Mr. DAWES. I do not believe the gentleman would put it in the paperhimself it must have been put there in his absence. I take his own statement that he knows nothing about it. I stated it has been charged, and Iasked whether he was trying to make the same argument to the House. I beg pardon ifI have done him injustice. I reret t atI have been comelled to say a word u out this matter. I won d not have alluded to it, Mr. Speaker, if I had not felt it was necessary for some one to repel the charge which seemed to be made upon this undefended contestant, when there is not a member of the committee who can put a finger upon a single dollar of money which has been used improperly in this case, whether by the contestant or any of his friends. But it has been brought up here, and this arade of his income has been made before this House for some pur ose best known to the sitting member, which iI wish I could explain charitably. Mr. Speaker, if the contestant had araded before the House that the sitting member was using his paperat home and his party at home for any such purpose, if the contestant had consented to such a mean and conteinptible performance before the ComElections. I should have felt bound to have treated it with all the indignation it deserved, The ComElections have weighed this testimon as well as they could. We may have erred. We claim nothing ourselves. The members of that committee claim nothing be yond others, to sift and wei h testimony, and to judge properly of the cone usion to come to. But the do claim, Mr. Speaker, that they have faithfulfy examined and weighed this case. They do claim that they have spared no pains. They have spared no labor. They have omitted no opportunity. They have turned a deaf ear to no argument, come from what sourceitmay. I have before me, taken from the record, a list of the time expended by the committee in giving the sittingl member and the contestant the opportunity they desired. Ten days, 2 hours each day, we listened to the learned Gentfrom NewYork. We heard no complaint he had one word more. The records show that he took 2 weeks to prepare a.brief of what he had said. The committee waited 2 weeks more before they came to a decision. Is it proper for him then to make any charge against the committee? What has transpired, Mr. Speaker, in the hearing of this case from 1st to last to justify the gentleman in his charge on the chairman of the committee that since the action of the House on the Bruce and Loan case he has failed to bring to the discharge of his duties here an upright and unbending purpose? Sir, I have been new 8 ears on this committee, not by any request of mine, sometimes put there against my remonstrance. During that time the records of the committee show that 50 contested election cases out of 80 that have existed in the last 30 years have come before the ComElections, and I stand recorded on every one of them, and on no report ever made by me has the House differed with me or failed to sustain me. I make no pretension to any ability mani fested in those reports, but I have this to say, that poorly as I may have been able to discharge the responsible duties of this position, there is one thing about them of which I am proud, and that is, they are all consistent. There is no conflict during all that 8 years. Mr. Speaker, the party with whom I have affiliated has been in power, and yet the book of contested elections shows that of the reports I have made quite a number of them have been a inst my party and I repeat, that on none of them has the House failed to sustain me. But that is of less consequence than the fact that at the close of this whole career, now drawing voluntarily to a close, I shall leave in this book a record which, if adhered to, I can trust my party associates on this floor with. if in the vicissitudes of fortune they shall come into a minority. No one decision in this book, for which in any degree I am responsible, will be found in conflict with any other, nor will any be found in conflict with the principles that will protect my party if they come into a mine irty, as I feel some conse ious pride in saying they have to some extent protected the minority of this House on some occasions when I have felt there was some pressure upon them. Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the House, is there anything that calls upon the House to treat this case otherwise than we have treated other cases? Is there anything in the position of the distinguished gentleman who now occupies this seat, or in that of his distinguished contestant, or in the circumstances in which we stand, that calls upon us to treat it otherwise than the House has treated cases for the last 30 years that have come before it? If there iIs, have failed to see it; and in listening most attentively to what has been said here on one side and on the other, I have failed to hear one reason offered or sug ested why we should not treat this case as we have treated all that have gone before. For one I do not propose to stand recorded in this casein any other light nor under any other precedent than that which has governed me and the House in all the cases in which I have participated in bringing to a conclusion upon this floor; and until I hear SOme reason, I hope it will be sufficient for me to show that this case is like those which have passed before the House, upon which, after the most delib erate and calm consideration, we have entered judgment for and against the parties, and handed down that judgment to those who are to come after us, as testimony that we deal imartially with contestants in this body. Sir, what is claimed by this committee? Not that because a board of registry was appointed and constituted of men who were not residents of their district that made the election void. There is no such claim by this committee as that the appointment ofincompetent registrars made void the election. Noris it claimed that because they did not appointa clerk accordin to law, or did not administer the oath require by law, that made the election void. Nor is it cliiimed that because they did not hold their meetings according to law that made the election veid. Nor that, when they did hold their meetings, because they did not discharge the duties imposed upon them by law, that made the election void. What, then, is claimed