The President And Michigan

In accordance witta its constitutional rights the state of Michigan has decided to select by districts its presi dential electors As ia this way the minority secures something like fair play, Mr. Harrison calis the attention of congress to the subject and asks tor remedial legislation. The choice of presidential electors is a matter which the constitution commits specilically to the state, and it no more coinés under the supervisión of the president than does an election of members of the legislature. In discussing the question the president should not have confined himself to Michigan. New York at the recent election gave a democratie majority of nearly 50,000, but the republicans still, even at a risk of riot, refuse to surrender control of the legislature to the representativos of the people. The president knovvs that the republicans control the senate by means of infamous gerrymanders. He knows that in New Hampshire, in Connecticut, in Nebraska, republican usurpers refuse to surrender the executive control to men chosen for these places by the people. Yet the president is silent concerning these ofïenses, while joining in the hypocritical outcry coucerning the action in Michigan. Yet the actual justice of the Michigan plan is indisputable. If it has an effect at all it wiH merely prevent in 1892 a repetition of the frauda and outrages of 1876, by means of whieh the republican party seized the presidency, disregarded the will of the people as expressed at the polls, and revvarded the tools of the conspirators with office and emolument. It would appear that the president remembers with exultation the success of the conspiracy of 1876; that he recalls with admiration the construction and the work of the electoral commission, and that he is espeeially desirous of again dragging the supreme court into politics. He concludes his lecture on the unpardonable sin of Michigan with this suggestion: " I believe it would be possible to constitute a commission, non-partisan in ite n.embership, and composed of patriotic, wise umi impartial men, to wliom a consideratión of the question of the evils connected ■with our election systern and methods might be committed with a good prospect of securing unanimity in some plan for removing or niitigating evils. The constitution would perrnit the selection of the commission to be vested in the supreme court, if that ruethod would give the best guaranty ol' fmpartiality. This eommission should be cliarged with the duty of inquiring into the whole subject of the laws of election, as related to the choice of ofticers of the national government, with a view to securing to every elector a (ree and unmolested exercise of the sullrages, as near an approach to an equality of value in each ballot castas is obtainable." That the supreme court should have anything to do with such a revisión is out of thequestion. It is in no sense a representative body. It has never been chosen by the people. lts functions are entirely distinct i'roni that of the legislativedepartment,and neitlier its character, its position, its decisions nor its hlstory encourages the belief that it is in any way fltted for the work of such a commission. The mere suggestion is preposterous, and indicates on the part of the president strange mental confusión coneerning the fundamental principíese)!' American institutions. This recommendation taken in connection with the implied threat that if Michigan's divided vote should, in' 1892, prevent the consummation of a conspiracy similar to that of 187(i, "the public peace miglit be seriously and widely endangered," should arouse the people to new diligence and to new devotion to constitutional rights. - Louisville Courier-Journal. Peel was in parliament at 21,. and Palmerston was lord of the admiralty at 23.