Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/472

452 back to an offense committed antecedent to the election; ergo, the Senate has absolutely no power at all in such a case. If I understood the argument submitted by the Senator from Kansas correctly, these were its salient points. What follows? The Senate must sit still, and with absolute quietness and submission suffer not only that person to take his seat, but, as the case may be, must suffer one after another of these seats to be filled by men who have acquired them by bribery, purchase, fraud and not by honest election, for to each one of those cases the same reasoning will apply which is now applied to this. However outrageous their proceedings, however glaring their corrupt practices may have been, we must treat such political merchants as brother Senators; we must suffer them to exercise the same influence upon the legislation of this Republic which is exercised by others; and all this, no matter what may become of the honor of the highest legislative body of this Republic; no matter what may become of the confidence of the people in their lawmakers, and therefore of their respect for the laws; no matter what may become of the purity and integrity of representative government and of republican institutions.

This, sir, is the argument submitted by the Senator from Kansas. It would seem to me as if the mere statement of the consequences which necessarily must flow from such an assumption would in itself be sufficient to show that in the very nature of things it cannot be correct; that the wise men who made the Constitution of this country cannot have left the highest law-giving body of the land in so pitiably helpless a condition. The mere supposition appears on its very face absurd.

Now, in inquiring into the power of the Senate to act upon such a case, I shall not consume any time in a discussion of the English precedents which have been quoted here, and this partly for the reason that I am not as learned