by the ComElections? It is this: that all these things put together were means through which fraud on tered into the ballot box in that district. Not that one of them of itself made the election void, not that all of them put together made it void, but that by means of them all fraud came int“o that box. The committeeare of the opinion that there was no registry at this district; that neither of the persons appointed ns registrarswas competent to hold the office; that the man acting as clerk actedwithout authority: that the mode of making up the registry itself was a fraud upon the registry law and in no manner a compliance With its provisions; that the useofsueh registry at the polls as a guide to the inspectorsof election contributeddirectly to the polling of fraudulent votes and that the la a countedfor increaseof votes at this [0 and unac l is directly attributed to these departuresfrom, and violations of. plain provisions of law and that to accept the resultof such oll so taken and so counted as the true account of legal votesonly is to sanction most inexcusable violations of Important provmons of law. essentialto the purity of the ballot box." Is there anything erroneous in law in that conclusion? The committee have not stopped as I said before, at what would be the effect if anyone of those departures from the law alone crusted, but they have taken for their guide the law of the State of New 1 ork, as laid down in 4 Selden, and followed it literally in the conclusions to which they have come. I read the syllabus: "An irregularity in conducting an election. which does not deprive a legal voter of his vote or admit a disqualified personto vote. if it cast no uncertainty on the result and has not been occasioned by the agencyofa party seeking to derive abenefit from it. may be overlooked in an action in the natureof s qaowan unto." That is the position taken. All these things may have existed, and still no evidence of fraud in the ballot box. The court, in the case referred to, says: "It is not to be disguised that there were irregularities in this district for which the inspectorswere censarable and icrhaps liable to be punished by indictment. Ha the defendants counselcontended on the trial that these irregularities rendered the state of the canvass uncertain he should have asked to go to the jury with the questionwhether the votes were accurately canvassedor not. By omitting to do so and by concedingthat the questionsyorp questions of law and not of fact and allowinir it to be proved. without obicction. that the voteswere accurately canvassed.nothing was left but the abstract questionwhetheran omissionto complywith the statutory requirements in question peras invalidated the votes of that district. If these requirements be directory and not jurisdictional. the learned Jud O was right in deciding that the votes were propor allowed." Now, sir, it comes to a question of fact, whether through these agencies fraudswere perpetrated on the ballotbox; and all that has been said by the committee in reference to the character of these illegalities was only to show how they contributed direct] to the bringing of fraudulent votes into the allot box. The ragin tmrs were not residents and voters in the district, but strangers there, who did not know the honest from the dishonest voters so as to be able to pass upon their qualifications as such. The failure to have a clerk sworn by law to make a faithful record enabled men without the sanction of an oath to do precisely what was charged upon this clerk, namely, make false returns and entries upon the register for the purpose of blinding the inspectors of election. The failure to hold their meetings in the place designated by law enabled them to hol a meeting unknown to the electors in the district, and therefore to create facilities for making a fraudulent registry to be the guide thereafter. The failure to post up the notice in the place where the election was held for 2 weeks before the day of election was a failure to advertise to the electors of that district the names of those they had registered, so gilnt all could know whether they were true or so and in this connection I wish. to call the attention of the learned Gentfrom Ohio to the fact that the election was not held in the place where they held their other meetings for the performance of their duty. It was held in a stable near by. The law says that the notice shall be posted up in the room or place where they hold) the registry, which the law designates as the place for holding the election. Therefore the law says that the notice shall be posted up in the room where the election is to be held. Now, this was not done. The list was posted up in Thompsons bar room, while the election was held in his stable, off at a distance, communicating with this building, as we learn today for the 1st time, only by a passage way up in the 2nd story. Lien who went to the place where the election was held, in the stable, would not find this registry list; and men who went to the place where the listwns posted up, would not find the place where the election was held. The object of having the list posted up in the place where the election was to be held was, that for 2 weeks previous to the election every name recorded there as that of a voter might undergo a challenge. Now, that was not one. Now, all of these things rendered it perfectly easy to perform the fraud that was charged in regard to this election precinct, and that is why the committee have arrayed together the irregularities in this precinct. Now, what was the evidence in this case? To begin with, the vote in the district was doubled; and beside the vote being doubled, according to the testimony of one of the inspectors there were 250 legal voters who failed to vote and the vote in this 15th district was as large as it was in the 15th and 12th districts, forming the old 12th district the year before; and the part left of the old 12th district as the new 12th district cast within a few votes of the old vote, so that the 2 districts taken together give double the vote cast in the old 12th district and when you take into account the 250 men who Brennan said were ready to vote when the sun went down and they were prevented from doing so, then you will have 1,000or more votes to offset the 490 odd given the year before.