fact, and yet by combining several facts they may carry conviction to every mind. 2 and one and 3 make 6, but 2 by itself does not. The exclusion of any friend of mine from the board, the finding of the kc in the wrong mans ocket, the large number of" votes not counted) that were proven to have been cast for me, the evident alarm and endeavor of the judges to excuse themselves and throw the blame elsewhere, and the excellent opportunity given for the perpetration of the frau,I think, when taken together, will satisfy you this box is at least “tainted with fraud.” But let us proceed to theinvestigation of the oll of Riley townshi. Here the job was more bunglingly performe than at Hamilton. At Hamilton the poll lists and tally papers agreed. A cool head and steady hand were all that were necessary to produce this result. To the manip ulator in Riley it was new business. Perhaps he was pushed for time in his hurry and haste to get rid of the ballots that were burning his fin ers. He failed to see thatin hidin them he ha given the means for his own etection. He was too anxious to have the door closed upon the evidence of his villain to try and see itpthese self same tickets wonl interfere with its a in o ening. Prudence, jud, ent all faile him in that trying hour. the ballots under the carpet are only the missing segment of thesum total wanting in the box. I feel from the evidence that it was a 1st attempt, and I trust the detection this time will prevent a 2nd. For the man who has thus placed his name upon,the records of his countrys legislation for all time to come I have no feeling butity. In a small) 011of 100 one 5th are missing. The poll list as 6 more names than there are tickets in the box. Tickets are picked up from the table that never had been voted and counted to make up the deficiency. Republican tickets are found under the car et in the Democratic inspectors house, in O use roximity to the place where the box, if pro)bed at all, was opened, and yet a return made under such circumstances you are asked. to consider sacred, and as showin the expressed will of the voters of Riley towns iip. Cloverdale township will next engage our at tention. More than 1/3rd of the votes cast for me are missing from the box—91 are proven, and 68 are returned. Nor can the real state of the ballot be proven. A large number of soldiers, legal voters, furloiighed for the election from the various hospitals and posts, returned after the election, and at the time of thisiiivestigation were absent. The missing votes unex plained should, in my oyiuion, impeach the credit of this return. [pen what other hy pothesis can you account for this discrepancy, only that the box was robbed? Here 33 er sous are proved to have voted for me moret an I have counted. Of course, as the tickets and poll lists agree, 33 different tickets must take the place of mine, making a difference of 66 votes in a small precinct; and yet thermal n thus shown to be false is to stand and here allow me to ditlerwith my friends of the committee, to whom Iam under so many obligations. This return i is allowed to stand, and they have merely counted the surplus proven for me. Now, if the votes were placed in the box for me, at least that number were taken out in order that poll lists and ballots should agree. Therefore, instead of only adding to my vote 33, the same number should be de ducted from the sitting members count; and if, instead of throwing aside the return, you simlply count it, I submit, with due deference, if should not have added to my majority double the amount of my tickets taken from the box and replaced by others; but in my humbie judgment this whole return is tainted with fraud. The board, with only a poll of less than 400, adjourn at 5 oclock on election day until 9 oclock of the next; the inspector takes the box out of town, refusing to seal the keyhole, and at the dead hour of night is visited by a resident of the county seat, a violent partisan, the attorney in this case for the sitting member; no explanation given, either by Mr. Scott or the inspector, as to what his business was I think sutheiently connects Mr. Scott with this transaction as to make his declaration a part of it, the admission ofaparticrps criminals the voluntary confession of the criminal, and if Mr. Scott were today on trial would be good, not on] against himself but against the inspector, when connected as these individuals are by this testimony. The box, if robbed at all, was robbed that night the ins ector had the box with him. Mr. Scott visited that inspector after ten oclock at night; they were alone with the box. Now, I submit, with all due deference to the opinion of the committee, if the admission by Mr. Scott that he had there and then fixed the box is not competent evidence to prove that fact, especiallywhenleftentirelyunexplained. Mr.Scott, as attorney for the sitting member, was present at the taking of this testimony and not even cross examined the witness. Ihe witness says this declaration was made. in presence of Hon. Austin Puctt, who was afterward ousted from his seat in the Legislature of Indiana on the identical fraud we are now investigating. But gentlemen are pleased to call this hearsay, and that no law or wouldinsist upon its reception. Who or what is on trial here today I Not the sitting member nor myself. The result of to days trial may be achan e in our positions, but we are not the crimina s. The t ingto be investigated is the box, the person on trial, the man who robbed the box. ow, the question to decide is, has the box been robbed, and have we so connected the inspector and Scott with the transaction as to allow the introduction of their confession? I believe we have, and that the admission of Scott as to what was done during the time of his visit to this ins ector is competent and if this House takes this view, and rejects the return made by Scott and the inspector, this case is placed beyond a doubt. Cloverdale and Hamilton, taking the law to be as stated by the learned Gentfrom Pennsylvania on my left, and I am elected without the aid of Riley or Jefferson, the sittin members majority in Hamilton and ClOverdale being 571. If Mr. Scott did not make this admission, why did not the sitting member bring up Mr. Scott or Mr. Puett to contradict the witness? Uncontradicted, it proves conclusively to my mind that the box was stuffed, and oinLs out unmistak abl who was