"But these Electoral Colleges are peculiar bodies, whose appointment is committed wholly to the States, whose certificates, when their official character has been duly vouched by their States, become by force of the Constitution the sole and exclusive legal evidence that the votes of those States have been cast for such and such persons as President and Vice-President. It cannot be, therefore, that any authority can reside anywhere to try any question, or to find any fact, that is to warrant the two Houses in rejecting the votes of any Electoral College of whose authority to give those votes the State, through its constituted authorities, has legally informed Congress. All such questions and all such facts belong to the proper authorities of each State to try and determine before the persons supposed to be chosen electors are assembled to give their votes. Any attempt by the two Houses, or either of them, to go behind the certificates and to determine the right of the electors to give the votes which they have certified, when the State has determined that right by its competent authorities, will lead to conclusions in which the people of this country will not acquiesce. "Thus, if it shall be found on an inspection of the certificates of the Electoral Colleges, when they are opened in the presence of the two Houses, that Mr. Hayes has received 185 votes, or more, that result must be accepted by the people as the legal result, whatever may have been the frauds committed in Louisiana or any other State in taking or returning or counting the popular vote. It is perfectly proper for Congress to ascertain the fact of such frauds in an authoritative and conclusive manner for the information of the people, but the certainty that there are such frauds cannot affect the legally certified election. Mr. Hayes must be inaugurated and acknowledged as President, even if the legal result is so tainted with fraud that honest men revolt at the very thought they must submit to. There is no alternative but civil war; and that forms an unnecessary and inadequate remedy, and is not to be thought of. If Hayes shall be declared President, with grave reason to believe that he has not been honestly and fairly entitled to have the electoral votes of certain States, he and his party must bear the consequences. Those consequences, if his opponents are wise, will be, not that his title to the office is to be resisted, but that the people are to be appealed to to use their constitutional and peaceful methods of redressing all wrongs and punishing all outrages--namely, by the ballot-box. No such appeal can be made if the country is to be plunged into anarchy by denying Hayes' title to the office. Our government must be preserved and perpetuated; and that it may be, grievous as the wrong will be that takes from Tilden States in which he has certainly carried a majority of the popular vote, we must submit to that wrong, in the entire certainty that the