But the Governor and Council have declared otherwise, and, in collusion with other well-known men, they entered into a conspiracy to change the result and deprive the people of their choice; and then began the remarkable count which has just closed to the lasting dishonor and disgrace of all who had a part or lot in it. They began to discover fatal defects,' as Governor Garcelon termed them, in the returns from Republican towns. Here and there an 'i' was not dotted, or a 't' not crossed, or a man had Jr.' left off his name, or the initial letter of his middle name was wrong, or the ballot that elected him had the names printed at right angles to the narrow side when they should have been parallel, or the signatures of all the town officers to the acute eye of a single Councillor, without any other evidence, were written in the same hand; or the total number of votes was not filled out in the right part of the election blank, or one of the town officers was an alien, or the Selectmen were permitted to swear away their return by ex parte affidavit. Although they had once sworn the return was sealed in open town meeting, they now swear it was not; or the return of cities was signed by only three Aldermen, just according to the blank sent out from the office of the Secretary of State, after being prepared as a trap or pitfall.

These, and numerous other minor points of like value, were freely used to destroy the popular vote and maintain in power the party and men whom the people have rejected. The result of the whole of this pitiful and wicked pettifogging was to change a Republican majority of 7 in the Senate and 29 in the House, to a fusion majority of 9 in the Senate and 17 in the House, with five Republican cities completely disfranchised, and denied by the Governor and Council the poor boon of a new election; so that Portland, Lewiston, Bath, Rockland, and Saco are absolutely rendered incapable of taking any part in the organization of the Legislature, or in the choice of Governor, or in the election of State officers, or in the original composition of the House committees, which shape and practically control legislation. Perhaps, if the representatives chosen by these five important cities will humbly petition the House and cool their heels in the ante-chamber of Fusion greatness for three or four weeks, they may be permitted to be sworn in, when they can no longer embarrass the progress of the conspirators' programme, and no longer be able to serve their constituents. These five cities have a valuation of more than $51,000,000, and pay nearly onequarter of the entire taxes of the State. To be accurate, they pay 23 per cent. of the whole. This very year the Fusion State Government has levied and collected from these cities more than $200,000 of taxes; and now, by virtue of a disgraceful trick concocted in the office of the Secretary of State, four of these cities are disfranchised. The fifth-our beautiful metropolis, Portland-pays $118,000 of taxes, and is denied representation on the paltriest of dishonest pretexts, and is not even allowed the opportunity of a new election. But I will not allow myself to go into a long speech. Before closing, however, I beg you to observe the following points:

First.-The Governor and Council have refused certificates to twenty-nine Republican members of the House and to eight Senators, thirty-seven in all swept off and out by one wave of an autocratic hand.

Second. Of this entire number there was not one case for which the law did not provide and direct the mode of correction. But the Council said the law was unconstitutional, and they set it aside. They gave out that Henry W. Paine, of Bos

4

ton, advised them that was their proper course. When I see an opinion of Henry W. Paine that the Executive Department may at will set aside the laws they are sworn to enforce, I will unite with his other Kennebec friends in deploring the decay of his splendid intellect and the loss of his admirable judgment. Until then I prefer to remember Henry W. Paine as I have known him for a quarter of a century.

Third.—There have been fifty-nine annual elections in Maine, carried in turn by the old National Republicans, by Democrats, by Whigs, and for twenty-two years by the Republicans. In all that time not so many fatal defects' in the returns have been found, nor so many Senators and Representatives counted out as Gov. Garcelon and his Council have counted out this single year. I will not add—not half so many.

Fourth. And all the 'fatal defects' are in Republican Senatorial and Representative districts. Not one of the Democrats or Greenbackers elected to the Senate or House was found to have a defective return behind him-of course not, after the returns had been secretly and surreptitiously doctored, as openly declared by the Hon. Charles B. Rounds. These returns were cooked and made over to fit the requirements, and the Council never dared to accept Mr: Rounds' offer to prove his charges. It is understood that they are taking characteristic revenge on Mr. Rounds, by counting him out of the office of County Attorney, to which he was honestly elected.

