Yours sincerely,
"August Belmont."
The editorial of the Sun here referred to, after giving in detail the provisions of the Constitution for the counting of the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, proceeds to give the advice which so disturbed Messrs. Belmont and Barlow:
"We[16] now proceed to state what, in our opinion, the Constitution means by counting the votes. It is to be noted that the Constitution commits the choice of a President and Vice-President, in the first instance, to a body of electors who are to be chosen in each State as its legislators may direct. These electors are to meet, to vote, and to make and sign and seal up a certificate of their votes. These instruments, denominated in the Constitution 'the certificates,' are to be transmitted to the President of the Senate 'sealed.' They are, in our opinion, not merely prima facie, but they are conclusive, evidence that the Electoral Colleges of the States from which they come gave the votes which they purport to certify.
"We can conceive of no reason why the Constitution required the electors to make and sign and certify lists of the votes which they gave, excepting that it was required in order to give legal verity to the contents of the certificates. For the same reason we hold that to 'count the votes' so certified does not import or imply a power to inquire into the legality, sufficiency, or regularity of the appointment of the electors whose appointment is duly certified by the State authorities whose duty it is to give to the two Houses of Congress legal information of that appointment. It will never do, in our judgment, to draw analogies for the government of this matter from the practice of legislative bodies in judging of the rights of their members to seats. That practice rests upon an express constitutional provision; and it is from that express power to determine the legality of an election that their whole authority to go behind the certificate of a sitting member is derived.
"But these Electoral Colleges are peculiar bodies, whose appointment is committed wholly to the States, whose certificates, when their official character has been duly vouched by their States, become by force of the Constitution the sole and exclusive legal evidence that the votes of those States have been cast for such and such persons as President and Vice-President. It cannot be, therefore, that any authority can reside anywhere to try any question, or to find any fact, that is to warrant the two Houses in rejecting the votes of any Electoral College of whose authority to give those votes the State, through its constituted authorities, has legally informed Congress. All such questions and all such facts belong to the proper authorities of each State to try and determine before the persons supposed to be chosen electors are assembled to give their votes. Any attempt by the two Houses, or either of them, to go behind the certificates and to determine the right of the electors to give the votes which they have certified, when the State has determined that right by its competent authorities, will lead to conclusions in which the people of this country will not acquiesce.
"Thus, if it shall be found on an inspection of the certificates of the Electoral Colleges, when they are opened in the presence of the two Houses, that Mr. Hayes has received 185 votes, or more, that result must be accepted by the people as the legal result, whatever may have been the frauds committed in Louisiana or any other State in taking or returning or counting the popular vote. It is perfectly proper for Congress to ascertain the fact of such frauds in an authoritative and conclusive manner for the information of the people, but the certainty that there are such frauds cannot affect the legally certified election. Mr. Hayes must be inaugurated and acknowledged as President, even if the legal result is so tainted with fraud that honest men revolt at the very thought they must submit to. There is no alternative but civil war; and that forms an unnecessary and inadequate remedy, and is not to be thought of. If Hayes shall be declared President, with grave reason to believe that he has not been honestly and fairly entitled to have the electoral votes of certain States, he and his party must bear the consequences. Those consequences, if his opponents are wise, will be, not that his title to the office is to be resisted, but that the people are to be appealed to to use their constitutional and peaceful methods of redressing all wrongs and punishing all outrages—namely, by the ballot-box. No such appeal can be made if the country is to be plunged into anarchy by denying Hayes' title to the office. Our government must be preserved and perpetuated; and that it may be, grievous as the wrong will be that takes from Tilden States in which he has certainly carried a majority of the popular vote, we must submit to that wrong, in the entire certainty that the party responsible for it will in due time be rewarded with political annihilation.
"We shall therefore deprecate and oppose any action by the House of Representatives looking to any dispute of the regular electoral certificates from any of the States. The responsibility for what is done in the three controverted States is with the Republicans, and there let it rest. All that the House of Representatives can properly do in the premises is to ascertain and determine the precise nature, methods, and extent of the frauds, and then leave the question to the judgment of the country, and to the legal and constitutional remedy afforded by the next elections."