It is no answer to these observations to say that frauds have been practised on the other side. Unhappily there is too much reason to believe that neither party is free from practices which are at once a scourge and a dishonor. Neither has the disgraceful monopoly of such practices, whichever may have the bad preëminence. But this is certain: one wrong neither justifies nor palliates another. There is no set-off known to the moral law. Because A has defrauded B, that is no reason why B should defraud A. If it were so, society would go on forever in a compound ratio of crime. The first breach of the law would furnish excuse for the second, and their progeny would follow in sad progression to the end of time. This is not, however, the moral condition of the world. The _lex talionis_ has been abolished by the law of civilization and the higher law of the gospel. In this case of Louisiana there can be neither excuse nor palliation for the misconduct of the Returning Board. On the 10th of November, President Grant telegraphed to the General of the Army instructions about troops in Louisiana and Florida, and added that "_no man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud_. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. _The country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns._" And again: "The presence of citizens from other States, I understand, is requested in Louisiana, to see that the Board of Canvassers makes _a fair count of the vote actually cast_. It is to be hoped that representative and fair men of both parties will go." Did the President of that day misrepresent his party, or his successor, or has the party changed and the successor also? Had the virtuous impulses of November faded away in February? Was there a change of heart or a change of opportunity? Neither Congress nor the Electoral Commission could give an _honest_ title, without investigating the honesty of the transactions on which the title was founded; and yet a President has been installed, in the face of rejected offers to prove frauds, the grossest, the most shameless, and the most corrupting, in all our history. Then what was the object of the committees of each House of Congress, sent into the disputed States? Was it to blind the people? Was it to conceal a meditated fraud? On the very first day of the session, December 4th, Mr. Edmunds, in the Senate, moved certain resolutions, of which this was one: