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The Ku-Klux
bill, which has passed the House of Representatives by a strictly party
vote, is very little changed from that upon which we commented last week,
and for the reasons which we then gave we consider it a profound mistake.
The President is authorized at his discretion to decide when the State
authority is unable, or refuses, to keep the peace, and when the situation
may be deemed a rebellion. Has Congress really measured the scope of such
a bill? It is a power which every one knows, indeed, that General Grant
will not abuse, but which might be used to subvert all liberty. It would
have been very easy to qualify it; to require, for instance, the
certificate of a District Judge of the United States that unlawful
combinations obstructed the courts; but the bill provides no restraint
whatever upon the executive discretion. There is no excuse for not having
made the language of the Fourteenth Amendment so plain as to render
misconception impossible.
And now more than ever is amnesty
imperative. Mr. De Long, a colored representative from South Carolina,
cogently declared in the House that while intelligent and influential men
are disfranchised they have no interest in maintaining order, and they can
not reasonably be expected to support vigorously a system which
politically outlaws them. He demanded general amnesty. We observe also
that at a recent meeting of Ohio Republicans interested in the Cincinnati
declaration both General Cox and Mr. Clark, a prominent colored
Republican, urged, amidst great applause, the necessity and good policy of
amnesty. And if the Ku-Klux bill is passed by the Senate the President can
do no more signal and sagacious service to the country and to his party
than to sign a message strongly recommending general amnesty at the same
time that he signs the bill. |
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