WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1858
49
one amendment which has been suggested, to allow her three members, and then to take a census, and to reduce the number to what that census may show her to be entitled to, strikes me as an absurdity. If you admit the three members, and then take a census, I warrant you the returns will come in for a sufficient number to entitle them to that representation, if they do not go far beyond it. We have heard frauds of a flagrant character charged in regard to the elections of Minnesota, as well as of Kansas. While these charges stare us in the face, are we to go on, from sympathy or kindness to Minnesota, to extend to her favors that the Constitution of the United States does not warrant, and that we have no precedent for? I think not. I grant that, if you allow her less than three members, you will have to send .the election back to the people-the very thing that ought to be done after a census is taken, and it is ascertained correctly to what number Minnesota is entitled. Then the people will have a fair opportunity of expressing their opinions; but until that is done, you cannot arrive at it with that degree of certainty which will enable you to conform to the Constitution and the laws of the land. I admit that you cannot select from the three members already elected any one; but you must send them all back, or else admit the three, which I should consider to be a monstrous violation of the law and of the Constitution. They will hardly draw straws, or toss up heads and tails to know which shall have precedence here; but they will all be admitted, or all go back. The only course that I can conceive to be proper, is to disregard the provision in the Minnesota constitution, and send the Representatives back. It will require but a short time to take the census, and it will be worth much; for there will be a solvency of principle in that which will sustain us hereafter, and we shall not be setting a precedent for transcending the . law and the Constitution; but, if you admit them as they are now presented, it will be a disregard of all former precedents of faw, and of Constitution; and if, in this instance, they are disregarded, may they not be in all future instances? May not a State hereafter come forward when applying for admission, and declare in her constitution that she shall have five or six Representatives, and then elect them by general ticket in posi- tive violation of the laws of the land? In this case, the three members were elected by general ticket, though the district sys- tem is established by law. If you receive the three persons elected as members in this case, you are giving every encouragement to disregard of law and positive violation of its provisions. So,
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