Whatever doubt may have been expressed or felt whether this statute applied to the canvassers of a presidential election, or whether the words _prima facie_ really meant _prima facie_, or whether "courts of justice," and "civil officers," included the Electoral Commission and the two Houses of Congress, there can be no doubt that "the returns of the elections thus made and promulgated" do not include returns canvassed without jurisdiction, or made under cover of pretended affidavits which the returning officers themselves caused to be forged. But, passing from this view of the subject, although this is sufficient to dispose of Brewster's pretensions, let us suppose a stronger case--the strongest supposable--that of a State Legislature directing not only the manner in which electors shall be appointed, but directing also that the certificate of the State canvassers shall be conclusive evidence that the State has appointed in the manner directed. Because the Constitution provides that electors shall be appointed by the State, in the manner directed by its Legislature, it is thence inferred that the State must furnish the evidence of the appointment, and of course that none can be received except that which the State has furnished. And this is said to be the true States-rights doctrine. It is a strange sight, that of gentlemen clamoring for State rights who will not allow the people of Louisiana and South Carolina to take care of themselves; who are even now debating at Washington whether they shall not order new elections in those States, or which of two State governments they shall put up and which put down, and who since the war have treated the South as if no States were there, parceling it into military districts, and denying recognition until constitutional amendments were ratified. Their assertion of the conclusiveness of false and fraudulent canvassers' certificates, on the pretense of upholding State rights, should seem to be thrown in our faces by way of bravado, unless it be meant, indeed, for burlesque masking hypocrisy. But if the sight were not strange, and those gentlemen had been all along as careful of the rights of the States as they are of their own places, there is nothing in the claim for the conclusiveness of canvassers' certificates which receives support from the doctrine of State rights. On the contrary, the rights of the States are best preserved by fencing them against force or fraud, by leaving them untrammeled in their own action, and leaving us untrammeled in finding out what that action has been. No rights are ever lost by letting in the light.