that an election was fraudulent, may be proven, and the Court must determine, from all the evidence, whether fraud has been shown. As, for example, if the aggregate vote cast is largely in excess of the number of legal voters, resident in the precinct, or if the vote cast at the election in question is largely in excess of the vote cast at any previous or subsequent election, and this fact is not explained, or if a large number of persons, unknown to the oldest residents of the precinct, were present at the election, and were seen voting, or if the list of voters contains the names of a large number of persons who are unknown to those inhabitants best acquainted with the people residing within the limits of the precinct, such facts as these, if unexplained, will often establish the fact that frauds have been perpetrated, and illegal votes cast, and make it necessary to throw out the poll altogether, unless it can be sifted and purged. (Knox vs. Blair, 1 Bartlett, 521.) § 450. Where the law required a consolidated return of the vote of a county to be prepared by the election officers, who officiated at the county seat, or a majority of them, and at least one officer from each of the other precincts, it was held that a consolidated return made up by a person not an officer, and who had no legal connection whatever with the election, and who had no right to handle any of the papers, was fraudulent and void. (Sloan vs. Rawls, 43d Congress.) § 451. As we have already had occasion to remark, it is an unsettled question, whether Congress has power under the recent amendments to the con stitution, to provide for the punishment of fraud, violence and intimidation of voters generally, or only for such violence, fraud or intimidation as is committed against a voter, or class of voters, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. (Ante Secs. 12 to 16.) Thus in United States vs. Cruikshank, (13 Am. Law Register, N. S., 630,) Mr. Justice Bradley, sitting as Circuit Judge, laid down the doctrine, that the act of Congress of May 31, 1870, commonly called the enforcement act, so far as it assumes to regulate the right to vote, is beyond the scope of the fifteenth amendment, and void. Also that an indictment, under said act, for conspiracy to hinder certain citizens of African descent, in the exercise of their right to vote, cannot be sustained in a United States Court, without an allegation that the conspiracy was to hinder, &c., by reason of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. § 452. The opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley, in the case last cited, is elaborate and able. The substance of it is thus set forth in the syllabus: "Where rights of individual citizens are not derived originally from the constitution, but are part of the political inheritance from the mother country, the power of Congress does not extend to the enactment of positive laws for the protection of such rights, but only to the prevention of the States from violation of them. But where a right is derived from the constitution, and affirmative legislation is necessary to secure it to the citizen, then Congress may pass positive laws for the enforcement of the right, and for the punishment of individuals who interfere with it. "These principles apply to the fourteenth amendment equally with the rest of the constitution, and there can be no constitutional legislation under that amendment, for directly enforcing the privileges, and immunities of citizens of the United States, by original proceedings in the federal courts, where the only constitutional guaranty of such privileges is that no State shall pass any law to abridge them, and where the State has in fact passed no such laws. "The thirteenth amendment gave Congress power to pass positive laws for doing away with slavery, but it did not give power to pass laws for the punishment of ordinary crimes, against the colored race any more than against any other race. That power remains to the States. "To constitute an offense, of which Congress and the federal courts can take cognizance under this amendment, there must be a design to injure a person, or deprive him of his right, by reason of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude. "The fifteenth amendment confers no right to vote. That is the exclusive prerogative of the States. It does confer a right not to be excluded from voting by reason of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and this is all the right that Congress can enforce. "Semble, Congress may pass laws to protect this right, under the fifteenth amendment, from individual violation, although the laws of the States are not repugnant to the amendment. But offences against the right to vote are not cognizable under the power of Congress, unless they have, as a motive, the race color, or previous condition of servitude, of the party whose right is assailed. "The war of races, whether it assumes the dimensions of civil strife and domestic violence, or is limited to private outrage, is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, but outrage, or violence, whether against colored people or white people, which lacks this motive, and springs from the ordinary impulse of crime, is within the sole jurisdiction of the individual State, unless the latter, by its laws, denies to any race the full equality of protection. An indictment for conspiracy to interfere with the right, peaceably to assemble, &c., or with the right to bear arms, or "to deprive certain citizens of African descent of their lives and liberties, without any due process of law," where the State has not passed any law interfering with such rights, or denying equal protection to all its citizens, is not sustainable in a United States Court, under any law that Congress had power to pass. An indictment for conspiracy to deprive certain citizens of African descent, of the free exercise and enjoyment of the right to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings, for the security of persons and property which is enjoyed by white citizens, does not, in the absence of a specific allegation of a design to deprive the injured persons of their rights on account of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude, charge any offence cognizable in a United States Court." § 453. The doctrine of United States vs. Cruikshank, was endorsed by Hughes, District Judge in U.S. Circuit Court, District of Virginia, but the opposite view was taken by Bond, Circuit Judge in the same Court. (The U.S. vs. Petersburg Judges of Elections, et al, 14 Am. Law Reg., N. S., 105. Same vs. same, Ibid, 238.) In the course of his opinion in this case in support of the constitutionality of the enforcement act of May 31st, 1870, Judge Bond says: "There is a citizenship of the States, and a citizenship of the United States. What the States may do by reason of this relationship, the United States may do. To give any other construction to the clauses of the fourteenth amendment we have been considering, would be to say, that everybody born or naturalized in the United States, had a right to call himself citizen, and that the amendment drew the relation of citizenship no closer than before its adoption; and that in view of the great contest just over, the people adopted an amendment, declaring every one born or naturalized in the United States, a citizen, and that Congress might enforce that nominal relation, and the empty claim to be called such by appropriate legislation. To overrule this demurrer it is necessary to claim only that the sovereignty of the United States is equal in its sphere for the protection of the rights and privileges of citizens, to that claimed by the States in the protection of their own. Nor does this construction of the amendment interfere with the rulings of the Supreme Court in what is known as the Slaughter-house case. The right to slaughter animals within the limits of the city of New Orleans was not a right appertaining to citizenship at all; aliens might do it; but in this case the right to vote is given to all citizens of the United States as such, and no one else can exercise it. It is an immunity, |