Fifth. A few Fusion towns have been counted out here and there, but always so selected as not to affect the result, and still more cunningly selected so as to apparently justify the counting out of a large Republican town that would destroy a Republican Senator or Representative. To contrive all this required time, and so the present Council worked over the returns, cooking and doctoring them from October 30th to December 17th. For this period they did it openly. How long before October 30th the returns were surreptitiously opened will never be known until the Council grant the investigation asked for by Mr. Rounds. Ordinarily, in former years, a week or ten days sufficed for an honest Council to count the re turns.

Sixth. To make some sort of covering for the atrocious fraud they have committed, a great effort has been made to prove that the Republicans carried the election by bribery and corruption. This is a factious and fraudulent pretense, got up to cover a case. Why don't they indict somebody? They tried it in September before a Grand Jury, two-thirds of whose members were Fusionists, and they came very near indicting Democrats instead of Republicans. They have got up a large number of affidavits from men of a certain character, telling how they had been bought for $1 or $2, or some trifling sum. Many of these affidavits have been recalled by parties who made counter-statements declaring they had made the first affidavit when drunk, on liquor which the Democratic agent furnished. If a man will sell his vote for a dollar, or any other sum, he is hardly the witness to appear as the public prosecutor of a great party. The whole effort to sustain the bribery charge has been attended with disgraceful conduct by the men who started it, and who have systematically bribed their witnesses to commit perjury. These Democratic and Greenback agents have really been guilty themselves of bribery, of subornation of perjury, and of getting men drunk enough to be participants in both crimes.

Seventh. Some of the Democrats who chuckle in private over this infamy, and do not wish to come out in square approval of it, are in the habit of charging it off against Louisiana, where, they allege, the Republicans cheated the Democrats. Well! Certainly. Maine Republicans did not cheat Louisiana Democrats, and even if somebody else had done so, Maine Republicans ought not to be made a vicarious sacrifice. But there was a cheat in Louisiana. The bull-dozers and murderers of that State were warned by law that wherever they wrought violence in a parish, and destroyed the right and power of peaceful voting, the parish should be thrown out. This was the law; whether wise or unwise was not for us to determine. But it was the law, and the enforcement of that law defeated Mr. Tilden and elected President Hayes. But where on earth is the analogy to sustain a fraud in Maine, unless you consider it good morals to steal my purse because you think an acquaintance of mine robbed your friend in Louisiana?

Eighth. And now we are asked, with the insolence of the highwayman making off with stolen property, what are we going to do about it? We are pursued with the taunt that we cannot help ourselves, and are boldly told that the same tribunal that has 'done' the country this year will be in a position next year to repeat the game, and such I have no doubt is the deliberate intention. Success always inspires courage, and if the people of Maine meekly submit now, they will be called on for a still greater display of meekness hereafter. The prizes next year, besides the State offices, are five Representatives, a Senator of the United States, seven Presidential Electors, and the undisputed possession of the political power of the State till January, 1883, as we are to have biennial elections hereafter. Within that time they could apportion the State into Legislative and Congressional districts to suit themselves, gerrymandering, at will to appoint the Valuation Commissioners, who will punish certain sections of the State by an undue and unfair share of taxation, and generally run riot, after the reckless style of the Administration already inaugurated. This is the treat to which the people are invited; this is the burden for which they are asked to bend their backs; this is the degradation to which they are expected to submit. A great popular uprising will avert these evils and restore honest government to Maine, and the people are already moving."

At this same meeting the resolutions that were adopted declare: First. That a Republican form of goverment requires and demands prompt and hearty submission to the will of the majority as expressed at the polls, and any attempt to thwart this will or deprive the people of their choice, is a crime against liberty, which, if successful, will undermine civil order, corrupt society, and lead to bloodshed and anarchy.

Second.-That Alonzo Garcelon, Governor of Maine, and the seven Executive Councillors associated with him, have forfeited the confidence and earned the condemnation of the people of this State by falsely counting and falsely declaring the result of the recent election, and attempting to install the minority in power over the majority. They have committed this crime knowingly, willfully, and deliberately, with light before their eyes, and in defiance of the remonstrances, evidence, and proofs submitted to them by the aggrieved and outraged parties.

