Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/205

, JEX PABTE 6EISSLER. 191 �pursuance of his authority as an officer of the United States tbere present under the law. �I do not justify in ail respects the manner of the action of Ihe superviser. It wônld have been much more creditable to him if he had shown more equanimity of temper ; if he had not become so escited, aiid if he had not returned sharp, bad language to the same kind of language. But we must make allowance for the infirmities of human nature ; and we cannot suppose that a man will always be unruffled when heis attacked, and -when opprobrious language is used towards him. The question is, after ail, had he the right to do what he did ? �Had he the right to preserve order ? Had he the right to arrest Dwyer? And was h« in the discharge of his duty as a supervisor ? And the fact ihat he may not have done it in such a quiet, smooth, regular sort of way as other men of a different temperament, does not render the principal act ille- gal. In other words, if a mari, in arresting another, where he bas the right to arrest him, pushes him with more force than perhaps may be necessary, it cannot, in general, affect the question of the legality of the arrest. So here it may be that the supervisor did not act as other men of a cooler tem- perament might have acted under the circumstances ; but he had the right, I think, to arrest Dwyer, and to preserve order by removing him from the room. The difference between the two men, as I have stated, is that the one was an outsider and the other was clothed with the authority of the law. �There seems to be some misapprehension in the public mind as to the rights of the offioers of the United States in cases of this kind, as though they were interfering with the rights of the state or of the eity. It is not so. The United States bas the undoubted right to interfere in ail cases where there is a registration of voters for an election of members of congress, and where that interference occurs under the author- ity of a statute of the United States, there can be no law which is paramount to it; and, as the supreme court of the United States has said, there is nothing in derogation of the rights of the states in this. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S., 371. We should move ou harmoniously in the one case as in the ����