Mr. SCOFIELD. No, sir; I do not insist upon any such thing. If the gentleman will compose his nerves and, as he has spoken an hour, listen to me for ten minutes he will probably see what I do propose to count and what I do not. I am only stating now that after the votes which have been returned formally and informally have been counted the contestant has a majority of 16; and by counting out a portion of those votes, taking from the list in ever of the contestant 30 or 40 more than they do from the sitting member, they give him a majority of 15. That is, they count off the 16 majority that the contestant has, making them even, and then they count off 15 more from the contestant, leaving the sitting member 15 ahead. Now, sir, I am going to content myself with taking only the 3 retnrns.which the Gentfrom Wisconsin has discussed; and I submit to the House whether, even under their construction of the law of Pennsylvania Wren as that.construction is, unjust as it is to the soldiers and to the Legislature of our State the committee have not made snflicient mistakes in the application of their own rule to give the contestant the seat. Company A, 150 5th regiment, the Gentfrom Wisconsin himself admits, ought to be counted. There are 7 votes for Fuller. He contends, however, that the report made some time ago in the case of Koontz vs. Coffroth by the majority of that committee, contains a few words which are adverse to the counting of those votes. Ideny that even that bad precedent can justify the exclusion. The gentleman cannot lean even upon that decision, wrong as it is, because in that case it was only the certificates of oaths that were wanting. If there is any phraseology employed by the majority of the committe which goes further than the facts, it is not ranted by the case. It is what We call obiier dictum, and if it were contained in the decision of a court, would'hot be regarded as of binding force. If gentlemen will take the large book, called “No. 2, ” and turn to pages 5‘.) and (30, they will find a full return of company A, 15filth re iment, and then below it the oaths taken by the officers and the cer tificate of the oaths. It was the absence of the certificate of oaths, in the case to which the gentleman has referred, that caused the exclusion of the soldiers’ votes. New, sir, before we had adopted in Pennsylvania the law which waives formalities in favor of the soldier the return would have Been counted by any court in our State under the old law, which did not waive formalities at all. That question has been decided over and over again; and the decisions of Pennsylvania courts on this question wae presented to the committee. Thus, sir, there are 7 votes which the Gentfrom Wisconsin concedes should be subtracted from the 15, leaving the sitting member only8 according to his own count. Now, sir, take the votes returned from Lincoln hospital. The majority of the committee occupy 2 pages of the report in the endeavor to show that the votes returned from Lincoln hos iital should not be counted. It would, in my umble judgment, take many more pages race of even foggier reasoning than we have here to convince a man of ordinary understandin that the votes returned from Lincoln hospital should be excluded for the reason given by the committee, and I am not surprised, therefore, that they occupy 2 pages of this brief report to deprive sevqt soldiers at Lincoln hospital of their votes. The officers of that hospital held the election and received, as they were authorized by the soldiers’ votin act to receive, the votes of that congressioua district. 2 of the voters were from Fayette county, 5 from Indiana county, and 8, I believe, from West moreland county. When the officers had gone through with the election, they made up the papers in due form and sent them to the prothonotary of Westmoreland county, because they could not at the same time send them also to Indiana and Fayette counties. The prothouotary of Westmoreland county certifies to those 15 votes, 5 from Indiana county, 2 from Fayette, and 8 from Westmoreland. The committee say, “We will count the 8 votes from Westmoreland county; but inasmuch as the prothonotary of that county had no right to certify to the votes of the other 2 counties, we will not count them.” The committee conclude their very cunning argument by generously saying: ‘1But there is another instrument of proof the certified transcript of the secretary of the Common wealth. who is the lawful depositaryof military returns for everycounty in the State. This is not produced in the presentease and only eightof the votes containedin this return can becouu d.” Sir, I take issue with the committee on this point. I say that this certified transcript was produced. t was presented in this House and was by the House referred to the committee. Let me state the evidence upon which I come to this conclusion. All these various documents which were presented, numbering nearly 100Ibelieve, were numbered in regular order with red ink. The transcript for Lincoln hospital was numbered 64. All the numbers up to 63, inclusive, arein the possession of the committee. No. 64 is missing. Then we Iind No. 65, and all the others following in regular order.