remainder of my life, over the rights of the citizens of our country with a jealous care. Such a usurpation must never occur again, and I call upon you to unite with me in the defence of our sacred and precious inheritance. The government of the people must not be suffered to become only an empty name." [Loud applause.] The remainder of Mr. Tilden's address was as follows: "The step, from an extreme degree of corrupt abuses in the elections to a subversion of the elective system itself, is natural. No sooner was the election over than the whole power of the office-holding class, led by a Cabinet minister, was exhorted to procure, and did procure, from the State canvassers of two States, illegal and fraudulent certificates, which were made a pretext for a false count of the electoral votes. To enable these officers to exercise the immoral courage necessary to the parts assigned to them, and to relieve them from the timidity which God has implanted in the human bosom as a limit to criminal audacity, detachments of the army were sent to afford them shelter. The expedients by which the votes of the electors chosen by the people of these two States were rejected, and the votes of the electors having the illegal and fraudulent certificates were counted, and the menace of usurpation by the President of the Senate of dictatorial power over all the questions in controversy, and the menace of the enforcement of his pretended authority by the army and navy, the terrorism of the business classes and the kindred measures by which the false count was consummated, are known. The result is the establishment of a precedent destructive of our whole elective system. [Applause.] The temptation to those in possession of the government to perpetuate their own power by similar methods will always exist, and if the example shall be sanctioned by success, the succession of government in this country will come to be determined by fraud or force, as it has been in almost every other country; and the experience will be reproduced here which has led to the general adoption of the hereditary system in order to avoid confusion and civil war. The magnitude of a political crime must be measured by its natural and necessary consequences. Our great Republic has been the only example in the world of a regular and orderly transfer of governmental succession by the elective system. To destroy the habit of traditionary respect for the will of the people, as declared through the electoral forms, and to exhibit our institutions as a failure, is the greatest possible wrong to our own country. It is also a heavy blow to the hopes of patriots struggling to establish self-government in other countries. It is a greater