We have said the Governor and his Privy Council put their defence upon a single point. It is perhaps, due to them that we should state the point with greater distinctness than we have done. It is this-that they acted in the matter as mere ministerial officers; that returns in form had been made from all the counties, that they had no right to go beyond the mere form of the returns, and could not amend, correct, reject, or set them aside for any other reason than informality.

This is their whole argument. It assumes in the first place— that it is unlawful for a New Jersey Governor and Privy Council, to have eyes to see, ears to hear, or understanding to comprehend any thing in an election case but the marks and figures of county clerks, that they have no right to know any thing but what the county clerks tell them, that if Clerk Booream, or Clerk Fithian, informs them there are but three townships in Middlesex and two in Cumberland, they are bound not only to believe it, but to swear to it, because they are "ministerial officers."

It assumes in the second place, that form is every thing, substance nothing. That if a county clerk sends a return in form, though false upon its face in every sentence, and word and figure, known by every body to be so, admitted on all hands to be so, proved by testimony as clear as light to be so, they are not to hesitate, or doubt, or inquire, because the proved and perjured villainy, is a thing in "form."

And it assumes that in New Jersey the voice of the people is nothing the voice of the county clerks, every thing. That the clerks and not the people have the power to determine who shall represent them; and that the will of the former is the law of the

ease.

Now to all this the simple answer is, that the clear and manifest intention of the law, is the guide for all who administer, as well as for all who are subject to it. The law clearly vests in the people the right to choose their representatives, when the choice is made, it directs that the proper officers shall ascertain and announce the fact truly.

It directs the Governor and his Privy Counsellors to do it. Who are they? The chief executive magistrate, who is also the Chancellor, and the members of the highest court in the State. What are they to do? To ascertain and determine the six persons who have received the greatest number of votes from the whole State. How? By casting up the whole number of votes from the several counties returned by the clerks. But suppose the clerks do not return the whole number of votes, what then? Why the Governor is to send expresses for them, and procure them. If the clerks refuse to make the required returns, then, er necessitate, other evidence is to be taken; and a township return, if so authenticated

as to be legal evidence to the clerk, is legal evidence to the Governor and Council.

Can there be a doubt about it. Why, the very same statute which prescribes the mode of proceeding in the election of representatives to Congress, from the act of nominating to the act of commissioning, prescribes the same for the election of electors of President and Vice President-the directions are the same, word for word. And is it possible, that electors of the first officers of the Union are to be the creatures of county clerks. If the Governor and Council are mere automatons, and can move only as an insignificant county clerk shall pull the wire, in one case, they are so in the other. A House of Representatives may correct the error in the first-but the elector once commissioned, there is no power on earth, to look behind that commission, or to stay his hand. The doctrine is wrong in theory, and would be monstrous in practice.

The people never so intended—the legislature never so intended, the law is not so. But suppose it had been a doubtful question of construction; suppose honest men might possibly differ about the terms of the statute-and no one, surely would doubt the intention, how should an honest Governor and Council have acted? Should they not have leaned to that construction which, while it carried out the intention of the law, arrived at the truth and justice of the case, gave effect to the will of the people, and favored liberty? Or should they have done as this Governor and Council did-strain a point to give effect to fraud, to reach a false result, and violate the sacred principles and genius of republicanism?

But again. The doctrine advanced by the Governor and Privy Council, that "they have no right to go beyond the mere form of the returns, and cannot amend, correct, or reject, or set them aside for any other reason, than that they are not made in due form of law," (we quote from their official exposé) is not only absurd, but in direct opposition to all former precedents, and was in fact, violated by this very Council.

1. It is contrary to precedent. In 1828, by the return of the clerk of Burlington, it appeared that John J. Ely, John S. Ely, and John F. Ely, had been voted for; the Governor and Council "amended" the return by transferring all these votes to the name of John J. Ely. Several other errors of the same kind were corrected in the same manner; votes given to Peter D. Vroom were transferred to Peter D. Vroom, junior; votes given to Robert McCarter were transferred to Robert H. McCarter; and votes given to Abraham Godman were transferred to Abraham Godwin. In 1830 the Clerk of the county of Gloucester returned nine hundred and twenty-six votes given to Silas Condict; the names of Silas Condict and Silas Condit were both on nomination for Congress, and the latter had received the vote in other counties, but

had not sufficient to elect him without the addition of the Gloucester vote. A Democratic privy council transferred these votes to him, and declared him elected, though he was a political opponent, and, by this amendment of the returns, was elected over a political friend. In 1832 the officers of election of Millville township, in Cumberland, failed to make their return to the county clerk within the time limited by law. The law required the return to be made before five o'clock on the tenth of November, and it was not received until twelve o'clock at night. The Clerk completed his list and sent it to the Governor on the tenth, omitting the Millville vote; but, on the twelfth, he sent up a certificate of the facts, and the Governor and Council added the Millville votes to their general list, and declared the whole Democratic ticket elected, though, by excluding the returns from that township, Lewis Condit would have had a majority. This was a federal council, composed, in part, of Governor Southard, Ex-Governor Williamson, and Mr. Sealey, who was afterwards Governor, and Dr. Condit was the candidate of their party. This case was exactly similar to that of last October. In both cases the return from Millville was received too late; in the first case at twelve, and in the second at eleven, P. M. of the last return day. In both cases the Clerk omitted the vote of that township in making his return to the Governor. In both cases the vote of Millville cast the majority on the Democratic side. In the first case the omission was "corrected;" in the last the power of correction was denied.