Third. That a great crime of this kind, attempted for the first time in Maine, cannot carry with it the authority of law, and must not be permitted to achieve

its wrongful and wicked design. We call on all good citizens to unite with us in averting this threatened calamity, and we make a special and direct appeal to those men who were fraudulently counted in as Senators and Representatives not to contaminate their honor nor soil their consciences by accepting the wages of sin. They, each and all, have it in their power to refuse to act as receivers of stolen goods, and thus escape the brand of infamy which surely awaits thieves."

The admirable letters of ex-Senator Morrill, unanswerable in their facts, their logic impregnable, and the courageous and patriotic course of General Chamberlain and Eugene Hale, followed by the unanimous and repeated decisions of the Supreme Court of the State of Maine, sustaining the Republican case on every point submitted, and again deciding against Garcelon on the case as made by himself, ultimately succeeded in defeating this the most audacious, disloyal and dastardly fraud that ever was attempted on representative Government.

That it was the skirmish line of the Democratic army of traitor thieves, who contemplate the more gigantic enterprise of stealing the Presidency in March, 1880, no intelligent, honest man can for a moment doubt. Whether the men, and their descendants, of the twenty Northern States of this Union, who gave a half million of lives and five thousand millions of dollars to save it; crimsoned the green grass of America with the blood of her best and bravest ; and watered its fields with the tears of mothers, widows and orphans of those who fell, will permit the Republic now to fall a prey to this Democratic force and fraud, is the question to be settled at the coming election of November, 1880.

PART IV.

COPPERHEAD REDIVIVUS.—THE

PRETENDED FRIENDSHIP OF

THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERS FOR THE UNION SOLDIER.
ARREARS OF PENSIONS, ETC.

The sudden and new-found burst of friendship for the Union soldier on the part of the Democrats in Congress within the last year or two, must be amusing to the veterans of the late war for the Union, and to the widows and orphans of those who fell for their country, an insult which they must repel with just indignation. Bah Friends indeed. Who forgets the dark days of 1862 when in New York the families of soldiers who were in the field, were made the scoff and jeer of every Democratic traitor who staid at home? When the thieves and traitors who composed the rebel home-guards of the North were organizing for their draft riots of a year later in the great commercial metropolis of the nation and who, when they were carrying out their hellish purpose, were addressed by two distinguished New York men in quite different tones: by Horatio Seymour, then Governor of New York, as "My Friends," and by the immortal John A. Dix with grape and canister and the sharp response of the Minnie-ball. Dix, the patriotic soldier and hero, who always had a ready answer for treason and traitors, saying to Governor Seymour when he made his mock offering of men to suppress the rioters, "I have men enough to take care of them and you."

What soldier of Ohio fails to remember that year when Vallandigham was making preparations for the reception of his friend John Morgan on his mission of destruction to the hearths and homes of Ohio soldiers, and slaughter to their wives, while they were absent fighting for their country and these same homes? And foremost among these brave Ohio boys, James A. Garfield, the glorious young soldier who was then fighting his way to the rank he soon after won, the highest in the field.

Can we forget or even forgive the crime that we still shudder at the thought of, that during that year of darkness and gloom the patriotic Blackburn was risking his life and spending his fortune in the hospitals of the tropics purchasing yellow-fever infected clothing to send to the northern cities of the Union as a new means of destroying the enemies of the so-called Confederacy? He is now honored by the Democrats of Kentucky with the Governorship of that State. Was not this the time when Union soldiers were in the estimation of northern Copperheads (I do not say Democrats, for all Democrats are not Copperheads, but it is at the same time undeniable that all Copperheads and traitors were at that time as now-Democrats), Lincoln hirelings, and the greenbacks with which they were paid, worthless paper, useful only to paper bar-rooms and barber shops. This was the vein of the soldier's friends in those dark days. Lately, in this latter respect as to "Greenbacks," a new light has come over the spirit of