so low and use as to doit. at. I now approach whatI consider the most dangerous of these frauds, not from its magni tude, but for its skillfulness. No political friend of mine was allowed on that board; no noise and confusion were made in bringin about this result; no unnecessary charges O abolitionism were made there; to all appearance every thiii was fair, and yet the result is that one thii of my whole vote fails to be counted. The return shows me 24 votes, while the roof be yond a doubt gives 36. Hereafter geficrson will be taken as the model. Secure the board, do it quietly, and then make no blunders, the game is in their own hands and no danger of a contest. for there is no proof of the commission of the crime. The breath has left the victims body, the black marks are around the neck, but none saw the murderer or the hand that did the deed. But the sitting member says I received more votes than Mr. Lincoln in the district, and therefore I could not have been robbed ofany votes. There might be some force in this argument if he had said I had received more votes than Mr. Lincoln in the precincts in controversy, but he has not made that charge, and he knows as well as I do the reason. But he states the case differently from what I do. I do not claim to have been more popular than Mr. Lincoln, but I do claim that he was less popular than General McClellan, and I will now endeavor to give an my reasons for believing so. GeneralMcClellan was for the Union at all hazards; the sitting member believed that the war was a failure. But that I may do no injustice, allow me to quote 1st from a McClellan campaign document, and then from the campaign speech of the sitting member: “Yes. in friends, if anybody is disposed to cavil with you u out your platform, tell him that General McClellan hasmade is own platform. General Mc Clellan. I repeat, has madehis own platform. which ought to be satisfactory to everybody. The Union. the Union at all hazards is as distinctly the whole import of gcorge B. McC cllans letter. as the Union in any event was the Farewell Address of George Washington, "Tho Union. it must be reserv ed is as clearly themaxim of McClellan in Slitasit was of Andrew Jackson in 1832. Let usgo for the flag and flOllllDI but the flag. Lotus furnish all thoincii and all the moneywhich are required for the aid of our gallant defendersin the field and bear the welfare of our soldiers and sailors over uppermost in our hearta.” such was the language of the McClellan lat form as circulated in the speech of Hon. C. Winthrop and printed in the Democratic organ of our State. The sitting member had a record and a lat form of his own. Pardon me while I read mm as ech delivered in this House March 5, 1864, and nhirculated by him as a campaign document: “Sir. in my hours of seclusionand study I have. to the best of m humble on duty, held ii the lamp of the past to t a face of the future. on I call Godto witnessthat I should be recroant and fuithlessto my own conscience if I did not proclaim. us far as niy voice will reach, that a danger is this hour upon the Americanpeople moredeadly than the iuicesof the hemlock or the bito of the asp. This (Iowernment is dying; dying. sir, dying. We are standing around its bed of death and will soon bewretchedmournersat its tomb unless the sovereign and heroic remedy is speedily up ilied.", f " “Secure the blessings of liberty—O. bitter mockery: justice hnabeen dethroned and the blessings of Ii ert annihilated, There is notone squaremi O of free sci in the American Republic, It is slave territory from Aroostook to the Columbia." "And all under the sapetion of the principles and practices daily exemplifiedby the dministration which now hurls us on to ruin. "The records of the last session of the 30 6th Congress are immortal. The baleful broodsof political destructionists who now unha ipily possess the high seats of national authority did not then want public tranquillity. they courted the whit lwmd. they danced with ahcll ish glee around the bubbling caldron of civilWar and welcomedwith ferociousyoy ever hurtful mischief whichflickered in its land and in ornalflames." Allnding to our then livmg but now martyred President, he said: “Gen his Khan and Tamerlano. preserved by the pen of the historian for universal oxccration. ound no pursuit so pleasant ascalling for more men. more men. more men, for the harvest of death and like our present Executives nuffing with jcsts and ribaldry the warm taint of blood on every gale.” In contrast with this notice the following: “ Will somepoor. crawling. despised syctiphant and tool of executive despotism dare to say atI shall not pronounce the name of Vallandighuinl The scan al and stima of his condemnation and banishment havefille the ciyilized world. Some members on the otherside of this Chamber have attacked with fierce clamor the great American statesmanand the Christian gentleman who suffers his exile in the causeof liberty on a foreign soil." and thus he alludes to the VEEP of the southern confederacy, the 2nd in commood of the rebellious hordes: “Why camethat wastedfigure. that gifted child of lonius.the pure and elevated stephens.of Georgia?”. But waxing more eloquent, he summons his most vivid powers of imagination. Hear him: "I take leave of the question of the general wol They invoked the storm. li l i fare. The bitter liourof a peoples bloody sweat and agonizing tours will soon e card. The niournful shadows of its funeral pall are already penetrating Tthhee once bright and abundant homel of virtuous labor. if iirit of oppression is oiiinipotent in our land, and li c death and famine none will escapethe pan which it inflicts. Let eacheye which now behol the sun take its last look at secpes of lenty and prosperity. Our fall from abonndingivba th and unlimited resourccs to pinched and shrunken and eowering bankruptcy is as certain and as I under our present policy as the fall of Lucifer. the mornina star. roin heaven; and the exclamation of the laborer as he toils in a hopeless bondage to the public debt may well be as despairing as thonnguish oft he lost angel: "Farewell. liap y fields Where joy forever dwells. Ilui l horrois; hail! nferual world; and thou. profoundest hell. eccivethy new possessor." and yet with such a platform he thinks I am very presumptuous when I hint that probably he was not quite as popular as General McClellan on a war platform of his own.