PURIFYING THE POLLS BY LAW.
The edifying efforts made by Congress to throw guards about the ballot would be encouraging were they based on a little knowledge of the fact, and the reason for it. As it is, the be-it-enacted agreed on is little better than a solemn protest. Our learned law-makers would enjoy greater progress if they would remember that we have had for a century all the law necessary to punish such corruption, and that the trouble lies in our inability to enforce its provisions.
What is really wanted is a tribunal to try and enforce the stringent enactments already in existence. This does not now exist. When a candidate for Congress corruptly purchases enough votes to secure his return to either House, he knows that such Chamber, being the judge of such applicant's qualifications, forms a court without a judge to give the law or an impartial jury to render a verdict. The Committee on Elections in either House is made up of the Democratic or Republican party, and so the jury is packed in advance.
This is not, however, the only evil feature in the business. There is probably no organized body so ill-fitted for adjudication upon any subject as Congress. Returned to place by parties, the members are necessarily partisans. Their tenure of office is so brief that they have no time in which to learn their legitimate duties through experience, and these duties are so numerous, to say nothing of being encroached upon by services entirely foreign to their positions, that they have no opportunities for study. The consideration then of any subject from a judicial point of view is simply impossible. It is "touch and go" with them, and the touch is feeble, and the go hurried. It seems that a case of purely judicial sort has no place in Congress; and yet we have seen an instance—for example, in the New Idria contention—where the courts had been exhausted, from an Alcalde to the Supreme Court of the United States, and yet the complainant, worsted in every one of these tribunals, came through the lobby into Congress, and for over ten years kept that body in a tumult. Of course this was kept alive by the corrupt use of stock to the extent of ten millions, based on the credit of a company that would be such when Congress gave its illegal approval. This fact alone proves the dangerous and uncertain character of a legislative body that takes on judicial functions.
When a contested election goes before the standing committee called into existence as a court, it passes into a secret committee-room, where the so-called evidence, put on paper, is supposed to be considered. What would be said of a jury impanelled avowedly from the party of one side, and then made into a court to sit and deliberate with closed doors against the public?
It is true that the finding is shaped into a report and goes before the House. But no member of that body, especially of the House of Representatives, has either time or opportunity to read the evidence, or even to listen to the arguments made by contestants upon the floor. That tribunal has lost all power in its loss of public confidence. It not only brings the law into contempt, but itself into such disrepute that its findings are worthless. This is the condition of Congress in public opinion. So far as contested elections are concerned, it is regarded with contempt. To make matters worse, and pay a premium on vice, the losing party is allowed the same mileage and pay given his successful competitors.
If all contests were turned over to the United States courts, to be tried in the locality where the wrong complained of was done and the witnesses live, there would be few contested elections, and some chance given to punish bribery and other corruption.
Again, the prohibition against the subscription or payment of money has exceptions that open wide the doors to corruption. To say that money may be used for any purpose is to leave the evil precisely where the law-makers found it. It were better to have the government furnish the tickets, as the government supplies the ballot-boxes, rents the polling-places, and pays the officials for their services. The ballot is as much a necessity to the machinery of election as the boxes; and because it would be difficult and troublesome to supply them is far from saying that it is impossible.
Then, to punish both bribe-giver and bribe-taker in the same way is to throw a guard about the iniquitous transaction. The bribe-taker should go acquit. Of course this would be in a measure opening a door to blackmailers, and make the candidacy extremely dangerous. Such it ought to be. The sooner we put a check on the shameless solicitations for office the better it will be for the Republic. Let the offices, as of old, in the purer days of the fathers, seek the man—and not the man, as now, the offices. If the effect of this would be to drive timid, decent men from office, it would not be worse than the present system. A candidate for the House of Representatives must not only pay his two years' salary in advance to "heelers," as they are called, but must get drunk in every saloon in his district. We cannot make matters worse, and there is a chance in a change for an improvement.
True reform to be effectual must be radical. A compromise with evil is a surrender to hell. To cut a poisoned shrub even to the ground relieves the eye for a time, but the root is made more vigorous by the trimming. The constitutional governments of Europe have rid themselves of bribery and other corruption by digging out the roots. This is the only course open to us. When members of the House can bribe their way to place, when Senate chairs are sold in open court, when it calls for only two millions to purchase the Presidency, and all done by men of high social position, we have reached the lowest level, and our great Republic is a mere sham and a delusion. We are not menaced with the loss of liberty and guaranteed rights. They are gone.