Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/50

30 obtain for him the post-office at St. Joseph, urging as his peculiar claim to reward that he had disfranchised so many hundreds of individuals; an application which was properly rejected.

I might go on for some time yet, giving you further detail of an equally interesting character. But it is enough. Last summer I listened to the burning eloquence of the Senator from New York, denouncing the election frauds committed in the metropolis of his State. His denunciations were not too severe. But he will agree with me when I say that it matters little whether the frauds be committed by stuffing illegal votes into the ballot-box, or stealing legal votes out of it under color of law. I feel much freer to-day to hurl denunciations against the Democratic repeaters of New York and Philadelphia, after having struck an honest and decisive blow against a similar abomination in Missouri where it disgraced my own party.

I call it an abomination, sir, as it had developed itself. I will not impeach the motives of those who first introduced disfranchisement. They certainly did not foresee the disgusting abuses that would grow out of it. But as it had developed itself the system amounted to this: the governor selected and appointed the supervisors of registration; the supervisors appointed the registering officers, subject to removal at their pleasure, and therefore under their control; and the registering officers, under a constitutional provision open to the most arbitrary construction, and being judges on all appeals against themselves, virtually appointed the voters. With such a machinery carefully made up, an unscrupulous man in the executive office, choosing instruments equally unscrupulous, might not only maintain himself in power against any opponent, but he might have a legislature elected to carry out his will. And even with an honest