2. It was in fact violated by this very council. This same Cumberland Clerk returned, as we have seen, nine hundred and thirteen votes, given to Thomas Jones York and others, as Representatives in the twenty-sixth Congress; and also in his explanatory note of the Deerfield return, gives one hundred and seventy-seven votes to Thomas Jones York and others, as Representatives in the thirtysixth Congress. Yet the Council "amended and corrected" the returns by carrying all these votes to the account of Thomas Jones Yorke and others, as members of the twenty-sixth Congress. This was necessary to make out Mr. Yorke's majority. In the return from Hunterdon the vote for William Halsted is given "one thousand six hundred and eight." The Council resorted to other evidence beyond the official return, discovered that the vote for Mr. Halsted in Hunterdon was one thousand six hundred and eighty, and "amended and corrected "the return of the Clerk accordingly, One more aspect of this case remains to be reviewed. We shall do it very briefly.

It is said that the returns from the townships of South Amboy and Millville not having been made to the clerks of the respective counties in due form, within the proper time, ought not to have been counted by the Governor and Council. The facts are these:

The South Amboy return was made up in due form, except that it was not signed by the Clerk of the election, and that no certificate of the election of James M. Warren, as one of the inspectors, he having been duly elected to that office on the morning of the first day of election, was sent with the return. The return was delivered to the Clerk of the county on the twelfth of October, by Mr. Wood, the Clerk of election; he states, under oath, that he delivered it on that day to Mr. Booream, and "asked the said Nicholas Booream if it was correct, so that if it was not it might be made correct, to which the said Nicholas Booream replied, as this deponent believes, that it was all right, and proceeded to take down the votes for members of Congress from off the said certificate along with the returns of other townships, before deponent left the office." And the fact is that he did, in the first official list prepared by him, include the South Amboy return, for Mr. Steele has deposed that Booream showed him the official list, with all the townships in it, on the fifteenth, in the Clerk's office.

The first return from Millville was informal in two or three particulars; but the only objection to the second was, that it was received six hours after the appointed time, though four days before the county Clerk actually made up his return for the county. For the second return for Millville was delivered to the Clerk at ten, P. M. on Saturday, the thirteenth of October, and his return to the Governor is dated the seventeenth.

The grounds, therefore, upon which these returns were rejected are: 1. For want of the signature of the Clerk of election; and 2. For want of a certificate of the election of an inspector in South Amboy; and

3. Because received six hours after time in the Millville case. Now, upon examination of the official returns from all the counties on file. in the Secretary of State's office in New Jersey, it appears that no certificate of the election of the person who acted as judge in Dover township, Monmouth county, was received in time, and that no lawful certificates of the election of either judges or inspectors in Shrewsbury or Dover townships, were ever received by the county Clerk. In Burlington county the returns from the townships of Burlington, Washington, Chesterfield, New Haven, and Little Eggharbour, were neither of them signed by the Clerks of election; the return from Mansfield township was without the signature of the Clerk and one of the inspectors; and that from Chester township was received open and unsealed; and in Somerset county no certificate was ever filed with the Clerk of the election of William Parker, who appears, by the returns, to have acted as one of the inspectors in Franklin township.

Yet the returns from all these townships, though accompanied with the evidence of these informalities, were received and counted.

Thus, while the township returns of South Amboy, giving a Democratic majority of two hundred and fifty-two, were rejected for want of the signature of the Clerk, and the certificate of the election of an inspector, the returns of ten federal townships, giving a federal majority of eight hundred and forty-nine votes, though all wanting one or both the requisites adjudged vital in the Amboy case, or some other equally important, were received and counted.

We have now seen that the decision in the Millville case was in violation of the principle settled in 1832; and that the decision in the Amboy case was in violation of the principles settled in ten other identically similar cases, at the same election, by the Governor and Council in 1838.

We have thus presented a brief narrative of the facts and circumstances of the most alarming fraud ever perpetrated against the right of suffrage in this country since the establishment of our national independence. We have seen the candidates for Congress nominated, voted for, and elected by the people, set aside by a Governor and Council, opposed to them in politics, and men commissioned in their stead, whom the people have rejected, because they had no confidence either in their political principles, or personal qualifications. We have seen this conspiracy generated in the fraud and perfidy of two federal returning officers, rejecting the votes of whole townships without legal authority, and in direct violation of all precedent and usage; the Governor refusing to do his duty under pretext of as petty a quibble as ever disgraced a tyro at pettifogging, and urging the want of the very evidence he was bound to procure as a reason for rejecting all other evidence of the truth of facts in themselves as clear as noon-day. We have seen a Governor and Council, adhering to a settled rule so far as it favored their own party, and setting it aside whenever it favored their opponents-counting informal returns from the townships which gave them majorities, and refusing to count informal returns from townships which gave majorities against them. We have seen them officially declaring persons elected whom they knew, and