Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/174

 162 FEDERAL REPORTER. �the defendant was liable to, and the court was authorized to impose. �So much for the legal aspect of the case. A word as to the moral one. �Throughout the argument for the defendant the court has been pressed with the suggestion and assumption that this prosecution is in some way an injustice to him, and that it is a great hardship for an elector to forfeit his privilege for the conviction of a crime which was only punished by the imposition of a comparatively small fine. In answer to the Bu^estion of injustice, it is sufficient to say that the prosecu- tion is lawful. It is conducted by the attomey of the United States, upon the authority of a grand jury of more than 16 eleetors and tai payers, impartially seleeted and drawn from the'body of the district, for the alleged violation of one of its tnost important laws — the law to preserve the purity and integrity of the election of representatives in congress. Neither is there any hardship in the case that can enter into the present consideration of it. �For reasons of public policy, the constitution of the state conferred the privilege of an elector on the defendant, during good behavior, and for like reasons declared it forfeited— withdrawn — upon his conviction of a crime of such charac- ter as presumptively proved him nol'onger fit for its exercise. Nor is this presumption affected by the fact that the court before which the defendant was tried saw proper, in the exer- cise of that discretion confided to it, to impose a compara- tively slight punishment upon him. Under the constitution the conviction of a crime, for which the offender is liable to imprisoment in the penitentiary, works a forfeiture of the privilege of an elector, irrespective of the kind or measure of punishment which the judge, under the circumstances, — per- sonal, social, political, or otherwise, — may see proper to impose as a punishment for it. �The law gave and the law had taken away — subject, it may be, to the operation of a pardon expressly restoring the priv- ilege, and granted in pursuance of an aet of the legislature authorizing it. ��� �